Dresden Park Railway

About this place

The line opened on the first of June nineteen fifty as a children's railway of the kind that spread across the eastern bloc. The gauge is only three hundred and eighty-one millimetres and the route is a loop of five and a half kilometres running inside the Grosser Garten, calling at five stations: the main station by Strassburger Platz, the zoo, the Carolasee, Karcherallee and the Palaisteich. The motive power is half the pleasure. Two steam locomotives built in nineteen twenty-five, named Lisa and Moritz, work alongside battery-electric machines from nineteen sixty-two and nineteen eighty-two. More striking is who runs the railway: most of the operating staff are children and teenagers from about the fourth or fifth school year, who train through the winter and then volunteer roughly one day a week as ticket clerks, signallers, platform staff and guards. A full circuit takes about thirty minutes and is the easiest way to cross the Grosser Garten with tired children in tow. The season runs from April to October. The railway is closed Monday and Tuesday, runs Wednesday to Friday from early afternoon, and from ten in the morning on Saturdays, Sundays and public holidays. Steam does not run every operating day, so do not promise a child a steam engine before checking the day's roster.