German Preserved Railways

[RichmondCommu]

G’day everyone,

Last October I discovered that I had a 23 year old German son and we’re now making up for lost time. Fortunately we’re getting on very well and having a shared love of football and music helps too. While Tim has been staying with us this Christmas he’s taken an interest in my modest collection of railway memorabilia and I’m interested to know whether there are any preserved railways in Germany that we could visit? Ideally they’d be near Munich (where he lives) or Dortmund which is his home city. Failing that, anything that has steam engines will do!

Happy New Year!

Richmond Commuter

 

[stuartmoss]

Hi Mate,

The Germans do seem to have a good amount of steam, I'm sure Gordon will advise in a fuller answer than me. I know that there is a preserved line near Dresden, but that is a LONG way from Munich. Try Googling Dampflok or Dampflokomotive.

Stu.

 

[WestCoast]

There's a few attractions in Nordrhein-Westfalen (the state where Dortmund is), that I know of;

There's the Railway Museum in Bochum, which has a small English information section on their website - www.eisenbahnmuseum-bochum.de/museum/informations-in-english/index.php

There is also the Schluff - Krefeld preserved line - http://www.swk.de/Die-SWK-Gruppe/Freizeit-Familie/Fahren-mit-dem-Schluff (in German only).

Really interesting story with your son by the way!

 

[martinsh]

this line is in the far south west, but it is pretty spectacular.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wutach_Valley_Railway

 

[33056]

Germany doesn't tend to have preserved railways per-se, more like the local association / group running occasionally either on the "main line" or one of the numerous private railways in the country; beware that some of them can be very occasional!

Can recommend the museum at Bochum, they do run a number of trips on the mainline each year using steam and diesel and they run fairly frequently on the RuhrtalBahn between Hattingen (Ruhr) and Hagen Hbf (2012 dates not published yet, but doubt whether they will start before Easter or early May).

Eisenbahn Tradition are another group not too far from Dortmund (based at Lengerich) who run both on the main line and a couple of branch lines in the area.

Nearish to München is the Bayerisches Eisenbahn Museum at Nördlingen who run trips on the main line and on two branches radiating from Nördlingen and Bahnpark Augsburg who appear to have taken over running some trips on the Staudenbahn (hmmmm, 38 1301 is required )

If you don't mind having a trip away, can recommend any of the former East German narrow gauge lines which run with steam all year round - especially the Harz sysytem , but none are do-able on a day trip from either of the two places that you mentioned and the harz really needs at least three days to do it justice.

 

[burns20]

Saxony has around 25.

Dampfbahn-route.de

 

[gordonthemoron]

There are 3 preserved railways I've been on in Germany. One is around Munich and the others are in the Harz mountains and on Rügen. The last two aren't close to Dortmund or Munich although the Harz one is sort of between Dortmund & Munich:

Munich Steam Trains

Harz Schmalspurbahn

Racing Roland

Another interesting thing about the Harz railway is that stop Nordhausen-Krimderode is by the Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp which is also the site of the V2 rocket factory which you can visit.

The munich trains are standard gauge, the others are narrow gauge. The Munich trains only run on certain weekends, and are very busy. The others run all year.

 

[igloo]

Some of my friends are fans of Aachensee, although I haven't yet made it there myself. It's near Innsbruck, south of Munich, I believe:
http://www.achenseebahn.at/en/home.html