Z-Freunde International e.V.

Hi friends,

I would like to report about our stay in Schwarzwald that ended yesterday. We’ve spent a month in the rehabilitation clinic after the disease of my lovely daughter. This clinic is located in the southern part of Schwarzwald in Schonwald - a small town between Freiburg and Villingen-Schwenningen. We’ve never been here before because it is far away from our home city – Dortmund, but we got an opportunity to discover this wonderful region for the first time. Luckily, the perfect weather during the whole period of our stay helped us greatly.

We started our road trips from Titisee and Schluchsee. These towns with lakes of the same name are connected by Dreiseenbahn – a small regional railway line along which historic trains also run: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreiseenbahn

Along with normal outdoor activities like riding the electric boat and hiking around the lakes, we, of course, explored a very interesting place – Seebrugg railway station – a home base from where the historical train starts its journey. This place is especially important for me because a copy of Z scale GGths 43 “Bromberg” 4-axle freight car produced by me is stored here – it was presented to the museum by Claudius Veit several years ago. The real “Bromberg” car is also exhibited here – exactly this car once became the prototype from which I designed my Z scale model:


Here is, by the way, the thread about my Z scale “Bromberg” car:
viewtopic.php?t=15344

Many very interesting pieces of the old rolling stock are parked at the Seebrugg station – many of them exist in Z scale. One of the most interesting items is a steam rotary snow plow:


The labeling indicates that this snow plow once belonged to Austrian Railways (ÖBB). Many other interesting cars can be found here, too:


Even a funny rail tractor is stored here:


Deeper in the railyard, I found an interesting locomotive shed built from the old cargo containers. An E 44 electric locomotive is hidden inside it:


The old station building is likely being renovated:

The building shows a modest white interior – it reminds me many small railway stations in Ukraine from the same years:


I even found two exact prototypes of the railway clocks I produced recently:


The station platform is nice and clean:


As you can see, the catenary ends straight at the entrance of the railyard which means that the electric locomotives are towed in and out with the help of a diesel locomotive:


I noticed that most freight and passenger cars are not in the best condition – many of them demand repair and new paintwork; it looks like the museum doesn’t receive sufficient funding to carry out all this work:


Only the historical train itself is in a good condition – it is towed by BR 139 electric locomotive:


It is also claimed that some departures use steam power, but I haven’t seen any steam locomotives at the station when we were there. This is the view of the railway station from the opposite bank of Schluchsee:


The Schluchsee railway station is nice and small, located right at the bank of the lake:

The narrow railway pedestrian crossing strongly resembles ones in Japan:


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ ... _Japan.jpg

The wooden pedestrian walkway over the tracks resembles well-known American trestle bridges:


The long walk around the lake deserves a glass of wonderful local beer:


We also visited Titisee where we rode an electric boat and walked around the lake, too:

Thanks for the beautiful photos, and I hope your daughter gets well soon.

The railway line in this area uses an interesting Y-shape sleepers which are made of sections of the old rails laid upside down:


I would also like to give special praise to the cuisine of Southern Germany – it really deserves it! Along with Schäufele and many other traditional meals, Käsespätzle is among my favorites:


It’s a pity that we don’t have all these delicacies in Northern Germany. If someone knows such a restaurant in Dortmund or in the surrounding area – please let me know, I would be extremely grateful for that!

During our numerous road trips in this area, I couldn’t resist from stopping at every beautiful spot along our way:


This scenery looks exactly like Windows wallpaper:


A small, but very beautiful mountain town of Triberg was very close to our place of stay:


We also visited Switzerland on one of weekends – the Rhine Falls in Schaffhausen is the place we wanted to visit for quite a long time:

We have spotted the SBB Roter Pfeil historical train on the bridge over the Rhine River:


And, of course, we traveled westbound on another weekend and visited Colmar and Strasbourg in France:

On the last weekend, we finally managed to visit Märklin Open Days in Göppingen. Although there was actually nothing new for me as a person who is familiar with all manufacturing stages of the train models, I was definitely impressed of how meticulously and with a great passion the whole manufacturing process is carried out there.

Of course, I didn’t spend all my time in Schwarzwald alone – a “mini-Stammtisch” took place right in the bar area of our rehabilitation clinic – I have had a great pleasure to meet with our dear colleague from Switzerland – Jens Wimmel (zettzeit memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=74), who was, by a lucky coincidence, driving by. We carried out a very pleasant conversation during which I also received my copy of the “Gray Mouse” train:


I must admit that I like this variant more than one from Märklin – not only because it is equipped with stock interior lighting, but also because the paint scheme looks fresher and more attractive to me:


I used an opportunity to check whether my digital kit for the TEE II train is compatible with the “Gray Mouse” variant – I can surely confirm it. The circuit boards are ready now; I only need to design the user manual and to prepare a detailed report about the new development on the forum.

I also have to add that other inhabitants of the clinic were really surprised to see two men disassembling miniature train models and enthusiastically discussing them in such an unusual setting

As one last word, I would also say that even a month is not enough to discover Schwarzwald completely – I hope very much we will have more opportunities in the future to come back here again:


We decided to drive the Rhine Route on our way back home to Dortmund – not the fastest, but much more beautiful one – through Bingen, Bacharach, Boppard, Koblenz and Remagen. As always, I took many beautiful pictures enroute; here is, for example, the famous Lorelei rock:


As you can see, the water level in Rhine is really low now; I hope the upcoming rainy autumn period will improve the situation:


On our remaining way to Dortmund, we have also had a pleasure to meet with one of Zetties in Bonn. Quite expectedly, I’ve got an avalanche of things to do at home upon our arrival. Despite of such a high workload, I expect to receive my copy of V60 locomotive soon, and I will start the development of the digital decoder for this tiny locomotive as soon as I have it in my hands.

Best regards,
Alex