Nicely captured scene of a railroad worker taking care of his locomotive!
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| Posted by xBNSFer on September 23, 2016 | |
First thing that pops into my mind is a couple of lines from John Frankenheimer's "The Train" - "It's a grease job - not a bath! A locomotive is like a woman - if you don't treat her right, she'll make your life miserable!"
The other thing is wow, Germany was still running a good deal of steam in 1978, as compared with total dieselization in the U.S. - but now, Germany has high speed intercity rail service, which in the U.S. is only present in a limited way in the Northeast Corridor. How things change.
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This location, in the far southeastern corner of former East Germany, is a jct. point on the narrow-gauge line from Zittau to Bertsdorf. From there, one line goes to Oybin and another to Jonsdorf. A photo favorite at Bertsdorf is the simultaneous departure of steam-powered trains to the two endpoints. By 1989 when the communist govt. fell, East Germany's economy was a wreck. But the Reds get at least a hat-tip from us railfans, for preserving the region's several steam-powered narrow-gauge lines, now run by private foundations that took over after Deutsche Reichsbahn was absorbed by Deutsche Bundesbahn in the '90s.
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