Tiny Trains: Neat Narrow-Gauge Rail Connects German Island to Mainland | Hacker News Reader

Tiny Trains: Neat Narrow-Gauge Rail Connects German Island to Mainland

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256 pointsmisnamed93 comments

The neatest part of this article was the fact that these trains used to operate by sail. It's a strange image to imagine but it makes a lot of sense for an incredibly windy area with rails.

My uncle is actually a tiny train enthusiast. He bought really old schematics for a full-size steam powered locomotive and scaled them down, machining every little piece from blocks of metal.

He has been working on it for 20+ years; he originally planned for his grandchildren to get to play with it but they're all adults now. Maybe it will be ready in time for his great grandchildren.

To me, what's fascinating is the way it's operated - families have rails running to their personal garages, and own their own individual wagons.

NSTAAF talks about sail trains on

https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/flavio-briatore-3/no-such-t...

(@14minutes)

For those like me who tried to google this, the term of art is "sail bogey." "sail train" gets you a bunch of travel agencies.

Good tip!

There's a wiki page on this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sail_bogey

I would love to see some pictures of this, any chance he would share some?

My uncle is on the other side of the country, and is about as old school as the steam locomotive he's building. So unfortunately I'd have to call him, convince him to take photos (with film), develop them, and (snail) mail them to me.

What is it about guys and trains? I reflexively upvoted before even reading the article, and after reading the article, I realize it is a pretty standard narrow gauge railroad. Don’t care! Would vote again if I could!

I think it's nerds and trains, rather than guys and trains. I know at least one woman who is pretty excited about trains too, and she is a colossal dork.

EDIT: and what it is about nerds and trains is that trains are wicked sweet.

>I think it's nerds and trains, rather than guys and trains. I know at least one woman who is pretty excited about trains too, and she is a colossal dork.

>EDIT: and what it is about nerds and trains is that trains are wicked sweet.

I do believe you've hit the nail on the head with that question. Or, in this case, the rail.

You mean the railspike?

Well put :)

I went to several remote places just to ride a weird train. For instance the Pilatus Bahn in Switzerland is a must-see. Or "Le train à vapeur de la baie de Somme". If it's a steam locomotive, its appeal is greater; if it's ancient and weird, the draw is indomitable.

You'll have to visit New Hampshire, USA. They have the first mountain-climbing cog railway. It's the second steepest. Some of the trains still burn coal, including one built in 1875.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mount_Washington_Cog_Railway

The question is why is the connection between men and trains relatively strong? OP never implied liking trains was restricted to men.

Rephrasing to "nerds" doesn't change anything.

Trains are a complicated problem space where a lot of impressive large-scale and small-scale engineering has been done over the course more than a century, but where you can still explain how stuff actually works at the layperson level. On top of that a fair amount of laypeople will interact with and even depend on a train on a fairly regular basis, in a way that is not necessarily true of other problem spaces; railroads have been romanticized in media for decades in a way that few other technologies have been.

> railroads have been romanticized in media for decades in a way that few other technologies have been.

Cars, space travel, boats, aircraft, all manner of transportation has been romanticized as much or even more than trains.

And all of those also have a lot of nerds who like those things.

Except for cars, those who obsess about cars are considered the antithesis of a nerd.

Since when? I work at a games studio, you couldn't imagine more dorky people than those who work here, and yet there's several serious petrolheads here, we go to car meets, one dude rents a barn to keep all of his rare US-imports and to work on them in his spare time.....

I don't understand(and rather dislike) the notion that if you are a nerd/into computers, you have to automatically dislike cars.

Wrong, anybody who obsesses about anything is a nerd by definition.

Obsession about muscle buildup strategies at the gym has rarely been associated with rhe term “nerd“. Those people can be quite nerdy, and even connect well with regular nerds if they find common ground, but isn't the mainstream accepted term “jocks“?

Depends on which problem space around cars we're talking about. Are we talking about the vehicles themselves? Then those aren't referred to by nerds in colloquial usage.

That being said, there are a lot of nerds who obsess about things like highway systems, road planning and the like. There's also the electric car space, the AV space, etc.

Absolutely true: the first hackers community literally grew around model trains.

https://www.wired.com/2014/11/the-tech-model-railroad-club/

Trains are like an information network you can see in action.

For me it's this. I am actually pretty indifferent to trains. But i am fascinated by railways.

Yes, this. I was really into model railroading when I was a child, and had a faily elaborate layout in the attic. What appealed to me the most, I think, was being able to sit at the controls, flipping switches on a big control panel, and manipulate the locomotives and switches way over in the next "town" (on the other side of the room).

Years later, when I first started using the internet, I found myself sitting in Atlanta, editing a text file on a server in California. And I immediately recognized that same sensation, of "control from a distance." And, well... here I am.

Yeah, I was going to say. I know two women who are really into trains. One is my wife, who was devastated at the news that her father, who is an engineer, was not 'that' kind of engineer. The other is the office manager at my former workplace, whose garage was like a magical model train emporium, much to her husband's chagrin. Her husband was a salesperson, she was a total geek.

Trains (toy) were my first conceptual introduction to programming.

The pieces of track are the instruction set. The layout is the program. Running the train is the execution.

I don't think this is restricted to the male population tbh

OP never implied was.

shh

Totally true! Something about trains of pretty much all kinds. Must be something genetic :D

I don't understand either how this got to the top of hn. I recently spent a weekend on the peninsula of Nordstrand and didn't even realize this was there... and it's nothing special in that area really. E.g. Sylt is connected to the mainland via a car train which I found much more exciting when I was younger (https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autozugverkehr_Nieb%C3%BCll%E2...) [german]

Could it be German and trains? I haven't known a country that is so into trains besides Germany. Actually, engineering in general is pretty high all the German guy's interest.

Britain as well, we love trains.

Japenese, Swiss

I would say that the Japanese are the most "into" trains by a fairly wide margin. They permeate everyday life and popular culture there in a way which is hard to appreciate unless you actually go there. The Yamanote line is probably the most romanticised railway line in the world, appearing in countless shows, both animated and live action, and Shinjuku station is the most popular transport hub in the world, of any type, by far. It has over 200 exits (!) and is arguably the heart of Tokyo.

So yeah. Germans love trains, it's true. Japanese love trains and do so in that overboard way which is at once both cool and kind of scary...

Which begs the question, could train obsession be a substitute for not obsessing about military hardware?

On the other hand, I don't know enough about Japan, are they really obsessed about trains or do they just happen to be really really good at trains and use them a lot? They might be just pragmatic about them (quite the opposite of obsessed) and a high presence in daily life would naturally be reflected in pop culture.

Coincidentally, Germany also has the world's largest model train exhibit, which even has a fully functional airport (with functional departure board, of course) and a full day/night cycle. You can watch a short tour of it at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACkmg3Y64_s

I love miniature train exhibits - and Miniatur Wunderland looks incredible.

Um .. most of Europe? Australians? Melbourne has the largest tram system in the world, and every over half the capitols (all except Hobart, ACT and Darwin) have train networks of varying sizes.

As others mentioned, the Japanese have insanely popular train networks, and the Swiss have incredibly conveniently train networks despite their smaller cities. I think both countries have Germany beat. :)

Switzerland, which has one if not the most dense rail networks in the world at 126 m per km².

>Each island house has its own wagon — some used to be wind-powered, using sails, but today they run on diesel.

Is that pretty standard?

It's a unique situation in Germany, and one that works for a small community where everyone knows everyone else.

The cars are not only privately owned, but handmade with wood and motorcycle parts.

There are a couple of safety rules, which are enforced by a permit you get from the mayor of the Hallig (island), and if you break the rules too often, it gets revoked. Which has happened only one time so far, apparently.

With the ones powered by sails, it sounded to me like something out of a Studio Ghibli film.

Could similar reasons br behind why men seem to love trains at a much higher rate than women do and also why men are over-represented in software development?

I'm german but I've never ever heard of neither the island, nor the trains. How remarkable!

Maybe it's because you live in a forest! ;-)

Now, this comment is proof that Germans can have a sense of humour.

Yes, but only on Thursday evenings!

Same here, but I have to admit I also from the Odenwald :D

"German" und "English" usw. immer groß schreiben. FYI.

Is it different in German? Just curious.

Yes, all nouns are capitalized.

More to the point, though, adjectival forms of proper nouns are not. (a German man = ein deutscher Mann)

German north is really very different from German south.

Yeah... someone said the other day that if they had divided Germany into south/north instead of east/west, there would have not been a reunion. Maybe that’s true

I've heard it commonly said in Austria: in Bavaria, you have left Austria, but you're not yet in Germany...

I wonder what they meant by that. I've heard that Bavaria is the most German state of Germany.

It’s similar to Texas. Quite German, but then again some people dream to be independent. It is also called “Freistaat Bayern”, “Free state of Bavaria”

Not as much if you compare urban to urban parts and rural to rural ones. Frisian island folk and the inhabitants of remote Alpine valleys have more in common with each other than both do with Hamburg or Stuttgart.

They would never admit that

Though they may have some difficulty understanding each other, the dialects are so significantly different.

You totally need to go visit it now. :)

Private train cars are the most interesting part. I wonder how signaling works? Does each house/"station" have its own fork in the tracks for getting their private train car home?

There are only a few houses (approx 15 residents) on the island.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lüttmoorsiel-Nordstrandischm... has a schematic of the track.

Looking at the map, it seems there are only two endpoints to the line on the island.

On the other hand, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nordstrandischmoor claims there are only 4 households on the island, so even assuming each has its separate fork, “each house” isn’t that much.

I wonder what system they have to prevent the two locomotives from meeting each other half-way through and to get one of the locomotives to a home when needed.

I've seen a couple of documentaries about how the inhabitants use that system. Though I forgot wether they have some signaling system, they do have passing loops (which they operate by driving there, getting out and manually perform the switch).

Also since the area is 100% flat eyesight should be enough.

Even without passing loops you could do it by simply swapping trains when you meet.

They use a marker in between the runarounds, and whoever reaches it first can pass while the other car needs to turn back.

There is no signalling, except for one marker in the middle of the longest stretch of single track rail between turnouts. Whoever reaches it first can continue, the other party has to go back. Though apparently, you can see whether the other car will be first, and wait.

Also, you don't really need forks, because are light enough to be lifted off the tracks. Some pull them up on special car trailers.

While in Japan last summer, we rode the Kurobe Gorge Railway deep into the Japanese Alps. It's a 762 mm narrow gauge railway, originally build as industrial railway for dam construction, but now open to the public. It goes through 42 tunnels and on the crazy steep sides of the deep V shaped Kurobe Gorge. It was a really nice trip - breathtaking views & nice outdoor hot springs to bathe in. :)

Some links: http://www.kurotetu.co.jp/en/railway/index.html https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eeo7Qxw88P4

I was envisioning a little village of houses with trains, but peeking from the satellites, it looks like one fork and only one guesthouse has rail service (Familie Siefert - Hallig Nordstrandischmoor). There seem to be a couple of guesthouses, a "Glockenturm" which is a school/church servicing three students, and one private house on the island.

There are a couple of significant and actually, physically, miniature 15" gauge steam railways in the UK. I say a couple because the Ravenglass and Eskdale Railway (Cumbria) and the Romney Hythe and Dymchurch Railway (Kent) are the preeminent ones.

They both served as genuine forms of transport at various points in their histories.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romney,_Hythe_and_Dymchurch_Ra...

North Wales has several ~2 foot gauge steam railways as well, though they're not exactly "miniature."

Ffestiniog Railway from Blaenau Ffestiniog to Porthmadog, and Welsh Highland Railway from Porthmadog to Caernarfon: http://www.festrail.co.uk/

Talyllyn Railway from Tywyn Wharf to Nant Gwernol: https://www.talyllyn.co.uk/

By miniature I mainly mean that the locos look like scale models of mainline steam locomotives:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Greenly

I'm always amazed that the Ffestiniog engines were built just around the corner from where I live at the Hatcham Iron Works on Pomeroy street in New Cross, London. It seems unbelievable that you would setup a locomotive works so near to central London.

https://www.festipedia.org.uk/wiki/England_Engines

Can't this inspire the future of automated driving? Paint strips on the freeway optimized for visual-recognition systems, to serve as super cheap railway tracks. Super cheap because painted strips are far cheaper than laying tracks, and they would lower the cost of the visual recognition systems in cars. These automated driving sections would satisfy my principal pain point with driving, which is long commutes or drives on the freeway.

MINITRAM!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfIZOElSgOE

(attention UK nerds of a certain age: this opens with the brilliant late '80s Tomorrow's World theme - despite the fact that this segment was on Tomorrow's World in 2003!)

EDIT: Oh, apparently they switched back to that version in 2002. Good.

They tried something like this in the 90s.

https://www.nytimes.com/1996/09/01/automobiles/a-smart-road-...

Existing lane markings serve the same purpose, just with a slight offset. They're actually a lot better because there are usually two. But of course driving is a lot more complicated than just staying in your lane.

This reminds me of Austria's Reisseck-Hoehenbahn which sadly closed down a few years ago. It was a 600mm narrow gauge train high up in the mountains originally used for the construction of a power plant. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7XrOfSNdO4

Thank you. A remarkably clear youtube video. I wonder what kind of camera/lens was used.

This reminds me of the Ooty toy train. Despite the name, it's not a toy, but a meter gauge train that goes between the plains and the hill station of Ooty / Udhagamandalam, in Tamil Nadu, a state in South India. Moves quite slowly. Good fun riding it. I've been on it years ago.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nilgiri_Mountain_Railway

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rack_railway

Images of it:

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=ooty+toy+train+images

There are several like it in India. Here are a few others I enjoyed very much:

Neral -> Matheran.

Kalka -> Shimla.

Siliguri -> Darjeeling

Neat, didn't know of those, thanks.

You can ride an underground tiny train in London -- what used to be used for postal mail delivery (Mail Rail)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCsKUNIspW8

Mildly related: The bus replacement rail service - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WHmETKW72E

There's a rather good documentary about it here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3XI-4wfYxI (in German, unfortunately), for anyone interested in how it operates.

Hey! With something (modernized) like that, you could ride in the suburbs to mass transit ... and leave the car at home.

They look ready to fall over.

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