Introduction
An Almost Forgotten Railway
The front page of the opening programme, published in 1946.
Repro: Soldier Magazine.
To get a bigger view, please click on the photo. |  | Early
last year, a couple of photos appeared in a German Railway Forum,
published by a New Zealand Railway fan, which he asked to be located. I
was pleasantly surprised to see photos of my home town Lage (Lippe) and
Detmold, taken shortly after WWII. I contacted the owner of the
photos—Mr.
John Brouwer—and asked for the circumstances under which the photos were taken. He wrote
back, that he got the photos of a deceased friend who served in Germany
after WWII. Mr. Brouwer kindly sent me the photos as scans. I merged
them into my collection, but was not able to figure out closer facts
about them.
Recently
I received an e-mail from the English Railway Fan David Carpenter
from Cornwall. He had noticed me because of my membership in the
"Railways of Germany" Forum.
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He had seen my home town in my forum profile and asked me, whether I had
heard anything about the "Detmold Military Railway". That was totally
new to me, so I requested further information. And what he sent
afterwards stunned me. David sent me documents and magazine articles
that proved, that the Rhine Army ran the branchline from Herford to
Altenbeken for training purposes right after the war. That was
something that I've never had heard before, and even old German railway
men I spoke to couldn't remember. Suddenly the old New Zealand photos
flashed in my mind again and I did some Internet research. There you
are—the photographer of the NZ photos was a former staff member of the
DMR! So the origin of the photos could be clarified due to the help of
railway fans from all over the world!
David arbitrated contact to Wolfgang Ewers of Bad Driburg, Germany, who
researches on the subject for many years now. He gave me various pieces
for publishing on this website.
Fortunately Mr. Carpenter granted permission to use his documents for
my website as well as the publisher of the Soldier Magazine, which has
published the DMR article in 1946. So I hope to prevent the memory of
this very interesting and long forgotten issue with these pages.
However,
the branchline from Herford to Altenbeken still exists — meanwhile
electrified —, even though a few of the stations such as Sylbach,
Nienhagen and Leopoldstal are about to be dismantled. But the Detmold
Military Railway is in danger to be forgotten. This page is dedicated
to this very special railway and the men who served in it, both German
and British.
Any contribution is most welcome
I am still collecting facts and documents regarding the DMR. If you like to support my efforts, please use my Mailform to get in contact with me.
And a personal note in the end:
This is a non-profit, private website, and I write it all for myself.
So please be patient with my funny English! Please send me corrections
to help me improving this presentation.
Guestbook closed
Unfortunately I had to disable my guestbook, because I've had several spam attacks every day and I'm sick and tired of cleaning my guestbook twice a day. I am sorry for that. For any messages or notes please feel free to use the mailform.
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