The famed Red Bull train, which operates from the companies production facility in Bludenz, Austria, was also diverted via Lauterbourg. The train is seen here at the northern entry signal where a large crowd of photographers had gathered.

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Last August the vital Rheintalbahn between Karlsruhe and Basel was closed for two weeks in order to connect a long delayed segment of a new bypass around the city of Rastatt. In 2017 during the construction of said bypass, a tunnel under the existing mainline caved in closing the line for several weeks as railway undertakings scrambled to reroute their trains on poorly suited bypass routes, often with diesel power. For this planned closure, many lessons from the 2017 incident were taken into account and alternative routes were set up for freight. The most interesting diversion was via the French left Rhine railway via the border station in Lauterbourg. The line, while double track on the French side, is only used for relatively sparse commuter services and sees only a small amount of local freight. During the Rastatt closure, months of planning and preparation allowed for approximately approximately 10 trains a day to use the corridor. The trains were organized by a group of Swiss rail undertakings, with locomotives largely from SNCF Fret. Each train operated with both a German and French speaking driver, allowing for operation without crew changes at the borders.

For photographers the most interesting location was by far the station at Lauterbourg which is still controlled by mechanical semaphore signals. After a quick stop, BB 75000 475124 departs Lauterbourg with a SBB 482 in tow.

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The sun comes up very early in Hungary due to being at the very edge of the Central European time zones. After a sleepless night in a terrible hotel room in Révfülöp, I headed back trackside for Day 2 of Balaton retro. Its only 06:11 as the first IC of the day, 19709 breaks the morning quiet at Badacsconytomaj. Soon the hordes of photographers from across central Europe will descend on the line.

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On the outskirts of Prague, one can still find some rather old fashioned railway scenes. The KBS 070 towards Mlada Boleslav
offered, atleast last year, a wide variety of old school Czech power, especially on weekends when the seasonal KZC trains run. Many of the local services were operated with these CD 854 motorcars. On this day I was lucky enough to stumble into retro unit M296 1021 which wears the old red and cream scheme. The train is seen here departing the still fully unmodernized station at Praha-Cakovice

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With some more sunny weather in the forecast I decided to give the RWE coal railways another visit, hoping to find better photo angles on the Hambachbahn. The Hambachbahn did indeed offer much better prospects than the Nordsüdbahn, but here too the trees are growing quickly. Due to all the disruptions due to coal protests and the extensive signage, I didnt dare try to do any tree clearing on the embankments. Most of my photos were only possible holding my camera over my head for an extra little bit of elevation. Thanks to the usual DB chaos I arrived an hour late but just after setting up a westbound empty rolled into view, even with a cobalt blue EL1. A good start I thought, but the rest of the day was a wash. All day the railway sent only eastbound trains while I was setup for westbounds, the two westbounds that did run came after shadows encroached on my position and running one after the other with no time to switch spots. Maybe there will some more sun soon and I can try again, preferably before the leafs return to the trees and make photography more difficult.

RWE EL1 546 is seen at Sinndorf after passing under the A4, the Niederaußem power plant can be seen in the background. This segment was built in 2014 to replace part of the line that would be swallowed up by the expansion of the Hambach open pit mine.

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An einem kalten ersten Februar, RWE EL1 546 zieht ein Leerkohlezug in Richtung Hambach entlang der 2014 neu trassierte abschnitt bei Sinndorf. Im Hintergrund ist das Kraftwerk Niederaußem zu sehen

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