[PRCo] Germany again

[Schneider Fred]

Does anyone want another vacation over on the other side of the  
puddle?   Again, you know where the delete key is.

How about Heidelberg and Manheim.

Maybe we can catch a rocket sled to go there.  How about an ICE  
(Intercity Express train).   The third one is the engineer's view at  
186 miles per hour ... catenary poles going by like a picket fence.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFtcGOUXNLA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PX2xcfpGynA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcy2tg6Lk4Y&NR=1

Heidelberg, Germany, on the Neckar River was the setting for the  
opera the Student Prince.   This is one of those central German towns  
on everyone's tourist map.    The next two are general interest  
videos ... no trams ... just pictures of why normal people go to  
Heidelberg ... the castle, the cathedral, the pretty views of the  
Neckar River.

I think this stop motion photo photo of the castle and the cathedral  
from the hill on the north bank of the Neckar is great  
photography.    I remember tramping around Bismarkplatz (named after  
Otto von Bismark) in the fall of 1959 when you could buy a wurst out  
of a sidewalk vending machine for all of one mark  (that was 23.8  
cents for a sausage).  I think I might have been back three or four  
times since ... it's a rather pretty city.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqgAnfwxoHA&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uV8Kuw6GRo0&feature=related

And the railfans have a reason to go there.   The Heildelberger  
Strassen und Bergbahn (--- Street and Mountain Railway) operated both  
the trams on the street and the funicular up to the castle.   The  
long inteurban down the narrow main street past the cathedral has  
been a victim of traffic congestion and low patronage beyond Karlstor  
(Karl's Gate; the rest of the system survived.   And the old  
Oberrheinische Eisenbahn Gesselschaft (Upper Rhine Railway Company),  
an interurban that connected Heidelberg, Mannheim and Weinheim with  
1200 volt DC lines is still there.   The OEG runs the white and red  
cars.   The others, mostly blue and white are the city system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isSoGLXEUJs

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS702z8ik14&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D9ulxWilI7Y&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwYLhWbYh1Q&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxaTkdJg_0g&NR=1

Mannheim was a huge industrial city to the west.   All I found to  
look at there were static pictures put onto a DVD.   The sign with  
the circular H at the beginning stands for Haltpunkt, or halt  
point.   It is the standard car stop sign used all over the German  
speaking world.    Very few for the huge Mannheim city system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nbLAVMKFGzo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vau38jVNp2E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d70WteFiU9Q

And here is one of the most fantastic videos I've seen in a long  
while ... you have watch to the biter end to realize what it was  
taken from.   But you are on one railway vehicle racing an O. E. G.  
interurban train .... side - by - side and going like a bad out of  
hell.   Pittsburgh Railways never ran the inteurbans like this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mab8dQQbPqM&NR=1

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwdIbVf43PQ&NR=1

This one says it is an OEG Sonderzug or translated, special train.    
What confuses me is that the first two cars are 600 volt cars from  
the Heidelberg system.   Has to be a local museum.   The city  
portions of the OEG (and their cars) were 600 volts so perhaps this  
was running in 1200 volt territory and perhaps the whole system has  
been downgraded in order to use standard equipment.   The very first  
car is a Ksw or Kriegstrassenbahnwagen, translates war streetcar or  
more appropriately war time utility car.   Those critters were built  
during and right after World War II as cheaply as possible in order  
to provide basic transportation.   Remember, the Brits and the  
Americans had bombed the nation to smithereens and Russians didn't  
help either.   And almost every able bodied man was a prisoner of war  
somewhere or had been killed, and that included kids back to age  
13.    Their object was to put some form of rudimentary  
transportation together on a well worn shoestring and they did a  
marvelous job.   When I got there in 1959 the German economy was in  
far better shape than the French and I cannot believe it was the  
Marshall Plan; that would not have accounted for a drop in the bucket  
without the dedication of the people and most of them women.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PFiMrUmtM4&NR=1

The final clip comes from the 1960s.   This is the kid of stuff that  
I first saw when my Uncle Samuel (that guy in red, white and blue  
pants) went me to Germany.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5e24-Q4GoZ0



Link to google maps (But you'll have to paste it back together)

http://maps.google.com/maps?f=q&hl=en&geocode=&q=heidelberg 
+germany&sll=37.0625,-95.677068&sspn=42.766543,66.357422&ie=UTF8&ll=49.4 
5786,8.500671&spn=0.275381,0.518417&z=11