Real steam in 2016

‘PlandamPf’ Puts on a show

BY TONY STREETER IT’s been a while since schwallungen’s furniture factory finished any dining chairs. Half-finished pieces lie around, and the Henschel stationary engine that powered the plant is silent. Truly ‘stationary’. If any ghosts walk these floors, then in September they would have witnessed a different type of steam engine - 2-10-0s and an ‘01’ 4-6-2 that rattled the windows. They were not stationary. Schwallungen is on eastern Germany’s Werrabahn and, once again, the venue for one of the 21st century’s great steam spectacles: Plandampf. From September 15-17, the group known as the IGE Werrabahn put on three days of steam on a mixture of moving real freight, and trains added just for fun. In keeping with an emerging tradition, the heartland of the event was again the 38 miles of single-track main line between Eisenach - where protestant reformer Martin Luther translated the Bible from Latin - and Meiningen, birthplace of Britain’s Queen Adelaide. This time, the group’s own 2-8-2 No. 41.1144 was in Meiningen Works, so couldn’t take up its now-usual position in the line-up; its replacement was a ‘Reko-50’ 2-10-0, bringing the number of those engines participating to three. Meiningen’s own largedeflector fitted No. 50.1380 (better known by its alternative number 50.3501) joined No. 50.3648 from Chemnitz and Noerdlingenbased oil-burner No. 50.0072. Inclusion of that latter engine proved fortunate given the opening summer temperatures - ‘fire risk’ was so great on the first day that its coal-burning sisters were prevented from dragging heavy freights over the wooded Thuringian hills. Fortunately, a swift change in the weather saw those restrictions lifted for the remainder of the event. No such limitations affected ‘01’ No. 01.2066, which gambolled around heading a lightweight five-coach train on all three