Final Return Home

I thought I'd post a pic where the entire scrap train is visible, seven class 140 locos and one class 139, parked on one of Opladen's now redundant tracks.

Why the title? Well, almost all of these locomotives had the reporting mark KOPLX printed on their sides. K stands for Köln, the Cologne area, X tells you that it's an "Ausbesserungswerk", a repair workshop, and OPL? Why it's Leverkusen-Opladen! Just behind all those trees on the right side of the tracks lays one of Germany's largest locomotive repair facilities, the Ausbesserungswerk Opladen, closed down in 2003, amids great protests and hunger strikes.

It was a highly controversial topic, as the workshop was rather profitable, and private investors showed interest in keeping it open. Even Bombardier offered to buy it, but the DB remained stubborn. Some say that they were scared of independent workshops that also offer services to private railroads that compete with them. Interestingly, one can see DB repairing locos of private railroads nowadays, showing that their actions were not just harmful, but also unlogical.

Back in the day, such a line of locos was obviously waiting to be towed into the workshop for general overhauls, repairs and inspections. These here may have returned home, but they'll leave the mainline towards the other side, towards the scrapyard everyone now knows as the Bender. This is quite a sad place for a railfan, but nowhere else can you get closer to the locos than here, nowhere else can you see so many of them together, to conserve the sight just before it's gone...