Robin and John go from a little village in Kent (England) |
A friend of mine (Robin) buys sells and restores old military vehicles as a hobby. In 1995 he was contacted by a man in Nurnberg who had always wanted a genuine, WWII American Jeep, and could Robin get one and have it delivered to him? He could, but wanted a co-driver, so I went with him. This is all written from memory, but describes how we got there and back, and what happened en-route. (This is one of the articles from the Railway journeys recounted section on www.worldrailfans.org.)
He was not familiar with the vehicle, and wasn't 100% happy that it's mechanically OK, so how could we cut down the amount of driving? Kent (south east England for those who don't know) to Nurnberg (southern Germany) is rather a long way in a vehicle that can only comfortably do 40mph (about 60kmh), and comfortable is not a word I'd use to describe an original Jeep. What about motor-rail? I started making enquiries... The nearest you can get to Nurnberg via motor-rail is Munich, that's not too bad, but it's still like about a 4 hour drive in a Jeep, but it was progress. So where do the motor-rail trains come from that end up in Munich? - Hamburg. That's not quite what I had in mind, but I started checking things out... It turned out that you could get a ship from Harwich in England to Hamburg that only runs during the summer. OK, we had a plan: * Drive from Kent to Harwich - not too bad, about 3-4 hours I made all of the bookings (wow, motor-rail is expensive...!), and we were all ready to go. I arranged a few days off work, and went straight to Robin's house from work on the Friday so that we could make an early start on Saturday morning. Saturday dawned bright but not too warm. We set off about 09:00 to leave plenty of time to get to Harwich (the ship didn't sail until about 17:00), as neither of us wanted to be in too much of a rush. If we wanted to stop for a break we could. By 10:00 it was getting hot and very sunny. The right sort of weather for driving with the top down..!! We made a couple of quick breaks en-route (toilet, coffee - not necessarily in that order), partly to check that all was OK with the Jeep as it hadn't been on a long run before. The traffic was not too busy (even though it was the holiday season), and we made good progress. Through the Dartford Tunnel under the River Thames and off in the direction of Harwich. For some reason, people were giving us some very strange looks..!! You'd think they'd never seen a Jeep before. Anyway, we got to Harwich by about 12:00, rather early, but we were there, so no need to panic. OK, I don't know how many people have been to Harwich Parkstone Quay (where the ships sail from), but apart from the ships, there is practically nothing there. Robin and I were both rather hungry (actually, I was starving), and there is a sort of burger-bar near where we were waiting, so we went and got something to eat. It was pretty hot sitting out there in the Jeep, and I was beginning to get sunburn. Eventually more people started to gather, and they opened the check-in, so we showed our tickets and parked up in the area for boarding the ship. Not much happened for a while, but we eventually got on board and went off to the cabin. Later on we got something to eat, and went to see a film in the ship's cinema to waste a couple of hours - Judge Dredd for those who want to know. Sunday - I didn't slept too well as the cabin was rather noisy (engine noise, not people), so I was up fairly early, so was Robin. We went and got something for breakfast, then went up on deck. It was a lovely morning, very clear, and the sea was as flat as a sheet of glass. Just as well really, I'm not a good sailor. We went along the north German coast and its islands for what seemed like hours (it was hours). In a few places we could actually see trains running along the coast, but we were too far out to see anything clearly. Eventually we turned down the river Elbe towards Hamburg. It was really HOT. We docked around lunch time, and when we get off of the ship, we found it was only about a 5-10 minute drive to the motor-rail terminal at Hamburg Altona station. When we got there we found we were way too early and couldn't actually check-in for about 5-6 hours, so we parked the Jeep and went walk-about in Hamburg. Seeing as it was a Sunday, practically everything was shut, but we went for a quick trip on the Hamburg S-bahn, and had a look in the window of Hamburg's finest model shop. I'd been there once before (on a day trip from Augsburg), but Robin was practically in a trance - he'd never seen anything quite like this (he's a railway nut too - just like me). It was too hot to do much, so we drifted back to the Jeep, and just sort of 'hung-out' for the remaining hour or so. Hamburg Altona is a bit strange. It's not very large, and the motor-rail terminal is actually on the station. The train was backed into one of the platforms (I believe 2 platforms have the ramps), and they isolated the catenaries so that people could drive up on to the upper level of the double-deck car transporters without electrocuting themselves. The Jeep was by far the oldest vehicle in line. There were plenty of Audis and Mercedes', the odd Ford, and a couple of motor cycles, but only one Jeep. Several of the drivers were giving us some very strange looks, although if they knew how much an original jeep in good conditions was worth, they might have thought a bit differently. Robin drove the Jeep on to the lower deck, and we then found out why the travel agent was so curious about the height. With the top and windscreen folded down, there was about 6 inches clearance on the lower deck, and Robin had to adopt a rather strange position to drive. I found this very amusing, but he ended up hitting me (not seriously) because he didn't think it was funny at all when he bumped his head getting out. We grabbed our bags and headed for our compartment. As we were travelling using someone else's money, we only had a couple of berths in a couchette (which has 6 bunks), rather than the 'rich people' who had the air conditioned luxury a few coaches further down the train. Still, I could open the window and stick my head out to see what was going on outside which they couldn't, so I didn't care. I didn't go and check out the locomotive (Robin did), but I could see that it was just a blue and cream class 110 electric. Once you've seen one, you've seen 'am all. Working in Germany for 15 months, I'd seen dozens of 'me - had a cab ride in one too, but don't tell anyone. We found out eventually that there was only one other guy in our compartment, so it wasn’t too crowded, but it was still pretty hot, so we had to have the window open all night, which was rather noisy, so again I didn't sleep to well. I can't remember what time we actually left Hamburg, but I think it was about 8:00 pm. I can remember stopping at Hannover, but the rest of the night was a bit of a blur. Monday - I woke up properly just as we went through Ingolstadt, and shortly afterwards the conductor came through with 'breakfast'. This was tea or coffee, and a chocolate covered Danish pastry. It doesn't sound like much, but it was quite filling and lasted us for a couple of hours. Why is it I seem to keep talking about food? We arrived at Munich Ostbahnhof (the east station) where the motor-rail terminal is and we got ourselves and the Jeep unloaded fairly quickly. The good thing about the Ostbahnhof is that it's more-or-less on the outskirts of the 'really busy' part of Munich, and the road heading out of town northwards towards Nurnberg was only just round the corner, so we were soon heading out in to the country and leaving the ni.shtmlare of Minchin’s traffic behind us. I won't bore you with the details, but we then had a lovely 4 hour drive along the back roads from Munchen to Nurnberg via Ingolstadt and Eichstadt (very pretty). Not much of railway interest en-route, but a very nice drive all the same. We stopped at Eichstadt for about 30 minutes for a top-up of food and also to get off of those Jeep seat 'cushions' for a while. Jeep cushions are only about 1 inch thick on top of a metal frame, so you can imagine what they feel like after a couple of hours..!! The last part of the drive up was on the autobahn just south of Nurnberg which wasn't much fun, but we eventually found the guy's house without too much trouble. We were looked after well (and fed), and spent the rest of the day taking it easy. That night I slept like a baby. We stayed for 2 nights as we didn't want to go straight back. Tuesday - We spent the day touring round Nurnberg. OK, let's be honest, we toured round Nurnberg checking out the model shops and other items of railway interest like the DB Museum. I spent a little money, but not too much. Honest..!! Wednesday - Our host's wife drops us off at Nurnberg’s main station in time to pick up the InterCity to Köln. We had seat reservations on the train about 10:15, but this left us with a very close connection at Köln, so as we got there early, we got the 09:15 instead so we'd get an hour or so at Köln. We had a proper locomotive - a class 103, and we also had a McDonald’s dining car on the train. I think there was only a handful on the DBAG at the time..??. The train was pretty busy, too many people with too much luggage. Nothing much special happened between Nurnberg and Wurzburg, but at Wurzburg we started to head off up the Neubaustrecke..?? I couldn't figure this out, why are where we going north up the Neubaustrecke when we want to go west? There turned out to be a junction off of the Neubaustrecke after a short distance and we then went off towards Aschaffenburg and on to Frankfurt. A little later most of the tourists got off at the Frankfurt airport station, and then the best bit of the journey started - the Rhein valley. Mainz to Koblenz is the best bit - I've seen it several times before, but it's the first time Robin had been via this route and he thought it was great. Well, I think it's great too, but the first time is always best. I can't easily describe it, but there is a double track up both sides of the river, and it is very busy. You can usually see a train on one of the other tracks. The west bank is mostly fast trains, the east bank mostly slower passenger or freight. The river winds around quite a lot along this stretch, and there are things like the Lorelei rocks to see... Oh what the heck, if you go to Germany, go by train down the Rhein, you'll love it. We rolled in to Köln around lunch time (food again!), and strolled around outside the station for a while. The cathedral is, well, how I can put this, seriously impressive. I mean we're talking BIG, and right alongside the station. Having been there before, I made a bee-line for the local model shop, but there was nothing special on offer when we got there, so it was a brisk walk back to the station to pick up our train to Oostende. The SNCB train rolled in, and I'm sorry to say that it was a bit (actually a lot) of a let down compared to the DBAG's finest we came from Nurnberg on. Off up to Aachen, then across the border into Belgium. I'm not all that impressed by Belgium. Some of the architecture looks positively British, some French, and it may be because we were going home, but I think it looked a little shabby. Anyway, nothing of any note in Belgium, and Oostende is just another typical cross-channel ferry port - dull. We hopped on to the JetFoil (OK, so we had to wait about an hour and a half, then we hopped on the JetFoil), and then we were off to Ramsgate. Uneventful crossing really, just quicker than a ship. At Ramsgate they used sniffer dogs to search all of the passengers from the JetFoil for drugs (I don't think they found any) then we climbed aboard an old bus for the 5 minute ride to the railway station - which is right at the top of the town. The bus was a real piece of junk. The noises coming from the transmission were terrible. It sounded like the thing should have been sent to the great scrap yard in the sky years ago. At Ramsgate station we got on to the train to London Victoria which is a normal stopping service - there are no special boat trains from Ramsgate to London - at least not that I could see, and not at that time of night. OK, now if you were a tourist, you might just have thought that Network SouthEast had provided a museum piece for you to travel to London on. I know different, I am a commuter, and the train we were on was just a normal Kent coast 4-coach electric multiple unit that was about 40 years old, and although the interior had been 'modernised', still has suspension worse than the Jeep. Let's say the ride up to London was rough, and not helped by the fact that we stopped at practical ever station all of the way. By the time we got to London Victoria it was getting late, but we only had a 40 minute journey back to my house and the adventure was more or less over. There weren't any trains back to Robin's village at that time of night, so he went back home the following morning, and I went back to work. |
OK, first things first... Robin found a Jeep for sale. The man in Nurnberg wanted to do a complete ground-up restoration himself, so all he needed was to have it delivered. Robin gave it the 'once over' to make sure it would get to Nurnberg, but wasn't going to do anything else to it.