An illustrated review of the railways of Germany in the period immediately following the Second World War. The first half of this magazine-style publication comprises a number of articles looking at how the railways began the transformation from destruction to reconstruction. Topics covered include:
- When the war was over: Impressions from Germany 1945-47
- A Briton in Schleswig-Holstein: Through Northern Germany with Peter Handford in 1945
- The importance of the Rhine bridges
- Chronicle: The most important dates of the post-war period
- A new beginning: What shaped Germany and its railways at the end of the war
- Early long-distance traffic with train examples from 1945/46
- Military traffic for the Allied occupying powers
- Electric railway operations in Germany
- Facts and figures: The Reichsbahn of the occupation zones in numbers
The second half of the book maintains the theme of how Germany’s railways recovered after the war, but moves on futher in time to look at some later success stories, combined with anecdotes of what it was like to work on the railway at that time. Topics in this section include:
- The V 60 Locomotive of the Bundesbahn
- Take the G 12 to Milano: What it meant to drive from Eisenach to the restricted area in the late 1950s and early 1960s
- All-rounder in the Altmark: The Oebisfelder Class 41 steam locomotives
- "Murder she said": Miss Marple and the Railways
- A visit to Bremerhaven in 1968
All of the articles are well illustrated, mainly in black & white, with some colour material where available. Maps, tabulated data and period reproductions are also included as appropriate. Also comes with a folded poster enclosed, showing a map of Germany’s railways in 1948. German text. 98 pages.