Primarily though this post is about providing a Table of Contents of my train adventures - so I'll do my talking summary at the bottom.
Excursion Trains
35 1097 Dresden-Nossen-Dresden, Germany (April 2015)
03 2155 Berlin-Wolsztyn-Berlin, Germany and Poland (April 2017)
Berlin U-Bahn Cabrio Excursion, Berlin, Germany (May 2017)
Portugal
CP 0186 Regua-Tua-Regua, Portugal (October 2017)
Sweden
Ra 846 Gavle-Uppsala, Sweden (May 2015)
United Kingdom
60009 "Union of South Africa" London-Lincoln-London, UK (December 2014)
46233 "Duchess of Sutherland" London-Carlisle-Settle-London, UK (January 2015)
45407 Jacobite Fort William-Mallaig-Fort William, UK (August 2015)
Metropolitan No.1 & L 150/5521 Harrow on the Hill-Chesham-Watford-Harrow on the Hill, UK September 2015)
60103 "Flying Scotsman" London-Oxford-Didcot-London, UK (June 2018)
Heritage Railways
Puffing Billy Railway, Melbourne, Australia (November 2014)
Steamranger Cockle Train, Victor Harbor, Australia (December 2016)
Yarra Valley Railway, Healesville, Australia (November 2014)
Germany
Harz Schmalspurbahn, Harz, Germany (December 2014)
Harz Schmalspurbahn, Harz, Germany (August 2015)
Harz Schmalspurbahn, Harz, Germany (January 2017)
Harz Schmalspurbahn, Harz, Germany (February 2018)
Kasbachtalbahn, Linz (Rhein), Germany (July 2015)
Weisseritztalbahn, Freital, Germany (April 2015)
Isle of Man
Isle of Man Steam Railway, Douglas, Isle of Man (June 2018)
Manx Electric Railway, Douglas, Isle of Man (June 2018)
Snaefell Mountain Railway, Laxey, Isle of Man (June 2018)
United Kingdom
Bluebell Railway, Sussex, UK (January 2015)
Mid-Hants Railway/Watercress Line, Hampshire, UK (February 2015) Gala
Severn Valley Railway, Worcestershire, UK (March 2015) Gala
Rodney Hythe & Dymchurch Railway, Kent, UK (May 2015) Gala
Great Central Railway, Leicestershire, UK (June 2015) Gala
Didcot Railway Centre, Oxfordshire, UK (July 2015)
Ffestiniog Railway, Snowdonia, UK (December 2015)
Welsh Highland Railway, Snowdonia, UK (December 2015)
Brecon Mountain Railway, Merthyr Tydfil, UK (March 2015)
North Yorkshire Moors Railway, Yorkshire, UK (April 2015)
Severn Valley Railway, Worcestershire, UK (May 2015) Gala
Strathspey Railway, Aviemore, UK (December 2017)
Snowdon Mountain Railway, Llanberis, UK (June 2018)
Mail Rail, London, UK (June 2018)
United States of America
Roaring Camp, Big Trees & Pacific Railroad, Santa Cruz, USA (July 2018)
Railway or Railway-Related MuseumS
Canberra Railway Museum, Canberra, Australia (November 2014)
Menzies Creek Railway Museum, Melbourne, Australia (November 2014)
National Railway Museum, Adelaide, Australia (December 2016)
Powerhouse Museum, Sydney, Australia (November 2014)
Belgium
Trainworld, Brussels, Belgium (April 2016) NRM
Canada
Toronto Railway Museum, Toronto, Canada (July 2018)
France
Cite du Train, Mulhouse, France (April 2015) NRM
Germany
Dampflokwerk Meiningen, Thueringen, Germany (September 2016)
DB Museum, Koblenz, Germany (July 2015)
DB Museum, Nuremburg, Germany (April 2015) NRM
Deutches Museum Verkehrszentrum, Munich, Germany (February 2018)
Deutches Technikmuseum, Berlin, Germany (July 2016)
Deutches Technikmuseum, Berlin, Germany (February 2018)
Dresden Transport Museum, Dresden, Germany (April 2015)
Eisenbahnmuseum Dresden, Germany (April 2015) Gala
Miniatur Wunderland, Hamburg, Germany (October 2016)
Technikmuseums Speyer & Shinsheim, Germany (April 2015)
Italy
Museo Scienza, Milan, Italy (August 2017)
Lithuania
Lithuanian Railway Museum, Vilnius, Lithuania (May 2017)
Poland
Wolsztyn Steam Depot, Wolsztyn, Poland (April 2017) Gala
Slovenia
Slovenian Railway Museum, Ljubljana, Slovenia (May 2018)
Sweden
Jarnvagsmuseet, Gavle, Sweden (May 2015) NRM Gala
The Netherlands
Het Spoorwegmuseum, Utrecht, The Netherlands (April 2017) NRM
United Kingdom
Aldwych Underground Station, London, UK (January 2016)
London Transport Museum, London, UK (November 2014)
London Transport Museum Acton Depot, London, UK (April 2015) Gala
Museum of Liverpool, Liverpool, UK (November 2015)
National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh, UK (December 2017)
National Railway Museum, York, UK (December 2014) NRM
National Railway Museum, York, UK (April 2016) NRM
Thinktank, Birmingham, UK (March 2015)
Tyseley Locomotive Works, Birmingham, UK (October 2015) Gala
United States of America
National Museum of American History, Washington DC, USA (July 2018)
Train Journeys of Note
DB City Night Line Dresden to Basel and Zurich to Halle
Wuppertal Suspension Railway
IRE Berlin to Hamburg, here and here
ICE Dresden to Berlin
Berlin U-Bahn and S-Bahn
Locomore/FlixTrain Frankfurt to Berlin
Italy
Milan, Italy to Zurich, Switzerland via the Gotthard Pass
Sweden
SJ Night Train Stockholm to Boden, Sweden
Switzerland
Glacier Express Brig to Chur, Switzerland
Bernina Express Chur to Tirano, Switzerland
Jungrau Mountain Railway, Switzerland
Croatia
Zagreb, Croatia to Sarajevo, Bosnia
France
Le Shuttle Vehicle Train Coquelles, France to Cheriton, UK
Macedonia
Night train from Skopje, Macedonia to Belgrade, Serbia
Norway
Flam Railway, Norway
Spain
AVE High-Speed Train from Seville to Madrid
AVE High-Speed Train from Madrid to Barcelona
United Kingdom
Caledonian Sleeper London (Euston) to Inverness
Javelin from London (St Pancras) to Folkestone
Eurostar from London (St Pancras) to Brussels, Belgium here and here
London Underground, London Overground, Docklands Light Railway
"Parliamentary Train" from South Ruislip to London (Paddington)
United States of America
Amtrak Southwest Chief Superliner, USA
So given my interests, it was only natural train travel would form part of my OE - not just as a means of getting between places, but in many cases the train would be the very reason I might go visit somewhere. There are a lot of high profile modern trains I wanted to experience, and there is also a lot on the heritage scene in Europe. Often, I could combine both new and old in a trip, particularly in Western European countries.
The UK was very fertile ground for trains of all kinds when I arrived. A huge network of modern trains of many different kinds, some that can whisk you along at 200km/h. There is also a prolific heritage railway scene in the UK, to the point where some of them run every day of the year, and most will run every day over the summer months. There is also a huge industry around steam trains running on the main lines - with a steam train running an excursion somewhere in the UK almost daily at certain times of year, with a variety of steam locomotives being used. High on the list of things for me to do in the UK was visit some of these heritage railways, and it seemed a sensible idea to use some of these main line excursions to help me see various destinations in the UK but also see and experience the type of steam loco which might be on the front of the train.
For the Heritage Railways, I decided to visit the Bluebell Railway south of London as my first one, one cold and later on foggy January 2015 day. I never wrote a blog post about going to Bluebell, which is interesting but there may be a reason for it. Bluebell was one of the oldest and more established heritage railways in the UK, but to be honest, I wasn't hugely impressed by it. A lot of stuff, particularly steam locomotives that had been working on their line had been parked up out in the open air, messy looking storage sidings, difficult viewing angles from stations and and cramped and dark display buildings. It seemed for photo opportunities, I either needed to walk ages away from stations or I'd be better to have a car, and while there were 2 steam trains on the line I was practically waiting an hour between photo opportunities. While of a good standard in general, it didn't seem to live up to its supposed reputation. Were they all like this? A visit a month later to the Mid-Hants Railway during one of their Gala Weekends put Bluebell in a sharper focus - no, they weren't all like this, and Gala's had more trains running (at least 5 steam trains running from memory) so more photo opportunities and also on-rail transport between spots. On a standard running day, Mid-Hants would have been better for me than Bluebell - but clearly Gala's were the way to go for maximum opportunity. I visited quite a few of the UK heritage lines, mostly some of the big-name ones but there were some I never got to do. Of all of them, Severn Valley Railway was my favourite - I even went there twice, once for a Steam Gala and once for a Diesel Gala. Their display building at scenic little Highley with the big viewing balcony is just magic. The Ffestiniog and Welsh Highland Railways were also pretty cool.
For Main Line Excursions in the UK, all started off very well and promising. My old work colleagues had brought me tickets on a trip behind an A4 steam loco to Lincoln - and another separate steam excursion visited Lincoln that same day, which I got to see. My next excursion was a month later, which I rode because I wanted to see a Duchess class steam loco in action, it would travel across one of the UK's "most scenic" railway lines and added to that, it snowed just days before. It was a great trip, the views looked great because of the snow but the scenery didn't hold a candle to NZ lines. I had big plans to ride more excursions behind different engines, with a shortlist drawn up but I never did them - because in March 2015 a steam train excursion ran through a red stop light at Wootton Bassett, almost creating a collision with a high-speed passenger train and all hell broke loose. 90% of all steam excursions in the UK were run under the license of West Coast Railways (WCR), and month later WCR were banned from running for an indefinite amount of time. As a result, main line running effectively ceased overnight because the other licensed operator, DB Schenker wouldn't operate the brake systems used on most steam trains. The Tour Operators, rather than promising something which they couldn't guarantee on delivering, cancelled their entire programs until they got news WCR could run again, which happend by May. It led to a slow build back up for the tour companies, and then WCR had another incident in October which led to another steam ban in November 2015 and a full ban in February 2016, which lasted until March 2016. Suffice to say the subsequent bans again knocked the stuffing out of steam on the main line, pretty much for the rest of my time in the UK! Flying Scotsman could run under the DB Schenker license though, and did so - but excursions behind it were either astronomically priced or sold out in minutes. It was not until we were leaving Europe I managed to secure tickets on a train hauled by Scotsman - so this constituted my last steam excursion on the UK Main Line!
I did go see and ride steam trains in Continental Europe too, though not nearly as much as what I did in the UK. Part of that is the excursion offerings are less, or at least harder to find for an English-only speaker. By far the most of my outside-UK steam experiences were had in Germany, even before I lived there. There is a lot of steam to be seen in Germany, and I really only scratched the sides - partly because I got fixated on the Harz Schmalspurbahn, and kept wanting to go back there at the expense of seeing other steam railways in Germany. I don't regret this - the Harz is magnificent, especially under snow, and even Sasha thinks so! One major thing I hoped to achieve in Europe was ride a steam excursion across an international border. I hoped to do this when I attended the steam train festival in Dresden, Germany on a trip to Decin, Czech Republic but it sold out before I could obtain tickets. However the trip I did do, from Berlin, Germany to Wolsztyn, Poland ticked quite a few more boxes as I'd wanted to go to Wolsztyn anyway - and it coincided with Wolsztyn's Steam Loco parade. I intended to visit steam in Austria and Switzerland, but I didn't manage either of these things in the end. But I did get to see steam in Sweden and Portugal, both of which I never expected to when I embarked on my OE.
I did manage to do a bunch of the modern trains that I was hoping to do - and some extra's I didn't think I'd get to do, like the Jungfraujoch Railway, the Glacier Express and the Bernina Express (all Switzerland).Trains of speed was a slight factor - so riding each country's fastest trains was a goal for me, and at the highest speed if possible. So this was achieved with the UK's Pendolino, HST, IC225 and Javelin trains; the ICE in Germany; the AVE in Spain; the FrecciaRossa in Italy; but the biggest one missing was riding aboard a French TGV at all, let alone at its top speed. It just never happened, as it was expensive relative to other options and I could never fit it in to what I was doing. One other thing I would like to have done - ride behind Germany's 18 201 steam loco at 180km/h, though I don't believe it ever ran any trains at that speed at any time that I was in Europe. I did ride at 75mph (120km/h) behind A4 60009 "Union of South Africa" and 60103 "Flying Scotsman" so they both tie for the fastest I've ever been behind steam.
I also visited a lot of Train Museums or Museums with Trains in them - getting to see a lot of important trains in the process. My favourite train museum was not the UK's National Railway Museum in York which is often held to be the gold standard, but rather the Cite du Train in France. In fact compared to a lot of the NRM's around Europe, York is missing a trick in many areas - though good at displaying shiny trains, it doesn't even attempt to describe the history of trains in the UK unlike many others. Aside from that - I did some foaming. Not a lot though. About the biggest foaming opportunity of note was going to Cologne, line-siding outside of a freight yard. In London it was often too hard with high walls blocking the view - and hard to track down info on where the freight trains would be.
I did a lot, some things more than I counted on, other things not as much as I'd hoped. But it was all enjoyable and eye-opening - and all was very informative for any future trips to Europe and the UK to see trains, if that so happens!