Harz Mountians/Brocken Steam help and advice.

The website addresses below have a lot of photos on them of the three stations on the Brockenbahn which are meant as pix of the infrastructure, rather than the steam engines, but give a good idea of trackside area which you would be able to get to and to take photos or video by walking around the vicinity of these three stations...

Steinerne Renne... http://www.harz-bahnen.de/HSB-Dateien/Seite2.htm
Drei Annen Hohne... http://www.harz-bahnen.de/HSB-Dateien/Seite8.htm
Schierke... http://www.harz-bahnen.de/HSB-Dateien/Seite9.htm

Map of Schierke at http://www.schierke-am-brocken.de/stadt ... 4_2008.pdf

Cheers

Andrew

 

Thanks everyone for all your help, most useful. Unfortunately I have to get 13.17 train on the Friday so can't make the tour round the works. Cheers for the link to the maps, they're far better than anything I found. I've got a rough itinerary worked out and should just about be able to do all of the system with steam.

 

Some excellent advice on here.

The early unit out of Wernigerode is useful to get out to DAH but there are plenty of buses to Schierke that stop there. Footpaths by the lines are all excellent - many sections have a bahn weg that follow the line. Good shots to be had around the tunnel as there has been alot of forest clearance - easy walk up from the mainroad from near a monument which you will see on a map. Unfortuantely the horseshoe curve is getting difficult due to tree growth and much of it is in shade in winter.

Have fun and enjoy the thrash!

 

Hi,
If you haven't yet received my e-mail, I have a 1 : 50000 map of the area with all sorts of useful info on it. If you can pop over and pick it up, I'll gladly show you the locations on the map which I'll happily lend you.

 

Stupid weather! Stansted shut, no flights til who knows when. After a 2 hour drive over to the airport (instead of 45 mins) the whole place is in complete chaos, no announcements and hardly any staff around. The only piece of information given out was by a Ryanair guy with a megaphone! It seems Ryanair diverted most of its flights last night, so there are only a handful of aircraft there. Oh well, guess I'll have to try again to get to the Harz!

 

And hope you get snow to see how the Germans deal with "a little bit of snow" and compare it to the British attitude !

Extrapolate further and answer the question "Why does no company based abroad want to employ British workers ?".

 

Went to the Harz a few years back. The snow was about 10 foot deep at the top of the Brocken.

Imagine if that happend here!!!!!!!!!!!

 

Only 109cm of snow at the moment (not sure what that is in £sd!). See this link.

 

I went in 2005 and the drifts were 7 meters deep on the Brocken. The result was the line was shut above Schierke for four days. Now put 10 feet of snow on the countryside at the bottom of the Brocken and the whole job would have stopped. Road etc. closures due to bad weather do happen on the continent, it's not just us.

 

Never mind mate. Just a little something to keep you occupied until you can get out there. A short excerpt of 997243 storming the Brocken.

 

I wish they'd get someone with a brush on the end of a long pole to get the snow off the camera lens!

Just out of interest, those pictures from the Brocken station webcam are archived at...
http://www.bildersammlung.ch/brocken-we ... webcam.php

and the pictures from the Drei Annen Hohne station webcam are archived at...
http://www.bildersammlung.ch/wernigerod ... webcam.php

Just pick a date from the drop down box on the right and scroll through the times.

No views of the trains in any of these, but for anyone that wants to see wos goin' on in Wernigerode, there are links to three town webcams at...
http://www.heuer-und-sack.de/pageID_4925387.html

Two are panormaic view towards the castle, while the one showing the Rathaus looks very pretty at the moment, with a smattering of snow.

Regards

Andrew

 

Ah yes, the old "the continentals do it better than us" story. Well I went out to Saxony in the winter of 1995 and in conditions no worse than SE England is experiencing
I witnessed closed airports, unsalted/gritted Autobahns, roads and rail at a standstill in places. Maybe not typical but just goes to show that our European cousins can also
come unstuck in bad weather. Quite what the current weather has got to do with overseas companies not wanting to employ British workers is beyond me and I think you'll find that
there are plenty of overseas companies with British employees.

 

Totally right Ian. In Germany in October we were warned by the locals that the first snow of the year is always difficult. Within hours roads were blocked with no gritting to be seen. They do one thing better than us though - railways!

 

Quite agree - having survived two Calgary winters IMHO it is an urban myth that other countries don't suffer problems when it starts to snow.