Hi,

I was in Germany and Denmark to visit adult daughters in November 2018.
I did not purposefully spend time chasing trains, but I took opportunity to photograph them when presented.

This is one of them, and it interests me because Maerklin do good models of era VI.
I have no knowledge of the departure point or destination of this train.
But I do have my suspicions. It was heading east through Heidelberg Hbf 14/11/2018 on what appears to be a heavily used line for freight down through Heilbronn.
And I guess that bypasses the congested urbations of Mannheim etc.

From what I read of the available models, it is likely a petroleum products train. On the day, I thought it may have even been wine.
The locomotive is 187 507-9 in silver paint with 3 large red dots at one end, a Bombardier TRAXX in the colours of leasing company AKIEM.
AKIEM own 440 locomotives throughout Europe and concentrate on transport operation, maintenance and logistics support for their customers.
This is one of the 187 that does NOT have the so-called Advertising Flex Panels on the side.
Maerklin do models of the 187 such as the 36630 and 36631 and a Swiss version without the Flex panels 36635.



Of the train I counted 23 tank cars of the following brands:
11 x Ermewa grey with red lettering
5 x Wascosa blue with orange end paint
4 x GATX dark grey with small lettering
1 x GATX light grey with large black letters
2 x unidentified blue/grey (possible "rail ... " lettering).

I can identify the possible reasonably equivalent models:
Ermewa Maerklin 46557, 47540 (2019) Trix 24215 (2019) - however the real ones have only one central boiler band, otherwise smooth sided.
Wascosa Piko 54758 or 58962 (2019)
GATX small letters Maerklin 00720 series, 47542 (2019) Trix 24217 (2019)
GATX large dark lettering Trix 24213

Both Piko and Maerklin models have 6 boiler bands, which do not strictly match those on the train ...
The tank cars are a modern variation as used in epoch VI and as described by Piko thus:
***Pressure variant of the creak-tank wagon***.
At the beginning of the nineties, the first tank trucks were built with a so-called "kink boiler".
The boiler was designed in such a way that the two boiler halves incline towards the middle by 3° each.
Therefore, the boiler contents, mainly mineral oil products, flows off almost completely without further aids.
Because the lightweight steel-built vehicles are capable of higher speeds, they were soon sourced from other companies throughout Europe.
These wagons can be found as P (= private) cars in the inventory of all European railway companies.

Germany .... such an interesting country .... such interesting railroad infrastructure and operation.

And here is a further picture of the train behind the locomotive - the giant black GATX lettering is the 5th car in this photo:


Kimball

Edited by user 15 April 2019 05:27:57(UTC)  | Reason: added another pic and clarified AKIEM

Hello Kimball,

Beautifully taken picture, love the composition as you have everything just perfect!

Regards,

Michel