Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: db

I was very much struck by how retro this train looked, and I do in fact wonder about its age. I don't know very much about Swedish equipment.

This night train from Stockholm (I think) was sitting in Berlin Hbf when I arrived early in the morning, having just arrived after rolling all night.

This is the waterspout at Bruckenmeisterei shed, pretty well intact, from the look of it, although I doubt that there's any water left in the tower posted earlier.

This is one of the signs that I've been talking about all this time, over the former yard office which is now the park office. So which is it? Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof, or Bruckenmeisterei (or for that matter, Bruckmeisterei West)?

This was the turntable for near the Bruckenmeisterei West office, which also is situated close to the Bruckenmeisterei shed and the Class 50 2-10-0 I found, as well as other steam-related facilities.

This is the water tower at Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof, or Bruckenmeisterei, if you will. This was where I found the Bruckenmeisterei signs, on the former yard office, which is now occupied, appropriately enough, by the offices of the park's management.

This was one of the highpoints of my visit to Berlin. You know how I said that everything in the yard was just left as-is? Well, that even included this former Deutsche Reichsbahn Class 50 2-10-0, although it's been stripped for parts. Someone repainted it, though, in order to control rust on it and make it look nicer in what is now a relatively clean and green park.

This is another shot of the path through the Rangier Bahnhof Tempelhof park, showing a turnout in the track. This was approaching the hump, as this railyard was a hump yard, in spite of being built and abandoned in the steam era.

This is part of the trail through the Bruckenmeisterei/Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof park, made out of one of the old tracks, as like I said almost nothing was scrapped.

I'm not actually posting Picture 2, as it was a bracket and I don't think it was very good. :-) This is another, clearer shot of the abandoned turnout in the last shot.

Here's the turnout that the abandoned switchstand was connected to. If I'm not mistake this was on or near the hump.

This was a switchstand that I found near the hump in the Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof park, by all appearances a powered one, again somewhat unusual for a steam-era yard, illustrating how sophisticated this yard once was.

This tunnel, not original, but made out of a pipe found somewhere, is part of a park that used to be a railway freight yard. The tour guide said the yard was originally called Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof, although all the signs I saw said Bruckenmeisterei, so whichever one it is. Much of the infrastructure, all of it steam-era, is still intact, as the yard was in control of the Soviets (as was all of the rail infrastructure in Berlin) after World War II, and lacking adequate international traffic to keep it going, it was eventually abandoned, with almost everything sitting abandoned until 1989, when it became the park that it is now.

I almost forgot this yesterday, but this was where my Berlin tour started, as the tour guide wanted to go here first. As in most major mainland European cities, Berlin's mainline, commuter, and urban transit railways are integrated (and were even under Communism, when the Communists were given charge of the railways in both the East and the West of Berlin). In general, the transport network is well unified and functional, unlike in London, where it's been partly privatized and fragmented beyond belief, or in L.A., where it transport means either a 10 m.p.h. traffic jam, or an 80 m.p.h. demolition derby. Here you can see Berlin Zoologicher Garten Bahnhof, which has both mainline and subway trains, in the foreground in a bus stop, and of course there are quite a few bicycles as well.

I first rode behind a DB 101 Class electric in 1998, on an Intercity service from Emmerich to Koln. That was a very memorable trip, and since then I've ridden behind a 101 on other occasions as well. They're very fast (for a locomotive as opposed to a trainset) being able to hit 220Km/h with little effort, although officially they only do 200Km/h in service with their 10-12 car Intercities, very powerful (the Class 103 is the only large German electric class to ever beat it), and just...well...good looking. The bright cherry red that DB uses for its Intercity equipment nowadays suits them especially well. Therefore, I figure I should use any excuse to put a picture of a 101 on my website, so here it is. I took this is Dresden Hauptbahnhof in 2005, where I was catching a Eurocity service to Prague. They cut the 101 off in Bad Schandau or Decin, if I'm not mistaken, replacing it with a CD Class 363.

This was a very lucky shot, although not perfect. I had gotten on the train, and was regretting the fact that I didn't have the chance to catch this earlier, when it went by on the mainline when I was in the wrong part of Dresden to get a good angle on it (I only saw and heard the exhaust through the trees). Much to my amazement, my camera was already in my hands, and there it was, moving slowly enough for me to get this shot!!! It's an old DRG Class 50 2-10-0, repainted for DB, as after World War II DB didn't get rid of steam until 1978, and even after that the DR kept it, so today a lot of it has been preserved.

I saw this coming from a long way off, but didn't get the classic angle of it bearing down on me, although I regretted it somewhat later, as I never got the number. This Ceske Drahy Class 371 electric was pulling a MAV (Hungarian State Railways) Eurocity from somewhere in Germany to Budapest, via Prague, so it obviously wasn't going to stop in Roztoky, and I wanted to be sure that I got this pan shot. I set my camera up, passed up the offset head-on view, and swung my body around for the pan. It worked perfectly, and now I have this, which may be my best pan shot ever. I hope you like it.

After I arrived in Berlin, there wasn't much to do for a few hours, so I walked around taking photos before getting the next train #NZ242 for Bruxelles-Midi, at 2146. Berlin Hbf was recently restored and rebuilt massively, and bears little resemblence at this point to the steam-era station. It's as much mall as station, like Washington Union, Cleveland Union Terminal (but with more trains), London Liverpool Street, or London Waterloo in this respect. The food isn't too bad, and the shopping is so-so. I didn't find anything worth buying.