Alstom Coradia iLint Hydrogen-Powered Train Video
I’ve just found this video from Alstom.
Intriguingly, the video was filmed at Braunschweig Hauptbahnhof, which is in another part of Germany, about two hundred kilometres to the South-East of Hamburg.
There does seem to be several local services radiating from the City on lines without electrification.
From Braunschweig To Osnabruck
This was a leg taken on the top deck of a double-deck Regional train going to a place called Rheine, that I’d never heard of.
These shorter legs on Regional trains can be interesting, as you really see the country well.
What surprised me was the generally simple stations. If there was a means of crossing the tracks, it was never a bridge.
Disabled activists would have had a field day.
What
Braunschweig
Braunschweig is known to the British as Brunswick.
I passed through on a train on my Home Run from Gdansk and as it was a place I’d never heard of before that trip, when I planned this trip, I noticed that I could change trains at the city.
This Google Map shows the layout of the city.
Braunschweig
It could be a sensible stop on a rail trip across Europe.
It was also a friendly stop, which started when the lady in the tram information kiosk, gave precise instructions on how to either walk or use a tram to the centre and then sold me a pair of tickets for the tram. The tram was not very new, but it was in good condition with very good information. Incidentally, the tram system has a unique metre gauge, which is being updated so that the tram routes can share with trains. Sounds like stealth train-trams to me!
As I had a good late lunch in the Cafe Alex, I’m glad I visited. It was only after I returned that I found that it was a brand controlled by Mitchells and Butlers. Some of their UK restaurants I’ve eaten in, don’t know their allergies as well as the Germans.
I must try out some of them again.
From Leipzig To Braunschweig
This was the longest leg of my journey from Krakow.
Most of the journey was across the former East Germany, with the old border at Helmstedt, which is on the Magdeburg to Braunschweig Line.
Magdeburg and its Hauptbahnhof seem to be definitely worth a visit. Wikipedia says this about reconstruction of the station after 1945.
At the end of March 1946, the restoration of the electrification was completed on the rail networks in the Soviet occupation zone. The Soviet military authorities then demanded the removal of the overhead line equipment and the transfer of the electrical rolling stock as reparations to the Soviet Union, which was partly returned in the early 1950s in need of repair. The rail network was then electrified for the third time, and electric train operation resumed in 1956. Reconstructed of the main station started in 1946, but without the roof of the historical station was omitted.
In 1974 the Magdeburg S-Bahn was established. More extensive alterations were made in 1984. In 1992, platforms were altered to allow Intercity-Express operation. In 2003, the pedestrian tunnel was extended to connect the various platforms to an entrance on the western side of the station. The station is being modernised again between 2008 and 2015 at a cost of about €300 million.
What a way to manage a railway!
This Google Map shows Magdeburg and its location with respect to the railway and the River Elbe.
Magdeburg
Magdeburg would be another place for a stopover. It’s probably a city on a par with somewhere like Stoke or Middlesbrough.
The Anonymous Widower 