European Railroad Discussion > The Harz in Black and White Part 2

All photographed in April 2006.

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Nice shots.  Track 31?  Must have been quite a large station!  At first I thought it might be 3.1  -  track 3, section 1 but I don't see any dash, comma or period between the numerals.  Anybody have an explanation?

Just a guess, probably to distingiush the from the standard track numbers located in front of the station?

Thomas Eckhardt

Location?

Photo 1 looks like Wernigerode judging by the layout

I knew the Harz Railway is located in former East Germany.  Did not know that Brocken, one of the towns served, was a former Soviet listening post due to the height of the mountain where their antenna fields were situated...

Brocken isn't really a town. It's on top of the Brocken mountain. The listening posts were actually started by Hitler. Once the wall wet up and the railway ran so close to the boarder with the west, armed guards rode the trains to make sure no one tried to escape the Soviet controlled east. Makes one wonder why some even now think the repressive Communist system was a good thing. 

andersonb109 Wrote:
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> Makes one wonder why some even now think the
> repressive Communist system was a good thing. 
I imagine the unpalatable truth for you and the other zealots who have no shades of grey in their life is that if the DDR hadn't existed you probably wouldn't have a steam narrow gauge system in the Harz to salivate over. The DB were quite happy to close all but the Brocken line down when they inherited it in 1990

86235 Wrote:
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> andersonb109 Wrote:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Makes one wonder why some even now think the
> > repressive Communist system was a good thing. 
> I imagine the unpalatable truth for you and the
> other zealots who have no shades of grey in their
> life is that if the DDR hadn't existed you
> probably wouldn't have a steam narrow gauge system
> in the Harz to salivate over. The DB were quite
> happy to close all but the Brocken line down when
> they inherited it in 1990

Well said! I don't want to get into major discussion over the merits or otherwise of the DDR.  While I certainly wouldn't defend the regime, I can at a least understand why some might do so. Peope who think regimes are good for them are those who benefit - many in the East Germany suffered hugely from the loss of security and employment post unification, while material benefits have accrued to others. Many of us Europeans may regard the approach by US railways to photgraphy as massively repressive. It all depends on your concerns and priorities.

I recall arriving in 1975 by train into Berlin Ostbahnhof from Athens via Belgrade and Budapest, and being both delighted by the array of steam locos waiting to depart, and utterly shocked by the cynical presentation of system maps in the S-Bahn trains. These were operated in both East and West Berlin by the DR - the Eastern railway administration - but the former had maps which showed the East of the city as if it were the whole place, while the latter showed both sides.

As for repressive regimes, where would we be without the highly authoritarian Chinese making all our electronic goods for us! You might not want to live there, but are you prepared to pay twice as much for your iPhone for it to made elsewhere, such as in a free society like Sweden?

PS fantastic pictures, many thanks!
 



Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/15 03:13 by spflow.

Ok then. Yes, we are fortunate a few narrow gauge lines were saved that otherwise probablay would not have been. But why then did so many people try to escape the country to the west?  I travel frequently to a country which was part of the former Soviet Union as my girl friend lives there. While progress has been made, the differences between it and the west are still quite noticeable. Just ask her impressions after her first trip to western Europe. Take a look at East Berlin before the wall came down. Can anyone honestly say it was a  better place to live than the west? If you like the Communist  stystem so much, perhaps you should move to Russia which seems to be returning closer to that system everyday with loss of freedom of press and other liberties....oh and not to mention invading other soverigne countries. But sorry, I forgot...they do have good rail systems. I guess that makes it all ok.

Also. The statement that the DB closed all but the Brocken line after unification is not true. There are four lines near Dresden as well as the rest of the Harz system that continued to run up until they could be bought and operated by private companies. Three of them were still run by DB when I rode them in 1996.  I also would like to know why you think armed guards were needed on the Harz trains. Certainly not to keep people OUT of East Germany. They were to keep people IN. Exactly how this is being a "zealot" is beyond me. As for the original poster, looking forward to more of your wonderful B/W series of this wonderful system.

Nick's points are:

1. that DB were prepared to shut most of the system,  not that they actually were allowed to do so, and
2. that things are more complicated than a simple ""good guys, bad guys" split may suggest.

As an example. the reason why the Brocken was so closley guarded and fortified was that it was the principal observation and listening post of the Soviet military over the US and British sectors of West Germany. There were huge forces lined up on both sides. I shudder to think what kind of security restrictions such a situation would create in the US. This is not to defend DDR emigration policy, which was monstrously unfair, although remember only introduced after 16 years of relatively free movement. Soviet paranoia over security has had a few imitators over the years, not always as blatant or heavy-handed, but there nonetheless.

andersonb109 Wrote:
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> Can anyone honestly say it was a  better place to live than
> the west? If you like the Communist  stystem so
> much, perhaps you should move to Russia which
> seems to be returning closer to that system
> everyday with loss of freedom of press and other
> liberties....oh and not to mention invading other
> soverigne countries. But sorry, I forgot...they do
> have good rail systems. I guess that makes it all
> ok.

If you re-read what I wrote you will see I made no comment on the system of government. Simply that the existence in 2015 of the Harz network - and the other steam hauled narrow gauge railways in the east of Germany - is down to the fact that they were in what was the DDR before the wall fell. In 1975 the East German government had designated the Harz, the Mollibahn in Mecklenburg and Racing Roland on the island of Rugen as National Technical Monuments. And they also rebuilt, in 1982, the link between Strassberg and Stiege which had been missing since the end of WW2, creating today's Harz network.

Similar railways in West Germany were long gone by unification, and the DB, in a fit of modernisation zeal, was all for closing all of the Harz network, with the exception of the Brocken line which they planned to operate with railcars. It was the railway men of the DDR n the form of the Interessengemeinschaft Harzer Schmalspur-und Brockenbahn.e.V - Harz Railways Society - which effectively blocked the West German closure plan.

So whether you 'approve' of the DDR system of government or not, and no one is suggesting you should, there are some things that it did which we train watchers benefit from today

Oh, and by the way Iraq was a sovereign country when the United States, aided and abetted by the UK, invaded it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/29/15 12:59 by 86235.

I did not intend that my post would turn into a political discussion......I'm posting these for the benefit of members who have not visited this fabulous system.
Chris

Chris,

As long as the political discussions remain civil, getting an understanding of how the the Harz system came to be preserved is providing useful information to people.  I first rode the line just after the wall came down, when the guard towers were still visible between Sorge and Elend, the locos and cars still said DR and each station had its little restaruant and bar.  The eastern leg of the system, the Selketalbahn, was still being used by the locals for transportation.  The next time I visited, two years later, many of the stations were closed, there were new car dealerships and fahrschules (driving schools) everywhere.  Ridership was down and the DB was threatening to close the system.  Thankfully the preservationists won out, although even today, service on the non Brocken portion of the system is down from what it used to be.  The plus side is the traditions loks (the Mallets and others) see frequent use and you don't necessarily have to be on a charter to see them.

It's now been long enough since the end of the DDR that there is a certain amount of nostalgia among many "Ostie's".  There is even a term for it, "Ostalgia."  Here's a photo that captures a bit of what it might have been like in "Ulbricht Ziet."  From a 2011 charter.

Michael Allen
 

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