This is something of a mystery trip which has surfaced from the 2023 investigations. It was based on the ADL 'Dürener Kreisbahn' tour but I have no record of it beyond the tour paperwork and some photos.
Friday 12 - Monday 15 April 1996
Without any written record I can only guess that Mrs EG and I decided to combine the ADL tour with a Belgian beer run, as photographs taken (near) lineside on the SNCF branch to Comines, at Kerkrade station near the Netherlands-Germany border, and at Aachen Hbf suggest that we travelled by car on this occasion, though I've no recollection of that other than being very envious of Mrs EG's schweinhaxe in the evening when I'd decided on a steak! My booking for the ADL tour was for a Düren start, with no cross-Channel add-on, and if we'd gone by air I can't see why we'd have been standing on the roadside near Comines!
The ADL tour was a comprehensive bash of the Dürener Kreisbahn (DKB) system, covering both its two (at the time) passenger routes from Düren, north to Jülich and south to Heimbach, as well as the freight lines to Linnich and Puffendorf. As the tour was to be steam hauled it had to stop short of Puffendorf, at Ederen, because there was no run round facility at Puffendorf.
Haulage was by Krupp 0-8-0T , built at Essen in 1953 and previously employed at the Emil Meyrisch mine at Siersdorf before being used by the Dampfbahn Rur-Wurm-Inde, a preservation operation on the DKB lines which themselves formerly belonged to Deutsche Bahn.
The tour route was from Düren to Linnich then returning via Jülich and continuing out to Ederen which was far as we could go towards Puffendorf. We then returned to Jülich Nord to reverse before heading south and crossing the DB Aachen-Köln main line and continuing to the terminus at Heimbach in the Eifel region. Return from Heimbach was on a DKB Regiosprinter for timing reasons, though the kettle fans were able to wait for the loco to be watered and return a little later if they wished.
That, regrettably, is all there is to tell of this trip, save for the photographs.
Without any written record I can only guess that Mrs EG and I decided to combine the ADL tour with a Belgian beer run, as photographs taken (near) lineside on the SNCF branch to Comines, at Kerkrade station near the Netherlands-Germany border, and at Aachen Hbf suggest that we travelled by car on this occasion, though I've no recollection of that other than being very envious of Mrs EG's schweinhaxe in the evening when I'd decided on a steak! My booking for the ADL tour was for a Düren start, with no cross-Channel add-on, and if we'd gone by air I can't see why we'd have been standing on the roadside near Comines!
The ADL tour was a comprehensive bash of the Dürener Kreisbahn (DKB) system, covering both its two (at the time) passenger routes from Düren, north to Jülich and south to Heimbach, as well as the freight lines to Linnich and Puffendorf. As the tour was to be steam hauled it had to stop short of Puffendorf, at Ederen, because there was no run round facility at Puffendorf.
Haulage was by Krupp 0-8-0T , built at Essen in 1953 and previously employed at the Emil Meyrisch mine at Siersdorf before being used by the Dampfbahn Rur-Wurm-Inde, a preservation operation on the DKB lines which themselves formerly belonged to Deutsche Bahn.
The tour route was from Düren to Linnich then returning via Jülich and continuing out to Ederen which was far as we could go towards Puffendorf. We then returned to Jülich Nord to reverse before heading south and crossing the DB Aachen-Köln main line and continuing to the terminus at Heimbach in the Eifel region. Return from Heimbach was on a DKB Regiosprinter for timing reasons, though the kettle fans were able to wait for the loco to be watered and return a little later if they wished.
That, regrettably, is all there is to tell of this trip, save for the photographs.
An SNCF DMU (don't know what sort - I know nothing of such things!) snapped at a location believed to be near Comines on 13-4-96 |
Preserved 221 135 with Rheingold stock at Aachen Hbf on 14-4-96. Details of the working unknown - Belgian 5533 was about to be coupled up, presumably to cope with Belgian signalling? |
Krupp 0-8-0T no. 2 at Linnich (probably) on the ADL tour on 14-4-96. |
Krupp 0-8-0T no. 2 doing a false start for the photters at an unknown location on 14-4-96. |
For the moment (pending further revelations from my dusty cupboards) the story can continue in May 1996 when I set off to Belgium and the Netherlands to do some branch lines on service trains, and ADL tour in Belgium and a local event in Belgium involving a much-sought after branch in the Meuse valley.
