Day 19 Friday 19th June 2009 Berlin to Cologne

Day 19 Friday 19th June 2009 Berlin to Köln by ICE.
We could look out of our 1st floor hotel room and look up at the station where we would catch our Inter City Express to Cologne. From the hotel reception we walked less than100 meters through a shopping mall to the escalator which elevated us to platform six. We left Berlin Ostbahnhof on time at 9:38am; we had two more stops in Berlin, Berlin HBF and Berlin Spandau before speeding off for 168 kilometres to our next stop, Wolfsburg where the beautifully landscaped Volkswagen manufacturing plant is. Every now and then the now common place wind generators where churning out power for the nation; they were all on flat land with some right alongside the track. Although we have seen wheat fields all over England and Europe in the last six weeks, today is the first day we have seen a field with the golden tinge of a ripening crop. At Wuppertal, one stop before Cologne we observed an unusual mode of public transport; a suspended two carriage railcar. As we could only catch a fleeting glimpse of it Alan offered to arrange a trip back to go for a ride. It was only a 23 minute ride and 46km on the ICE and our Euro rail passes covered the cost. Its track length is 13.3 km which it traverses in 30 minutes; for the first 4.6km it passes along a street over cars and pedestrians at a height of 8 meters above the ground. Each carriage is suspended by two large iron arms each attached to a single iron wheel, resting on a rail above the supporting structure; the wheel has a motor attachment which provides traction for the carriage. The rest of the route is over a winding stream edged with trees; quite pretty. It was built in the late 1890s, has 20 stops, a cruising speed of 26.6kmph, each of the two carriage trains can carry 3429 seated passengers covers 245 million km per year and 82,000 passengers per working day. We arrived back at Cologne at 6:40pm; I bought some fish and chips which Fay and I enjoyed at the hotel. It was not enough so I ventured out again and found a food market where I was able to buy some lovely chocolate mousse and a jar of apricots in juice.
Photos:- 1. Train track over river.
2. Train track over road.
3 Suspending wheel and arm.