The Old Railyard Hidden In A Berlin Park
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- Опубліковано 27 вер 2024
- For half a century after it closed down, the old Berlin Tempelhof railyard was completely sealed off from humans. During that time it became a haven for wildlife, and a tiny lost world on the edge of the city. But in 2000, it reopened - this time, as a protected nature reserve. I went to the German capital to explore it for myself...
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Anthracite = black coal.
Lignite = Brown coal.
Anthracite gives off far more heat than lignite, making it ideal for steam locomotives.
Lignite generally was used in power stations.
Unfortunately it still is used in power stations. Even in germany.
> Lignite generally was used in power stations.
Is, not was. The main tagebau site which is now digging up a highway and some villages in the ruhr area in germany digs up that for the nearby powerstations. Which is needed since germany stopped all nuclear power.
@Mark Stott - Thank you, I was scratching my head about what the english equivalents would be.
@@NoNameForNone this already is a very heated debate all over the internet. But I only want to add that the reason we have to continue using brown coal for a few more years (around 2030) is that the conservative party in charge botched the transition to renewable energy and bankrupted German solar industries in it's infancy. Our wind industry barely survived.
@@watson956 You're welcome 😊
Fun factoid about the steam train: A total of 3,160 DR Class 50 locomotives were built, making them one of the most ubiquitous single steam locomotive classes ever made. THE most ubiquitous was the DR Class 52, a later iteration on the Class 50, with over 7,000 engines built! A few Class 50 engines have seen service as far away as China and North Korea, with one being preserved in the Shenyang Railway Museum.
If you enjoy park spaces transformed from old railway yards, I highly recommend the Heizhaus Eisenbahnmuseum in Strasshof, Austria, about half an hour outside of Vienna on the S1 Line (get off at Silberwald, not Strasshof). This incredible railway museum can basically be summed up as a steam locomotive maintenance yard that never got the memo that steam was dead. Most of the original facilities are still intact and still functional and you're free to wander around most all of them. The whole site is over 2km long! Much of the collection is stored outdoors, but the most prized pieces are found in the engine sheds, including locomotives dating back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire that are steamed up for demonstrations and rides and select days of the year. There's also a nice miniature railway and several model train exhibits, as well as a few passenger coaches that have been repurposed as cafes and a gift shop, so a lovely day out for all. If Tim ever has cause to swing down to Vienna, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It's a lovely place run by lovely people passionate about preserving Austria's railway history as more than dusty objects in a museum, historic machines still capable of doing the work they were built to do even after over 100 years.
depending on whether you take the 4 e classes of russia railways as subclasses the russians built 11000-13000 e class steam locos depending who you ask
the russians also built over 9000 o class steam locos
re strasshof. yeah but they could make far better mainline use of that spectacular 310.23
Two Baureihe 52s made it to Britain. One went to Bressingham Steam Museum and was nicknamed "Peer Gynt", where it sat essentially doing nothing for about three decades, whilst the other did work on the Nene Valley Railway for a while. The NVR is the only line where Continental engines and stock can run in Britain, since its clearances were widened to take the Berne loading gauge.
Also at Strasshof:
Squirrel = Oachkatzl. 🐿
The VSM (Veluwse Stoomtrein Maatschappij) in the Netherlands owns 6 BR52's of which two are still operational. They also own 5 BR50's of which 3 are still operational. In the summer they have weekly riding days and in september they have the annualy "Terug naar toen" ("Back till then") weekend in which they try to run as many steam engines together as possible. Also a very great sight to see. If you search for "Terug naar toen" you can find some high quality video's of it.
It's also interesting that the DDR kept the name 'Deutsche Reichsbahn". This is not a fact, but it is believed that they kept the name because in all the East-West treaties regulating rail transport across the corridors and in Berlin itself, the entity was explicitly named like that.
Hello Tim, I reckon you would like hearing this if you had not been aware of it already, so here goes. The German (Eichhörnchen) and also the Dutch (eekhoorn) share a remarkable and most probably not utterly coincidental resemblance to the English word for their favourite food, if you believe the stereotype that is ofcourse, namely the acorn. In fact, the pronounciation of the Dutch word 'eekhoorn' is virtually the same as 'acorn' is for you. Take care and keep posting, I thoroughly enjoy your videos and quite often pin the locations!
Germanic languages unite! It's ekorn in Norwegian
And then there's the "rule" in French where é at start of a word indicates that it at some point may have been 'es'... so the leap from squirrel to écureuil isn't that massive either
@@kardinmo Ah yes, the pleistocenic Eichhorn with its saber teeth which the early humans hunted for their pelts, of which they made cute jackets for their pet mammoths, and also rode into battle.
@@AllegedlyHuman Kaweechelchen in Luxembourgish
same thing in Danish: They're called "egern" because they eat "agern" (acorn) - and both those words are nearly impossible for non-Danes to pronounce correctly (because the 'g' is a soft G, that's pronounced similar to, but not exactly like, a J - and if you pronounce it as J, you get "ejer" [which means owner] - and the N at the end is barely pronounced at all). And the one thing that usually throws off foreigners trying to learn Danish: the spokes of a wheel are called "eger", which is pronounced almost the same as "egern" - it refers to old wooden wheels where the spokes were made of oak.
I suspect the belly-tickling pit is an ash dump, for dropping the locomotive's fire into at the end of a working session so it can be cleaned out - it's too shallow for a proper inspection pit, I'd have thought. But I prefer Niamh's explanation.
Niamh is a real treasure, I loved her explanations (and her smile). Greetings to her! ;)
You're right. It's an ember pit. It's too shallow to be an inspection trench. So there it would be more like tickling a dragon.
Well if thats the ash dump then wheres the tummy tickling segment? Thats probably why the yard was abandoned, they forgot to build one
considering this was a freight yard, a dump pit makes the most sense. Inspection pits were (normally) only ever built (dug) by the maintenance sheds.
@@gummybread German trains are all very serious and refuse to be tickled, which makes them depressed and that is why DB is always late while SCNF is mostly on time. JR of course is the most timely railway company in the world because they cheer up their trains with cute anime decorations.
That was a very good idea to turn it into a nature park. It’s a pity we didn’t do something like that with a few of our abandoned sites.
Ouir active sites seem to be overgrown! You trees and weeds sprouting out of buildings - look at Wolverhampton Station. Its a disgrace!
I haven't been that way of late, but much of Feltham became forest.
In London there is the Parkland Walk, and the former railway line nature reserve by the Horniman Museum - there are probably others.
We have a similar site in Leamington called Foundry Wood - a triangle of land between 2 rail lines.
There is also the Gunnersbury Triangle Nature Reserve (across Bollo Lane - which has two level crossings on it).
One of Tim's particular charms is how elastically his British tongue adapts to other languages. I love Tim's French, and his German is just as impeccable. Yes, he may have a slight accent, but he manages the clear vowels in German and French so beautifully ❤
yeah it sounds very good!
He is good, but he is definitely an exception. Most English-speakers don't really addapt to speaking German, which is quite hillarious when you have a movie where one of the characters is supposed to speak German but isn't a German native (I am German, but sometimes I prefer to listen to a movie or especially TV show in the original English dub).
Yeah?! I think you mean "Ja!"
Not only German and French but also Dutch.
I agree as for his French accent!
The usual English term used for German Braunkohle is "lignite", which derives from Latin "lignum", meaning "wood". Whereas, "charcoal" in Latin is "carbones", which can also mean "coal", "soot", "anthrax", or "(burning) embers". Looping back to your friend's misapprehension, on my first visit to the lignite mine in Hambach, Germany, when I heard "Braunkohle" the first time, I misheard "Baumkohle" as well. Which confused the bejesus out of me, so I promptly asked my German hosts how they made any money making charcoal in such and enormous pit. There was much laughing. 😖
And that is not even getting into Kohlkraft (powered by cabbage)..
I hope you meant "anthracite" not "anthrax" :o
@@JamesChurchill Strangely, no, both Latin dictionaries I have specify "anthrax" as one of the meanings of Latin "carbones". Let's just say that Latin can be weird that way 🤨 But then there is the Greek term "ἄνθραξ" which was also used interchangeably for coal and the disease anthrax, that in turn gives us "ἀνθρακίτης" (coal-like), which is the origin of "anthracite". Etymology is just plain weird.
So basically, the difference of being invaded by the Roman Empire, or instead invading Rome itself...
The "animals of farthing wood" theme at 02:20 was definitely unexpected. Must be 20 years since I last heard it! Loved that series even though I'm probably still slightly traumatized from it.
I was convinced that's what I heard. Thank you for confirming. I love this about Tim's videos. :D
This American had to look up your TV reference.
Me too! Loved it when I heard it now again❤
I was very pleased to hear the Thomas the Tank engine melody merging with the Jim Knopf Title melody. Excellent job on that
It is definitely a series that teaches you about death straight from episode one!
The main railway terminus that this railyard served, was located just inside East Berlin, while all the tracks that led to it (including these) were located in West Berlin. So naturally, once the Berlin wall came up, the station and the tracks that led to it were abandoned. Trains from the south were diverted to Ostbahnhof so they could remain entirely in East Germany. And turning this area into a nature preserve (or anything else for that matter) was not high on West Berlin's priority list, which is why it sat abandoned until after Reunification. I believe the technology museum is now located where the train terminal once was.
Do you mean Anhalter Bahnhof? That used to be in former West Berlin, but was destroyed during the war. The Park am Gleisdreieck is another park using the field of tracks right in front of the station as park nowadays.
Fun fact: Tempelhof has another former transportation hub now open to the public: The former airport! The entire airport, runways an all, is now a giant park very close to the one in the video! Kinda surprised you didn't mention it.
There is even a subterranean railway track underneath the airport building.
I would guess that a crapload of propeller cargo planes coming and going are missing from this park? 😀
Except, it's not the entire airport. Only the airfield is open as a park during opening hours, not the whole vast building itself. Just a small part where community sport in one of the hangars is practised, everything else is closed off to the broader public.
There are two hour long tours in English of the main buildings which are huge six days a week. Google it.
He did not want to spoil the next vídeo. ;)
Love especially for the music in this video. apart from the "Thomas the little Steam-engine" there was the very nostalgic theme of "als die Tiere den Wald verließen" at 2:20. I so loved that show as a child.
I couldn't resist pulling an imaginary chain for the 'toot toot', as it kicked off! 😅
The little change of voice on "the German war effort" is a beautiful little Fawlty Towers moment.
Yep, Brits can't help it, can they?
Can confirm that is indeed how the Turntable works. You'd put a crank handle on that stub and you could wind the table around manually. I imagine it had some form of powered system as well being it had a large cabin on it as well.
Wow, I actually live next to a Tim Traveller treasure site! So cool!
The reason the yard was abandoned was the Berlin Wall - it sits in the western area and the lines out of it got cut off by the border.
Damn, I lived in Berlin for the first twenty years of my life and I never heard of this park. I am still visiting Berlin very often because of family reasons. I think I will have a look at this place. Thank you very much, Tim!
My thoughts exactly, except 35 years. I wonder how Tim finds these hidden gems, even locals don't know about
Well, Berlin is 8 times bigger than Paris (by area). I live here for 42 years and there are still things to discover. I visited Südgelände (the place in the video) several times though.
Don't ask a woman her age , a man his salary or a German train what it did during the 1940s.
Don’t ask a train what it did in the war, that’s a good one!
the french word "écureuil" and the english one "squirrel" are related, it's even almost the same. In old french, it was probably "escureuil"...
Interesting!
And the Norwegian Version is ekekatten literally "oak cat", which is the same as in Bavarian "Oachkatzl". The high German word is apparently mostly used to mock Spanish exchange students (they have their sweet revenge, and don't mess with the Polish, their language is mostly consonants - I wish I had an ear for it, impossible to do).
@@johanneswerner1140The traditional Berlin name for said woodland rodent is "Eichkater", so an oak cat once again, albeit a male one.
The pause after "genuine German train belly tickling trough" XD
I can imagine Tim's face thinking "I can't believe I just said that..."
Great video and an interesting story, thank you for sharing :)
Well, if he didn't say it, no one else would!
That line was brilliant
Echter Zugbauchkitzelntrog?
It‘s an ash pit!
Thanks to Julian & Niamh for being good sports! It’s good to see not just the backs of people Tim travels with ,)
Guten Tag. I sure do love me a Berlin Bonus Video!
I’m amazed that the theme from the animals of farthing wood had such a reaction in my brain. I’m sure I heard a neuron snap. Great work.
Ah memories of Erasmus days in Berlin during the hot summer of 2010. Took that line almost every day to get in and out of town from Osdorfer Strasse. Didn’t know about this railyard though, an incentive to go back and revisit my student days. Thanks for another great video Tim! :)
It's nice when people in charge realise the potential in these sanctuaries! Tim, love your work!
I‘ve been living in Berlin for years and never heard of this park. But I always wondered what that huge red tower was whenever I went past it on an ICE train. Now I know and I will definitely pay a visit to the park soon.
Man, I grew up in Berlin and never heard of that one. Thanks for sharing, Tim!
2:19 Thanks for that musical theme! The nostalgia kicked in hard.
After almost 14 years that we now live in Berlin and drove past it hundreds of times, we finally managed to take a look at the park yesterday. And like you said, just fantastic. Nature and a little German history. Perfect.
ISWYDT with the "Angering the Germans" part. ;)
Wonderful!
Thank you Tim.
Never thought I'd see Tim film my way to work..
Yeah another TT video!!! Happy day.
What an amazing repurposing of a railyard! Thanks for the video, plus all the info on wheelchair accessibility.
Such the linguist Tim! I wish I had your uprising as a kid, it's super hard to learn music and different languages when you get older! Here in Australia we had a few classes on Mandarin but I would of much preferred the Latin variants.
A cunning linguist
Tim studied French at university in Paris.
…..is what your mom calls me lol
as a former train belly tickler, i would have loved if the yard was a forest like that, it would have been so much nicer. instead it was all concrete and steel, the only shade was from the trains, and because they were steel they would radiate heat at you.
"It's not everyday you can walk into an actual train belly tickling trough" - I guarantee that sentence has never been said before
If you ever find yourself in Kalamata in the Peloponnese region of Greece - they also have a railway yard turned into a public park (with loads of trains you climb into)
This reminds me of the time I went to Germany with my mother (It was guided tour to Eastern Europe actually), during the last day of the tour, we were in berlin and we took a taxi to the German Museum of Technology (Deutsches Technikmuseum) Inside was an entire train locomotive shed, complete with a turntable.
Finally we've found a place where Tim can go 'and we're here to see all that!'
Love it!
I went to Berlin last spring, but totally missed this park. It's definitely on the to-do list for next time!
Update: I'm here! It was very cool indeed. No eichhörnchen, though.
Tim, i would watch you narrate your trip to the grocery store. That's how much I love your videos.
Great timing on the upload! I'm on a trip in Berlin, leaving tomorrow, so I can actually visit this one!
I love your videos Tim. Greetings from Massachusetts in the USA. This little park is fascinating for both nature and train lovers. Have you also done a video on the Flughafen Tempelhof park that used to be one of Berlins airports?
English acweorna survived into Middle English before being supplanted by the Anglo French squirrel. The standard German is effectively "squirrelkin", a diminutive of older eichorn "squirrel".
Neat. I've not seen an example as interesting as this, but old military land and old railway yards are often now nature conserves since they provided some rare habitats in areas where possibly there wasn't anything else left. Munich for example has this for old tank driver training grounds (nobody could go there because of ammunition) and old rail-post sorting yards (nobody could there because rails). It's space that's left free of human intervention and now can keep existing as parks.
the slight hesitation on "german war effort" was very amusing
Thank YOU - we'll be in Belin for several day in Oct and this might be gorgeous in autumn!
Thanks for this video. I'm visiting Berlin currently and enjoyed this park today. A really nice location!
Nice place to visit by the looks of it Tim and time to explore other places over a weekend
Fun fact about the german kroegsloch steam engine, theres actually two of them still in service at the tuzla coal mines just shunting coal. Since they have an abundance of coal, its cheaper to have steam engines than diesels.
Train belly tickling trough is perhaps the best phrase I have ever heard
Love the thomas the tank engine theme! You totally got me, I wasn't expecting that. Looks like an epic park.
These are the stories need to be told. Even me as aGerman did not know that much about it. And jut smiled about the "Als die Tiere den Wald verließen" theme. There are hundreds of old factory or train areas where wildlife is thriving in eastern Germany. I have one next to my neighbourhood with jaybirds, martens, hedgehogs, foxes and even raccoons.
Simply wonderful marvelous and neat. Thank You
My absolute favorite place in whole Berlin!!!
The soundtrack was a brilliant choice. Also, I miss being a child ..
we had a very similar abandoned freight yard here in Copenhagen, right next to Central Station, but it was gradually demolished bit by bit since the last steam engine was retired in 1967. Some of it was pulled out in the 1980s to make more space for main line tracks, but much of it remained well into the 1990s, hidden under sand and grass, when it was finally removed and used as storage for various construction materials over the years. Then in recent years they've built highrises on the spot - which are overpriced, ugly, and terrible quality. You know a redevelopment project has gone wrong when people in the area start a petition to have the buildings torn down before they're completed... we do have a couple other yards that sit abandoned and have been reclaimed by nature. On one of them the signals are still powered, and it's really weird seeing the light from the trackside signals through the dense vegetation, but officially it's not decomissioned, it's just not used anymore
I assume you're talking about the "Kaktus Towers". Good god they're hideous. Can't wrap my head around people actually liking their design...
Oh I love the song choice for the train
North of Südkreuz there is another former railyard turned park. It is part of the Berlin Technology Museum, and you can find even more old trains there. Is a bit more expensive though.
Yes, but it's got two huge roundhouses of locomotives stretching back to the 1800s, so it is worth the expense. Plus a magnificent HO gauge layout of the former Anhalter Bahnhof (station) that is almost 100 feet long!
@@zork999 Unfortunatelz the tracks aren|t proportionally accurate as they used standard off the shelf points which have too small a radius....
In Warsaw there is a bit similar thing called Stacja Muzeum, which is the old Warsaw Main station that has been abandoned and turned into a train museum. It has less area and infrastructure than this one, especially after some of the old platforms have been demolished to make place for a new station, but it has way more old steam engines (and not only steam), the old station building and a popular street food market called Night Market is active in the old platforms in the summer evenings from Thursday till Sunday. Actually I think you could quite enjoy the place, though going to Warsaw might be a bit of a trip.
I wish you had told me so a couple of weeks ago, was in Warsaw for a short holiday and things like that are of interest to me.
What a lovely little park, I love reclaimed industry like that.
Fantastic! I feel a need to visit...oh, Niamh is great. Tickling trough...hee, hee.
One of my favourite parks in Berlin
This is so cool. I miss germany. Thanks for sharing these videos so I can vicariously experience these things. Lots of love from Canada
Thnaks for sharing. That said Berlin is not really in my neck of the woods. I live in southern Germany. But I will keep this in mind for my next trip to Berlin.
And btw. your German pronounciation is really good.
Oh, I loved this. Thank you, Tim!
Wow, THE famous Tim Traveller travelled to my neighbourhood. Im honoured! 🙂
"Brown Coal" sounds like "Lignite Coal." The Northern Pacific R.R. was famous for relying on lignite, and as a result, their engines had extra-large fireboxes to burn enough coal to produce as much power as possible. Harder coals produce more heat per ton than lignite.
Hello and thank you, Tim!
This area is also very popular for theatre and concerts during the summer.
Here in NYC there’s an abandoned right of way running approximately SSE from the LIRR main line down to near Rockaway Boulevard and 100th Street. This USED to be the LIRR tracks to Rockaway Beach. Now the A subway line uses part of it swooping down from just east of the aptly named Rockaway Boulevard station and merging onto the old LIRR viaduct under it. While the subway ripped out everything to put in compatible tracks and signaling, north of Rockaway Boulevard was lef to nature, and well it’s kind of a mess.
Two proposals are being considered at various levels of government. One is to clean it up and make it a park like this, just stretched out. The other is to restore it back to some sort of public transport use (some say a busway, others a tram, and others a new LIRR branch. There is the problem that two short sections seem to have been taken over, one has a bunch of school buses parked on it, and the other seems to be in use by a luxury apartment tower for… something. (On Google maps you can see they’ve removed all the trees and plant growth and paved it over.)
I saw the thumbnail. I thought: I am gonna visit that!
Very cool park and video!
Loved the squirrel too! NZ doesn't have them, unfortunately - we missed out there...... :(
Omg the Thomas the train theme song was an unexpected hidden gem! So subtle but definitely there! ❤
Oooh, that Animals of Farthing Wood song brought back some sad memories
Kudos for the _Animals of Farthing Wood_ soundtrack in the background
You should also really visit Berlin-Schöneweide. Its like Tempelhof, but more active, less trees and for the southeast.
Ahhh, Dem ZugBauchkitzelnTrog! Wunderbar!
I love to see places that nature has reclaimed, or is reclaiming. Nice video.
Tim, only reunification made it possible to open the area for the public. Before it belonged to the Deutsche Reichsbahn who operated the rail in both parts of Berlin and the GDR.
DR even ran the S-bahn in West Berlin until 1984 when the BVG bought it out because West Berliners would boycott the mode due to it providing D-marks to the East German Regime
@@erik_griswold
I remember these times very well.
Love to go to Berlin and to see the disused abandoned steam train and railway tracks that is hidden away behind the woods. Very interesting stuff.
Damn you Tim, I was just in Südkreuz two days ago and had no idea. Now I am sad I missed it.
That is just an awesome use of space. And a great example of natural resilience.
Not only my hometown but aspecially my favourite area of the former Anhalter Bahnhof and my daily way wo work ❤❤❤
I deeply appreciate your taste for background music in the steam locomotive scene.
I grew up next to the Puffing Billy Railway in Australia, a narrow gauge, preserved, tourist railway that runs through forest for most of its length. Much of said forests are national parks, but I don't think they have anything quite like this!
A side effect of running through the forest though is all their services are followed 5 mins later by a couple guys on a tiny motorised wagon to check none of the bush caught fire.
3:39 just casually dropping in the “Thomas the Tank Engine” theme song may be my favorite part of this video
a tip for a new video. apparently there are 26-station unused underground rail network stations that where built under the city of Luxemburg in the late 1990s and still unused
"Park-Schein-Automat" is funny for my taste.
Ok that was great. I loved to see preserved Squirrels.... Um train stuff. Cool to see how nature reclaims.
Tim's friends seem so 'cool' - way cooler than my mates!
Berlin Nordbahnhof would be another nice to walk park that was once a train station. Without trains, sadly.
Thanks Tim! I love your videos, I save them until I have a nice cuppa and some time to unwind as it's always so delightful.
Fun opinion, Tim is my favorite explorer named Tim!
Animals of Farthing Wood theme? Nostalgia hit me hard
I've shared this video with my dad who's a train spotter. As I do with all your train themed video's 😉
Encouraged? How cool!!
Thanks Tim. Your videos always make me smile :-)
With red squirrels & a train tickling trough... 😄
I hope "Niamh Explains" becomes a regular feature.
I am pretty sure we aren't the only ones, but I think he just met them there by chance.
The thomas tune, omg