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Not all HSB trains run on steam. Less-frequented connections are also diesel powered, as seen here at Eisfelder Talmühle connection point.

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Guest locomotives owned by other railways also often run at major events, as for example here during the Historik Mobil 2021 festival hosted by ZOJE. Here you can see a Württemberg Tssd operated by Öchsle museum railway Ochsenhausen-Warthausen.

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Not far from Oerlinghausen you find Mühlenstroth Dampf-Kleinbahn (DKBM) which also offers rides on original historic trains belonging to former narrow-gauge lines on 600mm gauge as here in December 2016.

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One of Germany‘s best known narrow-gauge railways is the Trans-Harz and Brocken railway (HSB) which offers daily connections between Wernigerode, Nordhausen, Gernrode and Quedlinburg to the summit of the Brocken, often hauled by steam locos, as here in Alexisbad.

Steam Romantic can still be Booked

In the very first edition of our tram.news in spring 1997, I described the trainspotter species in detail. For over 25 years now, I have reported on railways and on tram operations, sometimes from the remotest corners of this world. While I also occasionally had the opportunity to discover historic trams and tram museums when on field assignments, I always looked out for historic railways when on holidays.
By Jochen Wiegelmann

Due to pandemic-related restrictions, it is difficult for specialised railway tour operators to offer or organise trips to far-off countries, so this time I would like to stay in Germany. As I said above, while my travels usually took me to the remotest parts of the globe, I have also been on some tours in Germany, and I would like to tell you about some of them here.

I am particularly interested in narrow-gauge railways, which usually have a unique character of their own. Apart from my trips abroad, I have been a volunteer at Dampf-Kleinbahn Mühlenstroth in my spare time now for over 35 years. This small steam-operated, narrow-gauge railway will soon be celebrating its 50th jubilee, and I will be reporting on that in another edition.

Although the Deutsche Bahn officially said good-bye to steam back in 1977, and the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn did so in 1988, various narrow-gauge railways still offer steam rides today – alongside the railcars / passenger trains hauled by diesel locos. Steam-powered rides are offered by the Harz narrow-gauge railways, Mecklenburg coastal railway and Rügen coastal railway which both cater for seaside resorts, and the Saxon railways Fichtelbergbahn, Weißeritztalbahn, Lößnitzgrundbahn and Zittau narrow-gauge. Diesel railcars/passenger trains obviously also run in rush hours and in school transport, and the service portfolio is rounded off by many voluntarily-run museum railways which offer interested parties rides on steam trains on selected weekends.

Narrow-gauge railways come with different gauges. Field railways (e.g. in brickyards, sand pits and peat works) generally use the narrow 600 mm gauge, but there were also so-called Kleinbahnen (small light railways) with passenger and freight traffic in this gauge. The Kleinbahnen in Saxony and on Rügen have a gauge of 750 mm. Bad Doberan’s Molli has a rather rare gauge width of 900 mm. Germany’s widest gauge found on a narrow-gauge railway is the 1000 mm gauge on the Harz Railways.