Take me far away from here...

...


I'd normally leave this blank, if it weren't for the fact that some people might find the rolling stock interesting, as well as the feeling I tried to convey with these pics.

Railfans know these commuter carriages as "Silberlinge", silverlings, built from 1961 until 1980. Even though they are now red, and were also mint-green once, their original livery consisted of polished stainless steel. The standard livery for all regional carriages and all engines today is "verkehrsrot", which would translate into traffic-red. Here you can see an original silverling in the middle, mint-green on the right, and traffic-red on the left. For some reason, half of the windows were changed upon modernisation. Originally, all of them could be opened. I somehow like the original livery, as everything is bloody red nowadays...

Below the window of the left carriage, you can spot the crest of North Rhine-Westphalia, the Federal State of Germany that I live in.

For some moody winter shots with silverling trains and class 141 and 110 engines (and a 140 as guest appearance) check out this topic in a German railroad forum. Oh, the good old livery of the engines, fascinating topic. Dark green used to represent freight and regional engines with top speeds below 130km/h, such as the 141 with 120km/h. The dark blue was for the express and passenger train engines with speeds above 130km/h, such as the 110, but then oceanic blue-beige was used for all engines starting 1974, so there was no more differentiation by colour.

At first, the 141, of which I don't have any pics, was almost exclusively used to pull silverling trains, and was replaced by the 110 after being taken out of service, which wasn't too young at that time either. So after they were slowly phased out as well, the 111 came along, which is also the tug on this train. If you're lucky, you might spot a silverling (or redling if you will) train with a good old "Bügelfalte" 110...

I hope you've enjoyed the pic and the commentary