A Privileged Journey: From Enthusiast to Professional Railwayman by Maidment David

A Privileged Journey: From Enthusiast to Professional Railwayman by Maidment David

Author:Maidment, David [Maidment, David]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: TRANSPORTATION / Railroads / General
ISBN: 9781473859494
Publisher: Pen & Sword Books Ltd
Published: 2015-06-29T16:00:00+00:00


Re-boilered Bavarian four-cylinder compound Pacific 18.606 on train E826 at Munich, July 1959.

DB 2-10-0 50 147 passes Dachau at speed with a freight heading towards Munich, August 1959.

Bavarian Pacifics 18.611 and 18.481 await departure westwards at Buchloe, August 1959.

Tegernseebahn 0-8-0 No. 6 at Schaftlach, August 1959.

After a few days of this I got a little more ambitious. One weekend I purchased a Sunday excursion ticket to the Tegernsee and travelled to the Bavarian Alp foothills behind one of the oldest ‘P8s’, 38 1142 (there were more than 3,000 of them, numbered from 38 1000), our train being hauled around to the lakeside terminus behind a privately owned ‘V65’ 0-6-0 diesel-hydraulic. I discovered later that the Tegernsee Bahn owned three steam locos — No. 7, a 2-6-2 ‘freelance’ tank engine based on Bavarian lines, No. 8 (of which I have no knowledge at all except for a reference in J. H. Price’s Railway Holiday in Bavaria) and the oldest, No. 6, an 0-8-0 tank, Krauss works number 8315 of 1924 (DB Class 98.8), which delighted me by returning to the Schaftlach junction with our string of a dozen six- or four-wheelers, with their wooden-slatted seats. At the junction a former Prussian Railway 4-6-4 tank, 78 301, whisked us in a very sprightly (not to say bouncing) fashion back to the state capital.

I also started to venture out as far as Buchloe — about forty miles distant, on the main line to Lindau, and the first stop of the D-Zug international trains, which were normally formed of half a dozen or so light and low-slung Swiss coaches and invariably hauled by an ‘18.6’. If I could raise the price of the two-mark Zuschlag (D-train supplement) as well as the fare I could wait for the 5.20pm Munich–Geneva D98, and on 29 August 1959 I did just that, 18 630, hauling seven coaches, completing the non-stop 68km run in 19 seconds under the 54-minute schedule but with a modest top speed sustained at around 60mph. On a couple of earlier occasions with 18 611 and 18 618 we had more energetic runs on the E826 semi-fast, which stopped at Geltendorf and Kaufering as well as Pasing and required brisk and noisy acceleration to 60mph to keep time. (I later discovered that the section of line to Buchloe was restricted to 100km/h at that time.)

My real joy, however, started at Buchloe. On my first arrival there on a wet and dismal August evening I was standing, eyeing 18 611, which had just arrived on the Munich–Geneva D-Zug, when another totally unexpected apparition appeared smokily from the direction of Augsburg. The same bullet-nosed smokebox and huge cylinders were there, but the boiler was smaller, and the chimney taller and flared, with what seemed like a copper cap! This was No 18 481, one of the seven remaining Bavarian ‘S 3/6’ Pacifics of 1908 design (this one built c1923), all of which were allocated to Augsburg depot. It was hauling an Augsburg–Oberstdorf Eilzug and would follow



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