Saalfeld 1978

A mate and myself went on a tour around East Germany photting steam (and not for the politics, I hasten to add) and had a couple of days at Saalfeld. The bridge just north of the station was a popular spot, so much so that the Vopos (Peoples Police) knew that folk with cameras there were after only one thing (steam), so never bothered us. On the second morning what at first glance appeared to be a large shiny centipede was noticed coming towards us on the bridge approach. This turned out to be a group of Japanese railway enthusiasts complete with many aluminium cases with photo gear, tripods, etc., with many legs underneath, complete with a lady guide from Berolina (the state tourist agency) accompanied by a Deutsche Reichsbahn representative, who I recognised as Erich, an electric loco driver from Halle who had accompanied us when on a group tour the previous year.

Seeing that they were going to visit the shed - normally verboten - I enquired if we might join them, which turned out to be no problem. Two amusing things came out of this shed visit. When one of the Japanese awked a question this was put in Japanese to their group leader, who then translated it into English to put it to the Berolina lady, who in turn translated it into German for Erich the Reichsbahn rep. The answer came back in German - English - Japanese. And so it went on, question Japanese - English - German, answer German - English - Japanese.

One question put to the Berolina lady was where could they get information about what steam was to be found where in East Germany, and after looking at my mate and myself for a couple of seconds, a flash of inspiration suddenly came to her. "You must subscribe to 'World Steam'" she said, "the British know more about what is happening on the railways here than we do!"

 

The road bridge was known amongst the Saalfeld railway workers as "die Affenfelsen" - the Ape-rocks, because there was always someone hanging-around on it. Spent many happy(?) and freezing hours there, myself!