2nd December 2012 - Visit to MindenSunday 2nd December 2012 We woke to another dull day weather-wise and it was trying to snow, not really helpful as we had a bit of a walk planned. A leisurely stroll across to the station saw us photting another steam special hauled by a 2-10-0 steam locomotive before catching an RE train to Minden for a ride on the Museums-Eisenbahn Minden to Hille, a new line for us. The RE train was hauled by 146 124 rather than a class 111 which we would have preferred, at least it was a “winner” for us; Borussia Dortmund must have been playing at home this afternoon as there were a number of football fans clad in the teams yellow and black colours but they were well-behaved. 52 8038 at Hannover Hbf We had allowed plenty of time to walk from the mainline station to Minden-Obertstadt and the walk took us around 30 to 40 minutes which is what we had expected; luckily the snow / rain / drizzle had eased off so we did not get too wet. We did wonder whether we would get a seat on the train as it was one of the railways “Nikolausfahrten”, which is the Teutonic version of meeting Father Christmas on the train and usually very popular with German children, but there was no problem and we were duly issued with a ticket issued by computer and printed on a sheet of A4 paper; a rather incongruous sight compared with somebody wearing traditional uniform in a traditional ticket office. 7906 at Minden-Oberstadt The MEM run in two directions over MKB tracks from Minden-Oberstadt, east to Kleinenbremen and west to Hille but today they were only running to the latter. We set off on a few minutes late with the 0-8-0T 7906 “Stettin” running bunker first but stopped after a short distance to pick up “Der Niklaus” (Father Christmas) in a field on the edge of the town. As we got going again he made his way from the rear to the front of the train followed by his helpers bearing goody bags hung from a pole with four more helpers ferrying more poles festooned with bags to keep the production line going. The MEM terminate at the old station in Hille though the line carries on for around a further kilometre to Hille Hafen on the Mittellandkanal which we think is served by MKB freight trains; we chose to try and get a photo of the locomotive as it ran round rather than investigate whether the line is used or not beyond here. This seemingly simple quest proved rather problematical as the loco was leaking rather a lot of steam from the heating pipe under the front buffer beam and actually getting a photo of something that resembled a locomotive rather than a cloud of steam in the damp conditions proved rather trying. 7906 at Hille The train returned to Minden, passing what looked suspiciously like two policemen in his-vis jackets photographing the train at a level crossing with a marked car parked nearby and dropping Father Christmas off back at his field. We had well over an hour to get back to the mainline so decided to follow the MKB tracks which was interesting as the line dropped quite sharply to start with before meandering through some houses with a branch heading towards the canal and an impressive bridge across the river Weser. At the station we saw a class 143 stabled in the sidings ready for a peak-hour working tomorrow morning and a 111 heading towards Rheine, of course we had to get the same 146 back to Hannover where we intended to take advantage of our Niedersachsen Länder ticket to try and get some Metronom locos “in the book” to while away the remainder of the day. This idea was rather shot down in flames as the Metronom service was still suffering the after-effects of yesterday’s derailment and was running in two parts; Hannover to Uelzen and Göttingen to Hannover Messe/Laatzen which rather cut down the number of locos available to “bash”. Despite this we did manage to get five new to round the day off nicely and a bonus picture of former CFL (Luxembourg) no. 1806 which we had passed a few times parked to the west of the station. 1806 at Hannover Hbf
Keywords:
Germany,
Museums-Eisenbahn Minden
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