Pan Up
Anyone with a professional interest in public transport must have been to Karlsruhe in Germany, or at least heard of it. It is usually referred to as ‘well they do it in Karlsruhe’: the city is the world capital of tram-train. There is a clue in that only a place that very few could place on a map is always the example. There are others, but not that many and none on the same scale.
As you would expect I have been on the Karlsruhe system, but more recently I tried the one in Nordhausen, as I happened to be there on a narrow gauge steam bash with the Railway Touring Company (it was great thanks, but I can’t write it up in Modern Railways, which irritatingly has a ‘no kettles’ rule). In the company of another anorak I sampled the tram-train to the Krankenhaus and back to the Hauptbahnhof, accompanied by a very large box containing a diesel engine, for this is the Department for Transport’s dream, a bi-mode tram-train.
‘We should try it on diesel’ Anorak said. ‘How far is the next stop?’ I asked. ‘It can’t be far – it’s a tram,’ he says, so off we went, leaving our steam special behind. We pressed the button to a merry ‘ding’, next stop requested. After a while I’m sure I noticed Michael Portillo …
