Johann Marsbar

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..

After very heavy rain overnight the following morning was a bit brighter, which was just as well as we were heading out of Vienna for a visit to the Strasshof railway museum. Supplementary zone tickets were purchased to cover our travel beyond our Central Zone ticket and we headed off on the S1 suburban service to Silberwald, the nearest station to the museum and some 20+ km to the east of Vienna. This Taurus came through on a Vienna bound service shortly after we got off our train...... The Strasshof Museum is a sort of Carnforth (as it used to be in the 70's) style operation in a loco depot, though the number of locos present in various states of repair/dereliction far outweighed the numbers you used to find around Carnforth shed! Most are Austrian in origin (and style), though there are the odd items from elsewhere amongst the stock. Some of the stuff was fairly buried in foliage as well, but an initial batch of photos of the stock immediately outside the shed is shown below.... ...and then we came across this......... Looking rather lost amongst the European stock, this appears to be one of the SR vehicles that were converted to generator vans by the WD to power rail mounted searchlights and, presumably, was left behind after Dunkirk. It looked in a very sound condition, so where it had been in the ensuing 66 years (to 2006...) was anyones guess!

My first visit to the MRC was back in 1982 and, as you say, it was rather a different place back then..... Last time I went there was for a Diesel Gala back in 2007 and, frankly, I wasn't that impressed with the way the place seemed to have gone, so haven't actually been back since then.....

A few more from inside the tram museum...... Certainly a very comprehensive display of vehicles in there and a "must see" location for anyone visiting the City. As was the next place we went to - Cue the Zither music........... The Riesenrad had been on my list of things to do ever since watching The Third Man for the first time so was definitely on the programme for this trip! It still gives a very good view over the City, despite all the post-war high rise developments and, assuming your trip on it is timed right, you could get aerial views of passing trams and trains passing through Praterstern station. A joint ticket was available for the Riesenrad and the 15" gauge Park "Liliputbahn" which we duly purchased after confirming that steam was in use on the railway that day. Two locos are required to run the service, one being this 1957 built diesel loco ..... ...while the other was this 1928 built Krauss pacific........ They do have some other locos, most of which were hidden away, apart from this other diesel, named "Harry" (Lime?) , built on the frames of another pacific, which was parked outside......

That's the problem with the down side of London Road Bridge as well, as there was always an annoying chain-link fence on the ramp down into the park from London Road which stopped you taking photos looking that way - and nobody went around with small step-ladders like they do today back in the 70's/80's ! I checked through my photos and have nothing looking that way where you can see any details of the bridge.....

Some visits to stations were made during the course of the day, though the weather deteriorated considerably later in the afternoon making photography almost impossible again....... The Vienna Central Zone tickets were valid on trains, so we did have a few rides around on push-pull sets and units over its period of validity. Main destination for the following morning was the excellent Vienna Tram Museum in the former Erdberg Depot. A few cars were parked outside as there were some charter workings going out that day..... The museum has a very extensive collection of rolling stock and small exhibits, covering buses as well as tramways......... They also did a rather nice range of ready-made HO scale plastic models of Vienna trams at the time which they sold in the Museum shop and which a few Euros were spent on whilst there! More photos from the Museum in the next post.....

I guessed the roller shaped things are point motors as they seem to be in the right place! This was another rather out of place design which used to be near Bury St Edmunds station, though the pub has been renamed since I took this in 2016.......

To be honest, I wasn't quite sure what to expect there this year, having not been to the place since pre-Covid (Sept 2019). I'd seen a lot of reports online on how the general Public Transit passenger safety/security situation seems to have gone to pot, and based on the change I noticed between the 2016 and 2019 visits, I was sort of expecting the worst! As it turned out, I felt it was better than the 2019 trip, and they certainly seem to have had a clear out of homeless & undesirables in the area of the King/4th Caltrain terminal. That was really bad in 2019 - and God help you if you needed to use the WCs there - but its completely clear now, and that was without any obvious security presence. Mission St in SF looked worth avoiding though. Didn't have any ptoblems anywhere, though Oakland was the most "dodgy" place and I had to make some unplanned diversions to avoid some areas, particularly between the Downtown and Jack London Square . The free bus that used to shuttle between the two no longer runs - presumably c/o Covid - and there are several tent encampments under the Freeway there and wouldn't want to walk round there in quiet periods or after dark.......

Friday 22nd was the last full day of the trip and most of the morning was spent in SF -particularly on the Muni Metro system, though I discovered that the line I really wanted to photograph is currently shut for trackwork! A pair of the newer Siemens cars on the M Line........ Cameron Beach depot was doing a very good impersonation of a Museum.... L-R , LA liveried PCC, Milan Peter Witt, Original SF car of 1914, Red Arrow liveried SF PCC, a Melbourne car and a SF PCC car. A few different liveries were out on the F as well..............Pacific Electric...... Toronto...... and Illinois Terminal....... I then headed off to the Salesforce Transit Centre, where this Alexander/Dennis DD was on a Westcat service...... ...but I caught a Golden Gate Transit bus over the bridge to San Rafael where I wanted to visit a couple of Breweries, returning to SF from there via SMART and the Ferry. San Rafael...... Larkspur - the southern end of the line...... I'd got an early evening flight back on the Saturday, so spent the morning in SF, where I discovered that the F line was shut along Market St and they were only operating from Steuart St to Fishermans Wharf, which meant using the loop at Steuart St - a "rare" bit of track, which gave some different photo opportunities...... St Louis livery..... Washington DC...... Rather than put up with the bus back to the Airport, I decided to catch Caltrain to Millbrae for a "last run", and a bus from there, which at least enabled a slightly better photo to be taken of the Caltrain liveried AEM7.......... As I left, I spotted an F40 coupled to an MP15 which were making up a long train of withdrawn stock and on arrival at Millbrae the place was crawling with photographers! Unfortunately they had single line working in force, but I managed a shot of the tran as it followed the service I was travelling on....... That concludes the selected images from that trip, though the thread will burst into life again later in the year, as I've got two other trips booked - one of which is somewhere I've never been before.......

For something a bit different on that front, this is the pub sign for "The Station" which is outside Wivenhoe station on the GE..... From the stock, I'm assuming it's Underground inspired but they seem to have forgotten the contact rails ! The pub was shut that day (end of scheduled 321 operation last year) so haven't a clue what it's like.......

Early August 2006 saw a visit made to a City I'd never been to before - Vienna - though the weather experienced during the trip was more like late October than August and it rained every day, from memory...... We flew out from Stansted on a late morning flight with Air Berlin on a fairly new 737-700 and after first heading into the City and checking into our hotel we purchased 72-hour Central Zone tickets and headed out for a look at Wien Südbahnhof station - with at that stage two seperate sets of platforms and nothing like the new station that you will find there today..... By that stage the light was deteriorating badly so we gave up and headed off to visit a Brewery for the evening! The following day was a bit brighter so we headed off after breakfast to start exploring the large tram network. The tram fleet had started to receive examples of the ULF (Ultra Low Floor) type..... ....though most of the fleet was still high-floor, with the majority being from the E1 class (in the foreground below), with others of the later E2 class (in the background)....... We then headed out to Philadelphiabrücke to get some photographs of the Wiener Lokalbahn Interurban cars...... The name Philadelphiabrücke originates from the first loco used on the initial segment of the Südbahn which opened in 1838 - a Norris product - and some tiled artwork commemorating this is present on a building in the area....

This obviously got to Austria - and is now preserved there.......

Mountain View is an interchange between Caltrain.... VTA Buses..... ...and the VTA Light Rail...... I then headed to Menlo Park station for a bit more photography..... ...before heading off to Sunnyvale to visit this establishment........ Long Haul was actually the name of their Hefewiezen (5.3%) which was one of the nicest tasting Wheat Beers that I've had in years. It was very noticeable that several of the brewpubs which used to be located along the Caltrain line have shut since Covid - paricularly one in Burlingame (Steelhead Brewing) - which I visited a number of times on the previous 2 trips to the area. I then headed back into SF and took a ride on the F Line out to Castro, this shot of one of the Los Angeles liveried cars being taken on Market Street from the Illinois Terminal liveried car..... The Chicago one was out that day as well...... .......before I finished up for a final session on Caltrain, 918 being seen at Millbrae after what I thought would be my last ride on the diesel service (but it wasn't....)

Whilst my 3-day ticket was valid out as far as Sunnyvale, it is possible to puchase a "zone upgrade" ticket from machines which, as long as you have a valid ticket for travel, enables you to travel beyond that zone at a rate of $2.50 per zone. On the Thursday morning I did just that and travelled as far as Santa Clara to get some photos there. Unfortunately the light was all wrong, so I only spent about an hour there, even if it was quite busy........ I'd originally intended to to get a bus into San Jose and, using the timed multi-transfer facility (2 hrs worth) on the Clipper Card (a Bay Area travel smartcard used by all operators on which you can load cash or season tickets), head back to Mountain View via the Light Rail which was in my Zone 3 ticket validity. However, as the Extra Zone ticket was valid for 3 hours (why that long?) and I was still heading in the same direction, I caught the next train to San Jose Diridon where there was a variety of stock parked up, including one of the new Caltran EMU's..... SJ is a huge multi-platformed station now, with each platform seemingly long enough to take 2 complete train sets at any one time. I decided to get another "Extra Zone" ticket to travel back to Mountain View on the train in the end, but did wander off Diridon to take a few bus photos and the VTA light rail while I was there.....