University Train

Two weeks ago I went back to Aachen, still one of my favourite towns in Germany. And while there I took a detour to Simpelveld (Netherlands) to visit local museum railway ZLSM, which were having their annual steam train days, with lots of events and lots of trains, both ones from ZLSM and guests from elsewhere.

One of these guests is this little industrial switcher known as "Anna" or more technically "IFS 3". You rarely see it outside, but for five years it used to the steam locomotive stationed most closely to where I lived, because it actually belongs to the university where I studied. Specifically it belongs to the RWTH Aachen's institute for rail vehicles (IFS) and is used there to train engineering students. I honestly have no idea whether that training goes beyond, "look at our steam engine, isn't it cool!?", but it's nice to see tradition preserved in that area.

This institute and its professor have connections to the ZLSM, since it's easily the closest museum railroad, and so every once in a while this little locomotive gets to go to Simpelveld and run trains. Here it's on the line Simpelveld-Vetschau, the shortest of those operated by ZLSM, but the only international one, since Vetschau is in Germany. The end of the line in Vetschau (which belongs to Aachen) has no switches or other means for a locomotive to run around the train, so trains are either run with old rail buses or with one locomotive at either end - or, at times, both at the same time. Here the other, Germany-facing end of the train is brought up by a dutch class 2200 diesel locomotive in classic paint scheme.