Today (and yesterday, but I didn't know about it then) there was a steam festival on the Millionlijn, a preserved steam railway in the south-east Netherlands, about twenty minutes from me. In the soon two years I've been here, I've only visited the line once, when nothing interesting was to be seen (yes, I know, I suck), so I used this chance to see it live.

The two main steam locomotives of this dutch line are not, as you'd expect, dutch, but instead swedish. The SJ Class B, also called Littera B (no idea what that means) are 2’C (4-6-0) locomotives for all kind of service, and an evolution of an earlier Atlantic (2’B1’ or 4-4-2) type which is logically called A. I guess most of us central and western europeans will agree that this kind of locomotive looks a little odd, except the british who were to the Nene Valley Railroad, which has one of them as well, of course. The two owned by ZLSM (Zuid-Limburgse Stoomtrein Maatschappij, I guess that translates two Souther Limburg Steam Train Club), who owns and operates this line, are the 1220 in blue, and the 1289, which is green. Here, the green one leaves with a train towards Kerkrade Centrum.

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