A change of scenery from Japan.

[westfalen]

For a change of scenery from my usual trips to Japan I'm heading off this afternoon for three weeks train riding and watching around Germany and Switzerland with a couple of friends.

 

Things definitely penciled in are Miniatur Wunderland in Hamburg, Gotthard Pass before the base tunnel brings its demise and plenty of places were we can film freight action.

 

I'll post some photos and trip reports as I go.

 

We will be off to a good start on Tuesday as the Munich to Salzberg line and the first section of the Berchtesgaden branch are closed for trackwork and we will have to take an interesting diversion along a couple of cross country single track branch lines to get to Frielassing from Munich Airport.

[bikkuri bahn]

Likewise I will be taking the Zurich-Munich route via Lindau and Memmingen this winter.  Hope to ride a few DB 218 class diesel-hauled RE trains with a rake of the repainted n-wagen silberlingen coaches.  Plan to get off at Stetten and hope to get some pics of trains with the semaphores there, if they still exist.

 

happy travels!

[E6系]

Hello,

 

I recommend Lucerne for a couple of nights.  Then train to Zermatt.  Wife and I overnight there also.  Take cablecar x 3 to the top of the Matterhorn.

[Jensen]

Hope you having a good time. 

Look forward to your wonderful photos and trip reports.

[bikkuri bahn]

Ditto here.  Hope the trainwatching and riding is what's keeping you away from the keyboard. 

[Darklighter]

I hope he will have left Germany in time as there won't be much train watching and riding from Thursday until Monday morning due to the longest strike in the history of Deutsche Bahn. 

[bikkuri bahn]

Yes, apparently two-thirds of scheduled services will be cancelled.

[westfalen]

Ditto here.  Hope the trainwatching and riding is what's keeping you away from the keyboard. 

Been busy, a lot to see here, don't seem to have as much time to get on the computer as I do in Japan.

 

Highlights so far have been a day at Miniatur Wunderland, (only just managed to see it all and took 500 photos), a ride on the Molli narrow gauge and a foray into the Czech Republic from Plattling

 

I spent three hours this afternoon at Gremberg marshalling yard south of Cologne and literally lost count of how many freight trains I saw.

 

Tomorrow I am spending the day going for a long tram ride from Benrath south of Dusseldorf to Witten.  So far this trip have ridden trams in Munich, Gotha, Halle, Leipzig, Naumberg, Wurzeburg, Rostock, and Cologne.

 

On Wednesday we head south to Karlsruhe and then to Switzerland via the black forest.

[westfalen]

I hope he will have left Germany in time as there won't be much train watching and riding from Thursday until Monday morning due to the longest strike in the history of Deutsche Bahn. 

We had to take a bus from Rostock to Hamburg but otherwise we hardly noticed the strike as we were in Hamburg for three nights.  Despite the strike there were still more trains running than we see at home, there were freight trains passing in front of our hotel at Hamburg-Harburg every 15 minutes or so.

[westfalen]

Hello,

 

I recommend Lucerne for a couple of nights.  Then train to Zermatt.  Wife and I overnight there also.  Take cablecar x 3 to the top of the Matterhorn.

My friend an I are freight fans so we will be spending a day on Lotschberg Pass and two on Gotthard Pass filming freight, staying two nights at Brig and three at Erstfeld.  We are travelling between the two via Milan to spend a few hours riding the trams there.

[E6系]

My friend an I are freight fans so we will be spending a day on Lotschberg Pass and two on Gotthard Pass filming freight, staying two nights at Brig and three at Erstfeld.  We are travelling between the two via Milan to spend a few hours riding the trams there.

 

Oh yes, of course.  To travel to Tatch and Zermatt from Lucerne the best way is to put your car onto the train and ride through the Lotschberg Tunnel.  If your car has a GPS it will say "Now board the ferry", which is a strange thing for the GPS to say at the top of the mountains.  :D

[katoftw]

Oh yes, of course.  To travel to Tatch and Zermatt from Lucerne the best way is to put your car onto the train and ride through the Lotschberg Tunnel.  If your car has a GPS it will say "Now board the ferry", which is a strange thing for the GPS to say at the top of the mountains.  :D

Female GPS systems will do that.

[westfalen]

Oh yes, of course.  To travel to Tatch and Zermatt from Lucerne the best way is to put your car onto the train and ride through the Lotschberg Tunnel.  If your car has a GPS it will say "Now board the ferry", which is a strange thing for the GPS to say at the top of the mountains.  :D

We rode through the Simplon Tunnel on the car shuttle for a morning of train watching at Iselle di Trasquera, but more of that later.

[westfalen]

No that I'm back home and settled in I'll go through my photos and put up a day to day summary of our travels.

 

We flew into Munich via Dubai and headed for Berchtesgaden, an area of Germany I hadn't been to before.  On the way we spent a couple of hours filming trains a Munich Ost, we were so impressed with the volume of passenger and freight traffic we decided we had to return later in the trip.  The main line to Salzburg was closed for track work so all through trains that were still running were hauled by diesels via Mühldorf and we made our way to freilassing by railcar.

 

The frst section of the Berchtesgaden branch was also closed so we had to take a bus to Bad Reichenhall to get the train.

 

The next day was train free as we explored the area, the Eagle's Nest had unfortunately closed a couple of days earlier because of snow but we hiked around the ruins of Hitler's Berghof next door to the hotel (where we appeared to be the only guests, although the owner said she had three more we never saw or heard them), the Mooslahnakopf lookout and the old bunkers under the hotel and the Documentation Centre.  The bunkers under the hotel where in more original condition although on not as grand a scale as those at the Documentation Centre but photos were not allowed.

Edited November 24, 2014 by westfalen

[westfalen]

Berchtesgaden has a very impressive station for a branch line terminus, no doubt because of a certain person who once lived there.

 

We returned to Munich via Salzburg allowing a some train and trolley bus watching and the opportunity ride a Railjet since the main line had reopened.

 

We did some filming at Munich Hbf before we checked into the hotel and after dinner went back to Munich Ost for some night shots but I only took video there.

[kvp]

That station was meant to be a through station towards Salzburg and you can still see the railroad tunnel behind the current buffer stops. The rest of the tracks were removed after the war, but the line could be followed for a short distance on satellite pictures.

[ozman2009]

Wow! Was the loco in the last photo, with the IC coach immediately behind it, actually a Br 103?

[kvp]

Yes, it looks like they are still in use:

 

103 113-7    ist seit Januar 2013 im Besitz von DB Fernverkehr und in Frankfurt beheimatet. Sie wird wieder zusammen mit 103 235-8 vor Regelzügen eingesetzt. Sie verkehrt weiterhin mit rotem Rahmen.

103 235-8    ist ebenfalls im Bestand von DB Fernverkehr Frankfurt und wird meist vor planmäßigen InterCity-Zügen auf der Strecke zwischen Stuttgart und Münster zusammen mit 103 113-7 eingesetzt.

103 245-7    ist die letztgebaute 103 und als letzte Maschine im Bestand von DB Fernverkehr München. Sie übernimmt seit 2013 planmäßig ein InterCity-Zugpaare zwischen Nürnberg–München sowie Sonderleistungen, z.T. auch nach Österreich.

[Martijn Meerts]

103 is still one of the most popular and well-liked trains in Germany, so no surprise they still have a few of them running around :)

[westfalen]

That station was meant to be a through station towards Salzburg and you can still see the railroad tunnel behind the current buffer stops. The rest of the tracks were removed after the war, but the line could be followed for a short distance on satellite pictures.

The line beyond Berchtesgaden to Salzburg was opened in 1909 but was closed in 1938 for conversion to double track to create a shorter and easier route to Berchtesgaden at the same time construction of the present station was started to cater for the large number of state visits by Hitler and his cronies.  The station was completed in 1940 but the double track project was abandoned along with the Berchtesgaden to Salzburg line after the war.

 

The two tunnel portals.

[westfalen]

From Munich we headed north to Halle so I'll use the opportunity to put up a couple of shots of ICE trains, though like Shinkansen in Japan they are only the tip of the iceberg of a very interesting railway system.

 

On the way at Frottstadt we caught a railcar down the branch line to Waltershausen to ride the Thuringerwaldbahn country extension of the Gotha tram system into town.

 

In the station yard at Gotha was this chocolate coated diesel.

 

A night tram ride around Halle finished off a long day.

[westfalen]

The next day started with some more tram riding and train watching in Halle and a visit to the DB Museum before catching one of the new Talent 2 EMUs to Leipzig for a look at the impressive station and some more trams.

 

The Halle DB museum.  Like most museums in old roundhouses you could get up close to the exhibits in an authentic environment but at the expense of being able to get good photos.

 

Talent 2 at Halle Hbf.

 

Leipzig Hbf has some historical rolling stock parked in one of the platforms as a mini musuem.

 

Leipzig trams, like most of Germany's tram systems one afternoon isn't enough to do it justice.

Edited November 29, 2014 by westfalen

[westfalen]

We headed south again, the first stop being Naumberg to ride one of the old four wheel trams on the town's remaining tram line.

 

A variety of trains took us further south to Plattling on the Regensburg to Passau line.

 

We spent a couple of nights at Plattling because we had been watching the webcam of the station and decided to see it in real life. You can see us through the fog standing on the end of the platform at the left in this screen capture of the webcam. We got some shots of shunting and trains passing through before we decided to head up the branch line to Bayerisch Eisenstien.

 

The border of the Czech Republic goes through the middle of the station at Bayerisch Eisenstien, (where the roof changes colour) and we continued on the waiting Czech train to Janovice nad Úhlavou then a four wheel railcar to Domažlice where we got some shots of trains in the yard before an Alex train arrived to take us to Regensburg and a connection back to Plattling.

Edited December 1, 2014 by westfalen

[westfalen]

Next day was a long trip from south to north to take us to Rostock.

 

Along the way we stopped over in Wurzburg for a few hours hoping to see a bit of freight action, but while the freight trains were elusive we got our tram fix for the day.

 

Kato don't make these!

 

Our main reason for visiting Rostock was to ride the nearby Molli narrow gauge line which was worthwhile even though the day was wet, and the first section of the line which includes the street running was closed for track work forcing us to take a bus to a siding on the outskirts of Bad Doberan to get the train.

 

After we returned to Rostock in the afternoon we did a cook's tour of the city's tram system managing to get to each terminus even though the last was well after dark.

[Densha]

Wow, a passenger service pulled by a BR234 Ludmilla in photo DSC02152.JPG?! They are freight locos, so that must have been only for the diverted trains because of the track work then.