Johann Marsbar

The second day of the 7-day first class rover ticket (which I can confirm cost all of £32, having found the haulage/tour notes yesterday) was used to take a day trip to Prague, this photo being taken just after 06.00 outside Brno station before catching my train.... The service to Prague (and back again in the evening) was hauled by a ZSSK class 350 electric which indicates the service must have started from somewhere like Bratislava. On arrival at Prague Holesovice I bought a day ticket for the Public Transport network and headed off to a tram stop. The City at that time was "T3 heaven", as can be seen from the shot below... ...though I was more interested in even older vehices, so the main destination that morning was the Transport Museum, housed in one of the tram depots. There was an awful lot of equipment on display in there, but photography was a bit restricted by the sheer number of items on display and the presence of closely spaced wooden roof supports in parts of the depot...... However, they did have a very substantial (232 pages...) hard-backed book about the museum and all of the exhibits - mostly illustrated in colour - which cost the equivalent of something like £4, so one was duly purchased to make up for the difficulties in taking my own shots of some of the exhibits! The rest of the day was spent travelling around on the extensive tram system..... ....and visits to the likes of Masarykovo station, where one of the fairly new "City Elefant" double deck units was seen...... ...along with an older diesel railcar.......

I spotted this elsewhere..... The Mexicans have put the BR IC 125 liveried power car into service, along with one retaining most of the LNER vinyls as well !

Back at Ostrava station - a Communist era edifice if ever there was one - a Tatra articulated car in advertising livery is on the tramway terminal loop...... ...with Skoda built trolleybuses on the bus terminal loop........ From Ostrava I headed off on the train towards Mezerici, with this Mittal Steel owned loco being passed at Ostrava Kuncice station....... I had to change trains at Frydlandt nad Ostravici and I was able to photograph the service I had arrived onboard from Ostrava..... I think the next leg was on a railbus, but the last part of the trip ended up on a rail replacement bus! Eventually I got to Hulin where there was some freight activity whilst waiting for my next train....... Next place of interest was Prerov where there was an interesting selection of stock visible from the station, one of the locos in a fresh coat of paint being this 181 for a Polish operator........ Breclav provided even more variety with this OBB 1116 in commemorative livery..........

That explains this variant I photographed in 2007 - Didn't realise they were built out there.......

Just spotted this one which seems to have gone live a couple of weeks ago..... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VRpbVCZZDQE How much traffic there is through there is anyones guess, but there seems to be a flat crossing between two lines visible on the camera.

Now I'm reconnected again we can move on to the end of August 2006 for a holiday in the Czech Republic based in the City of Brno. By reading the annual Railrover guide in Todays Railways I'd seen that a 7-day all line first class rover ticket was available from CD at a fraction of the cost of the likes of the Eurodomino passes, so arranged a trip which would cover quite a bit of the Country, despite being just based in Brno, and would also enable me to go to the Brno Airshow as well. An added bonus was that someone I knew had moved to Brno so he picked me up from the Airport and took me to my Hotel, plus, on the last day, we went out in his car to some of the more interesting local sites for photography. Ryanair provided transport from Stansted to Brno, as they were operating a single return flight a day at that time, and after checking into the Hotel I headed off to the station with details of the ticket I wanted all written down on a piece of paper (in Czech). On arriving at the ticket window, all I got was shrugs, waving of hands and a long treatise in Czech - which I obviously didn't understand a word of - but it was obvious that I had a problem! Luckilly there was also a Travel Office at the station, so I went in there and saw one of the staff in there who could speak English and she looked at what I wanted, said she couldn't understand what the problem had been and duly printed the 7-day Rover off - which, from memory cost the equivalent of something just over £30 in First Class! I'd already worked out my timetable for the week and this had ensured coverage of most of the tram & trolleybus operations in the Country, though riding opporunities were non-existent in some of those due to lack of time. After an early breakfast the next morning I headed off to the station where these were photographed outside..... ...and then on to the platforms...... I think this 362 was the loco on my train to Ostrava. On arrival at Ostrava this 363 was seen on a freight....... ...before I had a walk into the centre, photographing the local transport on the way. This was a fairly new Skoda low floor car in the Ostrava fleet at the time..... ...variations of which have since turned up elsewhere in the world, as seen in Portland, OR in May 2017...... The trolleybus fleet in Ostrava was being modernised with these Solaris types at the time...... Older Tatra tramcars were also about in some quantity.....

We had Cadent installing new gas pipes at the end of last year and that was bad enough - 5 days without a gas supply..... Whilst I was on holiday last week, Virgins Contractors connected my neighbour to the VM Network - using my cables, as they didn't bother to check whether they were in use or not - and it's taken 4 days to get back on line, which actually involved laying a few hundred metres of new cabling from the junction box to my house. The VM Technician who discovered the problem yesterday just couldn't believe what they had done, and nor could the Contractors who had to rectify it all this morning!

Proves someones awake out there 🙂 (unlike me at the moment - but you haven't had to contend with the unbelievable stupidity of Virgin Medias Contractors over the past 4 days!)

It's that Condor moment........ ...all at St Peter Port last week, plus this deposited a load of rather lost looking tourists on Guernsey for about 8 hours last Thursday......

Herm Harbour, Herm, Channel Islands....... Apart from not knowing that any railed items had ever been used there, the object that used them is actually preserved nearby and was a bit of a surprise....... ....which is a circa 1850 hand crane built by Bray and Waddington in Leeds..... ...and the wheels have centre flanges!

Normal service will resume on here in the next day or so (hopefully). Been away for a week and on returning I found that my broadband link at home had packed up, so currently waiting for Virgin Media to sort it out! Had to post this from elsewhere....

Some more of the equipment on display inside the main building..... There was also a short rake of restored goods stock in there...... One of the 0-6-2T rack locos off the Vordenburg line was the loco giving cab rides....... Our unit back to Vienna is seen arriving at Silberwald........ The rest of that day and the following morning were spent in Vienna, mainly on the tram network, before we flew back to Stansted on another Air Berlin 737.

I did spot that being mentioned as being for sale on National Preservation at the beginning of last week. Was surprised how may Rapier cranes of that period are preserved in the UK though..... http://www.bdca.org.uk/ukcranes.html ...and thats without any which might survive overseas.

Continuing our walk around the stock parked outside at Strasshof, this former Yugoslavian Kriegslok was one of the few foreign locos present...... Some of the stuff outside was in much better condition than the others, with some displaying large areas of rust and/or red oxide primer....... ...and there were quite extensive lines of stock parked outside as well.... The main building there is quite large, so all the "decent"/steamable locos and some restored rolling stock is stored under cover and out of the weather. What proportion of the stock there is operational wasn't apparent on our visit, though they did have a loco in steam giving cab rides....... More from inside the shed tomorrow....... EDIT: If you want to see how much rolling stock they own, have a look at the current list on their website! https://eisenbahnmuseum-heizhaus.com/de/sammlung-forschung/fahrzeuge The SR Van doesn't appear to be listed on there though.... .

Have been back to Vienna since then (2018) but didn't venture out to Strasshof on that occasion. There are 2 more days of postings from the 2006 trip to go, most of which are the other locos & stock on display at Straashof, so they'll go on here on Sat & Sun..