[PRCo]

[Schneider Fred]

I was having a fun time tonight.   And just wanted to share.

This query (below) will pull up all sorts of videos of Berlin trams  
and commuter railroad lines in youtube.   You're not interested?    
Then push delete now.

My first visit to East Berlin was about 1987 or 1988, just months  
before the wall came down.   Eric Honecker, the leader of the East  
Germans, had pronounced that his nation and the wall would stand for  
a thousand years.  Yup.   Right on.  Behind the wall was a nation  
straight out of the 1930s.

The commuter railroad network (the S-Bahn or Schnellbahn or fast  
railway) in Berlin was run by the East Berlin authority for both  
parts of the city.   The equipment was very antiquated.  The cars  
"made all the right noises."   The compressors thumped, spur gears  
howled.   The sounded just like the old subway trains in Philadelphia  
or New York in the 1950s.

The streetcars were confined to East Berlin.   Now try to remember  
your history.   The control of the German nation was partitioned  
among four nations: the United States, Britain, France Russia.    
Berlin was similarly divided.  Therefore East Germany represented  
only about one-fourth of the entire country and contained only about  
20 of the nations 80 million people.   The city of Berlin was  
similarly partitioned with the Soviets only having control of the  
northeast corner of the city   What we referred to as East Berlin was  
really only about one fourth of the city.  The streetcar network in  
the west and southeast was replaced by buses in the 1960s and all  
that remained rail was in the the northeast including two quasi- 
private lines that went into the suburbs from two S-Bahn stations.

You will see one of those suburban lines in the U-Tube videos -- The  
Woltersdorfer Strassenbahn with the single-truck Gotha cars painted  
cream and blue.  I saw in once in 1989 and again about 2000.   In  
1989 we were driving what was one of the very few cars in the  
neighborhood even though it was a very upper class area filled with  
the party faithful.  You can see from the pictures how many cars are  
there today.   When I was there about 2000 I found a great little  
Greek restaurant for lunch in a shopping center ... the ouzu (don't  
know if I spelled that right ... the Greek liquor that is about as  
toxic as paint remover) was complimentary.

Like most of the lines in eastern Europe in 1988, Berlin's cars were  
painted scarlet and cream.   How else would a communist-owned  
enterprise paint its equipment?   Once the government changed, it  
sure did not take long for the color to change to yellow.   I think I  
was guilty of stating that I thought those brand new 1987 or 1988  
Tatra PCCs were not long for this world but I see a YouTube tape here  
that shows they are still running.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=strassenbahnen+%2F+trams 
+berlin&search_type=&aq=f

And here is a second like, this time to the U-bahnen (plural,  
singular is U-Bahn.  It stands for Untergrundbahn or Underground  
railway.  The term is always used throughout the German speaking  
world whether it is on the ground, in subway or elevated.   The U- 
bahnen were usually run by the local municipalities while the S- 
bahnen (commuter rail lines) were run by the Deutsches Reichbah (and  
in the west after the war by the Deutsche Bundesbahn or German  
Federal Railway).   Today Deutschebahn (or German Railway) farms out  
the commuter rail lines under contract to the locals.   From the end  
of World War II until the wall came down in 1988, the subway was  
split into two companies.   Some western routes actually ran through  
permanently closed stations in the east and it was illegal to have  
maps or know about them.   I walked out of the East one night with a  
German railfan carrying maps rolled up in his pants ... not a night I  
want to really remember.  I can guarantee you, if he had been caught,  
I would not have know him.   But look at some of these videos ...  
very interesting.   It is a huge network.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=U-bahn 
+berlin&search_type=&aq=f