Eisenbahnmuseum Bochum

A few days ago we visited the largest German train museum. It is situated in the 'Ruhrgebiet' and lies in between Essen, Wattenscheid, Bochum and the river Ruhr.Once you leave the motorway 40, you will drive through residential areas for 15 minutes and then finally a few hairpin bends and you are in the Ruhr-valley in front of the entrance of the train museum.

It is a large terrain and used to be the steam depot of the German railroad in Bochum, including turntable and semicircular engine house. It has also two large rectangular engine houses, a station building. It is a rather different train museum than the Dutch Spoorwegmuseum. Since this train museum displays trains and has not be changed-over into 'an experience and children-playground'.

Not just a few trains, but loads of them to be more precise.

It is fairly difficult to make good photo's in the engine house, since the sun light brightly shines through the upper windows and make the trains reflect in all directions.

Several types of rail buses were displayed. Here a regular bus on train trucks as it operated in the fifties and sixties on remote branch lines.

But also the earlier pig's face from the twenties and thirties.

And some regular passenger coaches for the high speed trains of that era.

Luckily you can enter a few steamer cabins and respect the jungle of valves and pressure displays.

They have several steam engines that are tested and railroad-worthy, which are used for occasional trips. But they also have many steamers and coaches in urgent demand of restoration.

The oldest train car on display is a closed goods car from the 1850's. They estimated the age on several marks on the iron work. The wood side panels and the roof is in dilapidated condition, but it shows how small these early boxcars were.

Here an example of positive discrimination for women; a separate coach department on the high speed coach for women. Why? Smokers and non-smokers as division I understand. Prudery, curiosity or simply a way to avoid harassment? One wonders.

Here the logo of the Royal Prussian railroad company, hand painted on the side of a passenger coach. They needed a few well-trained painters back them to do all the coaches...

A general advice for all persons that try performing on stage without talent. Still relevant in the age of 'the Voice', etc.

And then there was the German crocodile E94 an impressive beauty.

In the end there were too many trains to be photographed. I reckon that they will spend the coming century to restore the rest of the trains that need TLC. There were many nice details to be seen, like the following shots:

In the wealth of train cars that require restoration, they choose to restore a train car that was used by Hitler. This came as a shock. The train car was beautiful restored and shined brightly. The swastika and eagle were prominently visible on the side of the car. Although they explained the historic significance of this train car, I would have preferred to let this car rot and instead restore the orient express sleeping car for instance. Although this is our shared history, it is still discomforting.