Funny looking foreign narrow gauge stuff

My title is intended to be humorous....I was the only American on this tour.

I recently spent five days on the Harz narrow gauge in Germany on a tour run by Bernd Seiler of Farrail Tours. Today the Harzer Schmalspurbahen is primarily a tourist railroad. But before German reunification in 1990 these narrow gauge lines were an integral part of the Deutche Reichsbahn and provided both freight and passenger service to the area.

Bernd grew up in East Germany and took his first pictures of the Harz lines in 1980 at age 20. His tour was designed to recreate the narrow gauge the way it was in the late 1980's before reunification. Two aspects of that recreation are notable.

Starting about 1988 the last regularly scheduled doubleheaded steam freight working in East Germany was a coal train on the narrow gauge from Nordhausen to a power plant a Silberhutte. The cars were standard gauge four wheel gons carried on narrow guage "transporter" wagons. Bernd's recreation of that train provided some dramatic steam photography. The steep grades limited the trains to six to seven loaded cars.

A branch of the narrow gauge line goes to the top of Brocken mountain, the highest point in northern Germany. Today it is a tourist destination, but during the Cold War it was a closely guarded Soviet military spy station, and off limits to civilians. Only military supply trains traversed the section of line from Schierke to Brocken. Reflecting those times our train was closely guarded along much of its route by the "Lost Battalion" of the East German National People's Army.

It was a fun trip. I have attached three pictures, and more can be found starting HERE on my website. Page forward, there are about 22 images so far! Again my apologies to those on dial-up, most of the images on my website are large files.

JBWX






Edited 6 time(s). Last edit at 04/14/2009 09:38AM by John West.