Bernhards Random Ramblings BACKUP

A Settlers of Catan drama tonight. Blue wins without building even a single street. 2 cities, most knights, and four (!) winner point cards. well done, Pascal.

The Christmas Market in Esslingen is one of the nicest markets in the area. There's a "regular" christmas market and right next to it is the Medieval Market. It's fun to stroll over the markets in late afternoon and browse what the stands have to offer. But the real magic starts to happen at dusk when the lights come on for full effect.

Given the white fluffy stuff outside today, it seems appropriate to post some of the photos I took 30+ years ago. On a rather cold Saturday morning in February 1987 I asked my dad to take me to  the station in Ludwigsburg to see what the winter weather was doing to train traffic. It had snowed over night and the white fluffy stuff was all over the place. The photos shown here are scans off color prints. The quality varies a bit. I hope my readers enjoy them nonetheless. Let's start with snow and ice on a couple cars in what I believe is  train 53911 bound for Kornwestheim. I was taking pictures of passenger trains from the platform on track 2, when my favorite locomotive class 151 pulled with train 53911 into track 5 and to my delight slowed to a stop. The engineer has pulled forward as far as it can go on track 5 without fouling the exit signal. The diversity of cars on this train is very interesting and quite typical for mixed freights in the mid-eighties. We can see b...

Franziska decided to take a break from homework and build a snow man with a distinct spring flavor.

We woke up to snow today. What a nice surprise. 

[ An English version of this post can be found here ] Eine weitere Ebay Auktion. Ein weiterer Stapel Altpapier. Diesmal ist es ein deutsches Gueterzugkursbuch mit dem Jahresfahrplan 1984/85. Das Gueterzugkursbuch zeigt fuer jeden Bahnhof welche Gueterzuege wann wohin fahren. Was kann man damit anfangen? Mal sehen ... Letztes Jahr habe ich einen  Artikel  geschrieben in dem ich spekuliert habe was der Richtpunktcode auf einem Hauptzettel bedeutet, den ich im Februar 1987  auf Gleis 5 in Ludwigsburg fotografiert habe . Hier ist eine Ausschnittvergroesserung des Hauptzettels von diesem Foto. Ein paar Sachen, die mir gleich auffallen: Die handschriftlichen Eintragungen oben rechts sind Gewichte fuer Wagen (19,2), Ladung (22,1), und Gesamt (41,3) in Tonnen. Unter den Gewichten ist die Wagennnummer 21 80 238 4? 831-1? . Die Nummer ist schwer zu lesen, daher muss ich fuer einige Zahlen raten. Der Wagen wurde in Neheim-Huesten mit Stueckgut beladen, und geht nach Leonberg. Der Wa...

[ Eine deutsche Version dieses Artikels ist hier. ] Another ebay auction, another chunk of "Altpapier". This one contains tables for freight car routing in Germany for 1984/85. What can I do with this? Let's see ... Last year I wrote a blog post speculating about the meaning of the Richtpunktcode on the Hauptzettel (~waybill) attached to the outside of a box car I photographed on track 5 in Ludwigsburg in February 1987. Here's a close-up of the Hauptzettel in that photo. A couple things to note: The hand written numbers in the top right are weights of car (19.2), load (22.1), and total (41.3) in tons. Below the weights is the car number 21 80 238 4? 831-1? . It's hard to read, so I'm guessing for some of the numbers. The car was loaded in Neheim-Huesten with Stueckgut (less-than-carload, LCL freight), destined to Leonberg. However, the car appears to travel directly from origination to destination with no intermediate stops, so I'm guessing it was loaded...