Black and Whites

I almost forgot this yesterday, but this was where my Berlin tour started, as the tour guide wanted to go here first. As in most major mainland European cities, Berlin's mainline, commuter, and urban transit railways are integrated (and were even under Communism, when the Communists were given charge of the railways in both the East and the West of Berlin). In general, the transport network is well unified and functional, unlike in London, where it's been partly privatized and fragmented beyond belief, or in L.A., where it transport means either a 10 m.p.h. traffic jam, or an 80 m.p.h. demolition derby. Here you can see Berlin Zoologicher Garten Bahnhof, which has both mainline and subway trains, in the foreground in a bus stop, and of course there are quite a few bicycles as well.

This small memorial is in the old Jewish ghetto in Berlin, on the location where Einstein lived until he had to flee the holocaust. The memorial is all that remains of his house, as the whole area was levelled by Allied bombing.

I took this on Lotte-Lenge-Bogenstrasse, and until I looked at the full size version of the scan, I couldn't remember why I had taken it. Up on the railway bridge is the answer, however, as this is one of my only photos (and maybe the only one) of a Berlin S-Bahn Zug, or train.

Although I could have taken this in 1999, when I was actually taking a photography course at the University of East Anglia, I'm fairly certain this was actually taken by me independently, and then developed in the darkrooms of the UEA Photo Society. I'm not sure, though. The year on the poster, of course, is referring to the 2001 UK election, as this poster is ridiculing Cherie Blair's obsession with mysticism and superstition. In the end, of course, Britain was doomed by a weak opposition and voter apathy to 4 more years of Blairite incompetence and corruption, which included the Iraq War, and yet another unsuccessful attempt to get rid of him, so one has to consider this poster as being unsuccessful, if indeed The Times dared to take a political position against Blair. It is a bit of an ethical grey area for many journalists, to be sure, when a serious newspaper like The Times does something this blatantly partisan. I've always thought that this photo was very interesting, though, in that it perfectly captured the mood of the times (no pun intended), and even included a reference to the British Rail Crisis, all in a major railway station! :-)

This photo, logically, should be the first rather than the last in the series, as it was the first on the roll, but I didn't notice it on the list of files until later, so I decided to put it last. This plaque is on the steps of the West Berlin City Hall (if I'm not mistaken), where U.S. President John F. Kennedy gave his famous "Ich bin ein Berliner" speech against the undemocratic Communist regimes of East Germany and East Berlin.

This tunnel, not original, but made out of a pipe found somewhere, is part of a park that used to be a railway freight yard. The tour guide said the yard was originally called Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof, although all the signs I saw said Bruckenmeisterei, so whichever one it is. Much of the infrastructure, all of it steam-era, is still intact, as the yard was in control of the Soviets (as was all of the rail infrastructure in Berlin) after World War II, and lacking adequate international traffic to keep it going, it was eventually abandoned, with almost everything sitting abandoned until 1989, when it became the park that it is now.

This was a switchstand that I found near the hump in the Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof park, by all appearances a powered one, again somewhat unusual for a steam-era yard, illustrating how sophisticated this yard once was.

Here's the turnout that the abandoned switchstand was connected to. If I'm not mistake this was on or near the hump.

I'm not actually posting Picture 2, as it was a bracket and I don't think it was very good. :-) This is another, clearer shot of the abandoned turnout in the last shot.

This is part of the trail through the Bruckenmeisterei/Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof park, made out of one of the old tracks, as like I said almost nothing was scrapped.

This is another shot of the path through the Rangier Bahnhof Tempelhof park, showing a turnout in the track. This was approaching the hump, as this railyard was a hump yard, in spite of being built and abandoned in the steam era.

This was one of the highpoints of my visit to Berlin. You know how I said that everything in the yard was just left as-is? Well, that even included this former Deutsche Reichsbahn Class 50 2-10-0, although it's been stripped for parts. Someone repainted it, though, in order to control rust on it and make it look nicer in what is now a relatively clean and green park.

This is the water tower at Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof, or Bruckenmeisterei, if you will. This was where I found the Bruckenmeisterei signs, on the former yard office, which is now occupied, appropriately enough, by the offices of the park's management.

This was the turntable for near the Bruckenmeisterei West office, which also is situated close to the Bruckenmeisterei shed and the Class 50 2-10-0 I found, as well as other steam-related facilities.

This is one of the signs that I've been talking about all this time, over the former yard office which is now the park office. So which is it? Rangierbahnhof Tempelhof, or Bruckenmeisterei (or for that matter, Bruckmeisterei West)?

This is the waterspout at Bruckenmeisterei shed, pretty well intact, from the look of it, although I doubt that there's any water left in the tower posted earlier.

This is the coal bunker at Bruckenmeisterei shed, and very surprisingly it still has coal in it, although indeed everything is surprising in this yard-turned-park.

Very oddly, the Bruckenmeisterei shed isn't considered part of the park, and is in fact still occupied.