Smoke (and tears) get in your eyes

WENINGERODE - If a tour has to come to an end, as all tours must, how better than a ride into the mountains by steam train?

Under other circumstances, the two lines from Weningerode would have closed. Or been electrified or run by diesel rather than hot water. But here they escaped modernisation because one of the lines climbed to Germany's highest peak. It's not an especially high peak because Germany isn't an especially high country. But the line has to twist and wriggle in a way that a conventional train couldn't.

And that saved it. Because this isn't a conventional train - the rails have to be closer together to tighten the turns - it couldn't be joined to the main network. The lines could therefore be left as they were when everywhere else was brought into the modern era.

And that meant leaving them to be run by steam, which meant in turn that they became tourist attractions. And that attractiveness to tourists has kept the line alive and steaming ever since.

Think of the two lines as an irregular Y. One side and one arm runs up to the mountain top and the other, far longer, runs over flatter countryside to serve villages and small towns along the way.

Most tourists ride to the top of the mountain. Most, I imagine, wonder why they bothered. There are a handful of buildings up there, including a hotel and a glum canteen of a restaurant, and a television tower and not a lot else. Unless we missed something, the best there is to do is to wait for the train to go back down again.

But, what pleasure to ride both up and down, though it's sad to see how fire has destroyed much of the woods. Could hot cinders from the locomotive have caused it?

I said this was our last riding day. In fact, we'll get off at the end of the flat section and then ride for half a day to our connection with the line to Strasbourg. We spend the night there, as we did on the way out, take a train to Paris soon after dawn and then another from Paris to Cahors, leaving us 60km to get home. But I'm not going to bother you with that, so I'll take my leave now and thank you for riding along with us.

Here's to the next time!

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