GERMANY: THE FADED FLEET
When accountants moved in on the remains of East Germany’s steam fleet, one individual couldn’t bear the thought of letting the scrapman win. TONY STREETER discovers the vast collection that resulted.
Row upon row of engines, curving out of sight. Weeds, weeping paint, thistles. And quiet; still silence from locomotives that haven’t run in a quarter-century. A ghost fleet in a ghost depot.
An obvious British comparison to this spot on the edge of a Brandenburg town might be Barry. But these survivors have not been brought to Falkenberg (Elster) for scrap. The 50 or so engines filling the sidings and shed roads have been saved, preserved – gathered en masse.
In eastern Germany, the early 1990s were odd times. Reunification with the West had brought capitalist accountants – but not yet the departure of Soviet forces. So, while Red Army tanks still populated Brandenburg’s plains and MiG-29 jets smoked aloft from airfields such as the one near this town, the already on-its-way-out Deutsche Reichsbahn was ‘binning’ scores of 2-10-0s.
What you see gathered in this place with its back of beyond feel is down to the triumph of one man over the disposal lists. For this concentration of stored engines is the result of a buying spree – and their collector, Bernd Falz, has another similar set-up too.
Falkenberg is a railway junction. It lies roughly halfway between Berlin and Dresden. On a map, a cross drawn by the lines running north-south and east-west centres on the town’s station.
This is a flat, empty-ish landscape, where nature reserves share space with troop training areas; nearby is Torgau, where US and Soviet forces met on the River Elbe in 1945.
Not far north of the station, a railway museum is based in the closed motive power depot. A single, cosmetically restored ‘52’ stands on a plinth – clearly visible to those crossing the railway by the Uebigauer Strasse.
However, Falkenberg had another shed, on the line that reaches out to Torgau and beyond in the west, and Doberlug-Kirchhain, Cottbus and the Polish border to the east. Now, fenced off from still-active sidings filled with trains of shiny new cars, this is home to more than 30 of East Germany’s rebuilt ‘Kriegsloks’, the ‘52.80s’ – plus ‘50.35s’, ‘41s’ and the huge ‘44’ 2-10-0s known as ‘Jumbos’. Also here is a pair of something much rarer – the remains of ‘22’ 2-8-2s (again a rebuild, this time of the Prussian ‘P10’) and around the back of the shed even engines brought in from Romania.
This is no conventional museum, but storage for a private collection. There are though occasional open days – this year on June 8-10 and September 7/8.
What future is there then for the sizeable fleet that now calls Falkenberg home – each member of it with its own history?
A lucky minority stand inside the former depot’s part-roundhouse.
Some engines have been cosmetically restored. One of them,
No. 52.8117, even took part in Germany’s very last year (1994) of main line steam operation in capital stock.
Most, though, remain outside. A band of supporters does its best to keep the vegetation back. Herr Forker, the local representative of the collection, says it’s planned to keep Falkenberg’s engines intact – and indeed there is hope of putting a roof over ones that currently have no cover. That, however, is reliant on both money and planning permission.
So, these witnesses to the end of East German main line steam slumber on.
How many other places on earth today could you find so many engines, all gathered together? Indeed, how many engines anywhere have been rescued and are owned by one man? For Herr Falz has a similar number congregated in western Germany, at Hermeskeil in the Rhineland-Palatinate.
It’s true that the scale of Falkenberg and Hermeskeil makes them remarkable. But ask yourself this: other than numbers in one place, how different is this faded fleet to some of those engines and carriages stored in our own country? Witnesses – there as here – to an ever-receding past.
●● With thanks for assistance from Herr Forker, Falkenberg.