On 02/01/12 12:26, Graeme Wall wrote:
You don't even know the history of your own country yet you presume to
lecture others on their history.

Facts are what happened. Lüko is more concerned with what should have
happened. And he still won't say whether he thinks the Holocaust (a)
happened or (b) mattered.

Ian

On 02/01/12 13:40, wrote:
But the train drivers themselves were East German, as I understood. DR
also made sure that the drivers had families in the east, just in case
they started thinking staying in the west.

Surely the superior employment conditions were more than enough to keep
them in the east without all this business of family hostages,
minefields, machine guns and so on?

Ian

On 02/01/12 12:23, Lüko Willms wrote:
The nurses, teachers and railway workers are not the ones who
appropriate profits.

Where do you think their pay comes from, then?

Ian

On 02/01/2012 19:13, The Real Doctor wrote:
On 02/01/12 12:26, Graeme Wall wrote:
You don't even know the history of your own country yet you presume to
lecture others on their history.

Facts are what happened. Lüko is more concerned with what should have
happened. And he still won't say whether he thinks the Holocaust (a)
happened or (b) mattered.


Probably still frantically looking it up in the Good Stalinists Guide to
Political Opinions to find out what he ought to be thinking.


--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

On 02/01/12 07:54, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
The Real wrote
in :

I have no problem with the idea of nurses, teachers and London tube
drivers making money.

You know perfectly well that is not the issue.

It is /an/ issue, and a related one.

Ian

On 01/01/2012 15:19, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
The Real wrote in
:

On 29/12/11 12:15, Oliver Schnell wrote:
These benchmarking figures for Berlin are between 20% and 50% below
those of others German agglomerations, while punctuality and quality
of service offered elsewhere is much better.

Ah, if only the DR and DDR were still around to run it, eh?

A re-nationalised Deutsche Bundesbahn would be fine thank you. Actually
the DR weren't so bad. Their rolling stock was old, but with what
little means they had, they provided a more reliable service than
today's operators.


They were running steam engines well into the 1970s, were they not.

Poland's PKP was doing same, I understand.

On 02/01/2012 19:46, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
Graeme wrote
in :

On 02/01/2012 12:19, Lüko Willms wrote:

When Schumacher and other West German politicians diveded the county
and Berlin itself, they carefully avoided to challenge the occupation
regime and had kept the Berlin Generaldirektion of the Reichsbahn (or
how that was called) intact.

You don't even know the history of your own country yet you presume to
lecture others on their history.

He's telling an orthodox East German party line version, or a
caricature of it. He does know that much.


I'm well aware that he is only able to parrot a distorted version of the
party line. I object to him trying to impose his fantasies on others by
bullying.

--
Graeme Wall
This account not read, substitute trains for rail.
Railway Miscellany at http://www.greywall.demon.co.uk/rail

On 01/01/2012 21:39, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
wrote
in :

No, I was just wondering if operations on the Berlin S-Bahn were
generally better or worse when Deutsche Reichsbahn was operating the
service, all politics aside.

For West Berlin where I was the answer is obviously NO! They shut down
half of the system, and what was left was in an abysmal state and train
frequency was rather low. The reasons are complicated, but well
documented:

http://berliner-unterwelten.de/the-c...und.104.1.html

In East Berlin I should think the train frequency was better and fares
were of course much lower, and all stations were always staffed - as
opposed with today when many are not. Train stock was old, handicapped
and other modern facilities were often lacking, where they are usually
present today. Oh, and station building were still used for their
original purpose, whereas nowadays many in the suburbs are rededicated
to businesses while passengers have to wait outside in the cold.


IIRC, some of the trains from the East Berlin U-Bahn wound up in revenue
service on the Pyongyang Metro.

http://www.pyongyang-metro.com/

It's the fourth picture down when you click on the photos link.

On Jan 2, 8:04*pm, Graeme Wall wrote:

I'm well aware that he is only able to parrot a distorted version of the
party line. *I object to him trying to impose his fantasies on others by
bullying.

Without that standard tool of the communist, the secret police, he
ability to impose anything is pretty limited. There is no electable
European hard left, and the irony is that tankie and ostalgie is a
pretty large part of why they're figures of fun. Watching a man deny
Stalin's crimes, twist and turn over the the DDR's habit of shooting
people who wanted to leave and generally fail to accept the facts of
the past century's history isn't threatening, because no-one serious
takes him seriously, but is amusing.

On 02/01/2012 19:46, Wolfgang Schwanke wrote:
wrote in
:

Where were the people who worked on the Berlin S-Bahn in West Berlin
from during the city's partition?

Yes they were West Berlin locals. They had a reputation of being all
communists, but that was not true. The communist party membership was
somewhat higher among them though. (Where "communist party" stands for
the "Sozialistische Einheitspartei Westberlin" or SEW, the West Berlin
section of East Germany's SED. The West German communist party DKP did
not exist on West Berlin soil.)

What were fares like on the S-Bahn in West Berlin during the city's
division? I wonder how that compares with fares for the same service in
East Berlin?

Where, BTW, was border control carried out on the S-Bahn? Did
Grenztruppen der DDR board the train at any point or did one have to
exit at Friedrichstrasse to go through border control?

I also know that at least one line on the West Berlin U-Bahn went via a
part of East German territory. Was there not a transfer point between
two West Berlin lines in East German territory, however? IIRC it was
Alexanderplatz. You could transfer to another line there, but you could
not leave the station.

I thought that certain luxury goods were sold duty-free at
Alexanderplatz at kiosk that belonged to a East German trading company
(state-owned, of course). This really annoyed West German authorities,
and they would sometimes place Federal customs officers at stations with
the sole purpose of catching anybody carrying such goods purchased in
East Germany.

Do correct me if I am mistaken.


I understand that actual train drivers were East German,

That is true for long distance trains connecting West Berlin to West
German, but not local S-Bahn within West Berlin trains.

I would have though that DR train drivers would only be able to go as
far as the Inner German border, indeed.