Sunday 30th April 2017 sees two interesting events south-east of Frankfurt am Main, the “Tag der offenen Tür” (open day) at Miltenberg and the “Tag des offenen Eisenbahnmuseums” (railway museum open day) at Amorbach. The Westfrankenbahn are advertising additional passenger trains, with class 212 (V100) and class 218 (V160) diesel-hydraulic locomotives as the motive power, to link the two and also run along the scenic route hugging the Main river as far east as Wertheim.
Normal tickets (for example the Bayern-Ticket) will be valid for travel on these trains, alternatively single trip tickets will be available for €3.30 (regardless of length of travel on each train). Great value for an interesting day out.
The 218 in question will be MTU4000-engined 218460, recently repainted into “ozeanblau-beige” livery and named “Conny”, of the Westfrankenbahn (external link to photo here). The loco has been well-travelled recently – spending a week (between 30th January and 7th February) hauling peak-time commuter trains out of Frankfurt am Main to cover for a lack of class 642 DMUs; and then six weeks (1st March to 18th April) off Mühldorf, working everything from local passenger trains to Eurocity expresses, this time covering for a temporary shortage of 218s there.
The 212 will be 212372, belonging to the DB Museum (external link to photo here).
The two locos will sandwich three carriages – a Bm, an Abn and another Bm.
218460 has now been repainted into a heritage livery, but here it is in service days at Illertissen, 25/08/08. (JW)
In common with previous events at Miltenberg, cab rides in a Voith Gravita class 261 centre-cab 1,600hp diesel loco will be available from Gleis 9 at Miltenberg. Previous locos to have performed such duties have included 261039 in 2014 and 261031 in 2016.
The exhibition at Miltenberg will see three electric locos on display, all normally to be found at the DB Museum at Koblenz. These are of class 103 (103113 – retired from main line service only last month), class 110 (110152) and class 141 (E41001).
Of further interest is that the railway museum at Amorbach contains four carriages and the “Lindenberg-Lok”, 218212, on static display. Link to photo of 218212 in situ.
A link to the timetable in PDF form on the Westfrankenbahn website can be found here. The diagram for the diesel-hauled train covers 242 miles (389 km) through the day and is as follows:-
RE23471 09:15 Miltenberg – Wertheim 09:53
RE23470 10:02 Wertheim – Amorbach 10:51
RE23473 11:01 Amorbach – Wertheim 11:53
RE23472 12:02 Wertheim – Amorbach 12:51
RE23475 13:01 Amorbach – Wertheim 13:53
RE23474 14:02 Wertheim – Amorbach 14:51
RE23477 15:01 Amorbach – Wertheim 15:53
RE23476 16:02 Wertheim – Amorbach 16:51
RE23479 17:01 Amorbach – Wertheim 17:53
RE23478 18:02 Wertheim – Miltenberg 18:36
These are always great events, so I’d really recommend you pop along if you are in Germany that weekend!
Many thanks to the DB Regio AG for their assistance with info for this article.
European Traction 
