I went for an explore around the local railway lines recently. Freiburg city and the state of Baden-Württemberg are investing heavily in public transport here: The last time I was in the region I went for a ride on the trains and they were single-coach diesel railcars.
So it was a bit of a shock when I crossed over a railway line and it looked like this:
The train is owned and operated by Deutsche Bahn, German railways, but our state is now giving out franchises and insisting that new stock has the national colours of yellow and black, and the new "BWegt" logo. I guess that's fair as they're paying for them. If you're wondering, "BWegt" is a mix of "Bewegen", German for movement and the initials of the state of Baden Württemberg.
After some pootling to various rural stations I ended up in Breisach, which is right on the French border. in the 1840's this was supposed to be a major point on the new trans-European main line from Paris to Vienna. The fact the track stops here makes it clear that something went a bit wrong there.
The Rhine is about 500m away behind those trees, but the bridge was blown up by retreating German troops in 1945 and was never rebuilt. Ironically many French people work in Freiburg now, so the car park is a defacto park and ride and full of French registered cars.
North of Breisach the country becomes very rural: there's a range of hills between this region and Freiburg and not many other cities for a long way in any direction. They're still electrifying the line despite this. This doesn't seem to be finished yet so services are run by the single unit railcars I knew from the last time I was here. I happened to be passing when this one went through a crossing.
There are a lot of sidings and loops in rural stations too, which the company seem to think worth keeping and rebuilding This is at the magnificently named but tiny Königsschafhausen station. It was apparently worth the expense of keeping the bay platform and loop, but not electrifying them.
The loop could be a freight loading loop, I guess if you have big machines loading logs onto wagons you don't want electric wires overhead, but the bay is a mystery.
Station building at Königschafhausen. I'd like to have this house if anyone has several hundred thousand pounds they don't need:
I have more pictures, including the railway company main station, depot, and headquarters. You have been warned...
