Crossings gone and no need for the Kursbuch

Berlin rail station, opened in 2006, is
on the site of the old Lehrter bahnhof.

In the mid 1980s I lived in Berlin, Moabit to be exact. It was a 15 to 20 minute walk to West Berlin's main rail station at Zoologischer Garten. It must have been one of Germany's most run-down stations, at least stations served by Deutsche Bundesbahn, now called Deutsche Bahn. Clever Germans, they managed to keep the DB brand. Ironically the former communist GDR continued to call their railway Deutsche Reichsbahn, DR, German Kingdom Railways.

DB was not allowed bring its ICs or ICEs into West Berlin. Nor were they permitted to haul their trains with DB locomotives. All trains in and out of Berlin were pulled by Deutsche Reichsbahn locomotives. Trains from and to West Berlin from the Federal Republic had to have their locos changed on the German German border. Marienborn/Helmstedt, Gerstungen/Bebra, Probtzella/Ludwigstadt, Schwanheide/Buechen are those rail crossings on the inner German border that will be etched in my memory for ever.

Trains could be held at these crossings for long periods of time and if the two Germanys were in dispute then no-one was in a hurry to give the train clearance.

And the loco change happened before the train arrived in the station. That change happened in no-man's land.

The barriers, the Vopos in their green uniforms, jackboots and peaked caps. And then the portable tray/bag they carried with all their official documents as they moved from passenger to passenger. That very special East German look to make sure you were the person whose picture was on the passport. The loud speakers welcoming rail passengers 'auf dem Territorium der Deutschen Demokratischen Republik'.

It's all gone. Marienborn, all of them gone. And Friedrichstrasse, sanitised beyond belief.

For years and years one of the last things I did when leaving Germany was to buy that huge magic book, Das Kursbuch - the complete rail timetable for all DB traffic, national and international. Indeed, on one occasion a DR loco driver gave me a DR Kursbuch, which I still proudly possess. And probably never do it again; travelled from Hamburg Altona to Dortmund in an ICE loco on a quiet Sunday morning.

The GDR is gone and all the information that was in that Kursbuch, which I spent hours upon hours reading and studying is no longer needed, maybe not even available. It can all be checked on the DB app.

Right now I can see that ICE 848 is due to leave Berlin Hauptbahnhof, a spectacular building, at 13.35 and will arrive at Frankfurt-am-Main Airport in four hours 35 minutes. Just one change at Frankfurt-am-Main HBF.

That's life.