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Description
Merry Christmas everybody! I've been meaning to submit this weeks ago, but forget. But right now, everything is quiet and I remembered this picture, and it's even christmas-themed, vaguely. It features traditional german christmas weather (grey, no snow), and the train is labelled as "Weihn.-Express", short for Weihnachts-Express, which translates to Christmas Express.

This make-shift platform is the current station of Breinig, a part of Stolberg, along the Stolberg-Walheim branch line. That line used to lead from Stolberg central station (along the Aachen-Cologne main line) south through the Stolberg city centre, then rose up and turned west to head via Breinig to Walheim. Nowadays only the part through Stolberg is used regularly by the "Euregiobahn" service, but some freight trains continue to industries a little further south. The rest of the line is still mostly intact, but used to suffer from not one but two bridges that were partially blown up by the german army in World War II, immediately rebuilt with supposedly temporary bridges by the american army, and then left to deteriorate until today. One of these, the Rüstbachviadukt (shortly after the last stop in Stolberg proper), was completely rebuilt this year. As a result, the freight trains can run faster, and during special events such as the christmas time, special trains can run all the way along to Breinig again. This is one of these trains. As you can see from the red sign, that's as far as the line is officially open.

There are plans to fully reopen the part to Breinig in the near future for regular service. This will still require some updates to improve train speeds, new level crossings and in particular a new platform, but with the bridge, the most expensive part is out the way. Initial suggestions sound kind of weird (the current plan is to run a shuttle service from the last stop in Stolberg to Breinig only, because of timetable constraints), but in the long term, this could be useful.

The really interesting thing is where it goes from there. There's one more similar bridge in need of repairs or replacements before Walheim, but the rest of the tracks is generally okay. There's even a museum railway headquartered in Walheim. That station used to be an important junction, but the line north and south from there are both closed and turned into cycle ways. However, the line west from Walheim still exists. It runs all the way to Raeren in Belgium, and from there further to Eupen and eventually Welkenraeth. The line exists and trains can run on it (albeit rather slowly), so with not too much money, you could reintroduce a third railway link between Belgium and Germany. There are no specific timetable for this reopening, and specific timetables have often slipped a lot around here, so I have no idea when this could happen, but it certainly sounds promising.

Description
Merry Christmas everybody! I've been meaning to submit this weeks ago, but forget. But right now, everything is quiet and I remembered this picture, and it's even christmas-themed, vaguely. It features traditional german christmas weather (grey, no snow), and the train is labelled as "Weihn.-Express", short for Weihnachts-Express, which translates to Christmas Express.

This make-shift platform is the current station of Breinig, a part of Stolberg, along the Stolberg-Walheim branch line. That line used to lead from Stolberg central station (along the Aachen-Cologne main line) south through the Stolberg city centre, then rose up and turned west to head via Breinig to Walheim. Nowadays only the part through Stolberg is used regularly by the "Euregiobahn" service, but some freight trains continue to industries a little further south. The rest of the line is still mostly intact, but used to suffer from not one but two bridges that were partially blown up by the german army in World War II, immediately rebuilt with supposedly temporary bridges by the american army, and then left to deteriorate until today. One of these, the Rüstbachviadukt (shortly after the last stop in Stolberg proper), was completely rebuilt this year. As a result, the freight trains can run faster, and during special events such as the christmas time, special trains can run all the way along to Breinig again. This is one of these trains. As you can see from the red sign, that's as far as the line is officially open.

There are plans to fully reopen the part to Breinig in the near future for regular service. This will still require some updates to improve train speeds, new level crossings and in particular a new platform, but with the bridge, the most expensive part is out the way. Initial suggestions sound kind of weird (the current plan is to run a shuttle service from the last stop in Stolberg to Breinig only, because of timetable constraints), but in the long term, this could be useful.

The really interesting thing is where it goes from there. There's one more similar bridge in need of repairs or replacements before Walheim, but the rest of the tracks is generally okay. There's even a museum railway headquartered in Walheim. That station used to be an important junction, but the line north and south from there are both closed and turned into cycle ways. However, the line west from Walheim still exists. It runs all the way to Raeren in Belgium, and from there further to Eupen and eventually Welkenraeth. The line exists and trains can run on it (albeit rather slowly), so with not too much money, you could reintroduce a third railway link between Belgium and Germany. There are no specific timetable for this reopening, and specific timetables have often slipped a lot around here, so I have no idea when this could happen, but it certainly sounds promising.