TICKET TO RIDE
The Railways Of Germany
Part 3

In TTR25, we concluded our tour of the Ruhr at Wuppertal, TTR27 picks up the story and heads south, but our journey starts at Aachen - while within the Netherlands, we view the freight line in from Belgium! Then it's on to Düren for a look at the work in progress on the NBS to Cologne. Around Düren, we have time to have a look at the brown coal trains of RHEINBRAUN on their 300km network. Krefeld has a superb tram system and we ride the fast tram to Düsseldorf.

Düsseldorf is the business city of the Niederrhein. It's busy with rail activity 24/7! It also has an interesting surface tramway and at Neuss, on the opposite side of the Rhine, a port. Heading south we visit Cologne and look at the splendid Hbf and the two bridges that "control" rail traffic transiting this magnificent city, take a ride on the tramway to Bonn to see the Südbrücke.

We visit Deutz and then look at the implications of the new NBS. We head south following the NBS and see a new ICE3 unit on a test run.

The two classic routes are not forgotten; we spend time around Bonn see the HGK at work and see how the OAO shares track with the metro. This is Bayer country, and we have a chance to view this major of the chemical industry at work at some their plants.

There's lots of freight down both banks of the Rhine and we can sit back and enjoy the spectacle from the heights of the Drachenfels, and at Koblenz from the castle that overlooks the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel. Luck was on our side as south of Koblenz the ICE/EC/IC services to Frankfurt were being diverted down the right (freight) bank. This gives us the opportunity to watch a stream of trains of all types transiting Rüdesheim!

Back north we are the guests of P&O who have a new home at Logport, the 250 hectare site of a former steel works that is being transformed into a major "tri-modal" logistics hub. We get to grips with 21st Century transport and watch P&O unloading Nordwaggons of toilet tissue from Italy!

Filmed from,: lineside, boat, train and air- narrated by Phyllis Watts.

DVD Info

Region: 0
Running Time: 90 minutes