Steam before sunrise in Germany
You have to rise with the larks to catch the first train from Radebeul Ost – which is quite possibly unbeaten to the start by any other steam service in the world. As part of Steam Railway’s series on the former East Germany, TONY STREETER takes a bleary-
Is it coming?
Somehow such thoughts always seem extra pressing at 5am; cameras set up, nobody around… listening for the hurried rhythmic exhaust beat that means an early start hasn’t been wasted.
Today, as most days, the sun is below the horizon when train P 3000 sets off at 5.15am. It’s hardly a tourist time of day, and neither is 6.46am, when return-working P 3001 calls at Moritzburg. Yet a black 2-10-2T and its green coaches will quite often roll into a platform jammed with people. Why?
The clue is that these trains run Mondays to Fridays in term time. Yes, they are those most precious of survivors: steam workings that exist not because they are a fun experience, but to offer travel more convenient than the alternatives. In fact, the 5.15am is probably now the earliest running steam passenger service in the world. A generation ago it would have been commonplace. Now, the 750mm gauge train that curves through a wooded valley then scampers across fields – before taking water and coming back bunker-first – is the rarest of rare.
It endures because the local transport authority wants it to – and as this is no preserved line, it is that organisation that orders and pays for the trains. The logic is simple: for many of those living in outlying villages served by the ten-mile Radebeul Ost to Radeburg line, using the bus services on offer to reach town early wouldn’t be practical. However, riding on return-working P 3001, which currently leaves Radeburg at 6.25am and arrives at Radebeul Ost at 7.15am, certainly is.
These are not the only early services in Germany either, though the others are sluggards by comparison, certainly with the 5.15am. The Bad Doberan line has a similar train that begins its journey from Kühlungsborn West at 6.40am; the Harz lines have one that leaves Gernrode at 7.34am.
Over in Poland, the first train on Mondays-Fridays leaves Wolsztyn at 6.17am and, like P 3001, that service is used by students and others needing to reach Leszno ‘early doors’. However, none quite compare with P 3000, which rumbles under vineyards and alongside the little stream known as the Loessnitz before many people will even be up. As its bell heralds its roadside approach through Radebeul, perhaps it even serves as an alarm clock for some?
Yet apart from a bunch of people rushing to catch the return working, but who then perhaps travel engrossed in homework or their phones, or those woken by a fleeting presence behind their gardens, who really knows it even exists?
Some, certainly. The company that since 2004 has run the line reports that people sometimes turn up just for the sake of it – especially around the time when there’s a special steam event either here or in the nearby city of Dresden.
As for most of the rest of the day’s timetable, that’s more geared around those who may come to see the castle on the lake at Moritzburg that’s famous for once being owned by Saxon ruler Augustus the Strong; or perhaps the villa in Radebeul that at one time was occupied by ‘Wild West’ author Karl May. At weekends and during holidays the early train doesn’t run at all.
Such passengers might not even notice the 5.15am in the timetable. If they did, might they wonder why it’s even there?