A children's railway or pioneer railway is an extracurricular educational institution, where children interested in rail transport can learn railway professions. This phenomenon originated in the USSR and was greatly developed in Soviet times. The world's first children's railway was opened in Gorky Park, Moscow, [1] in 1932. At the breakup of the USSR, 52 children's railways existed in the country.
Many children's railways are still functioning in post-Soviet states and Eastern European countries. Many feature railway technology not seen anymore on the main lines and can be considered heritage railways. Though few exceptions exist, most children's railways built in the Eastern Bloc have a track gauge of at least 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in) [2] and can carry full size narrow gauge rolling stock.
closed railways:
The international E-road network is a numbering system for roads in Europe developed by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). The network is numbered from E1 up and its roads cross national borders. It also reaches Central Asian countries like Kyrgyzstan, since they are members of the UNECE.
A heritage railway or heritage railroad is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period in the history of rail transport.
Halle (Saale), or simply Halle (German:[ˈhalə]; from the 15th to the 17th century: Hall in Sachsen; until the beginning of the 20th century: Halle an der Saale ; from 1965 to 1995: Halle/Saale), is the largest city of the German state of Saxony-Anhalt. It is the fifth-most populous city in the area of former East Germany after (East) Berlin, Leipzig, Dresden and Chemnitz, as well as the 31st-largest city of Germany. With around 244,000 inhabitants, it is slightly more populous than the state capital, Magdeburg. With Leipzig, the largest city of Saxony, Halle forms the polycentric Leipzig-Halle conurbation. Leipzig/Halle International Airport lies between the two cities, in Schkeuditz. The Leipzig-Halle conurbation is at the heart of the larger Central German Metropolitan Region.
Gera is a city in the German state of Thuringia. With around 93,000 inhabitants, it is the third-largest city in Thuringia after Erfurt and Jena as well as the easternmost city of the Thüringer Städtekette, an almost straight string of cities consisting of the six largest Thuringian cities from Eisenach in the west, via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena to Gera in the east. Gera is the largest city in the Vogtland, and one of its historical capitals along with Plauen, Greiz and Weida. The city lies in the East Thuringian Hill Country, in the wide valley of the White Elster, between Greiz (upstream) and Leipzig (downstream). Gera is located in the Central German Metropolitan Region, approximately 60 kilometres south of Saxony's largest city of Leipzig, 80 km east of Thuringia's capital Erfurt, 120 km west of Saxony's capital Dresden and 90 km north of Bavaria's city of Hof (Saale).
Santa Clara is the capital city of the Cuban province of Villa Clara. It is centrally located in the province and Cuba. Santa Clara is the fifth-most populous Cuban city, with a population of nearly 245,959.
The narrow-gauge railways in Saxony were once the largest single-operator narrow-gauge railway network in Germany. In Saxony, the network peaked shortly after World War I with over 500 km (311 mi) of tracks. At first, it was primarily created to connect the small towns and villages in Saxony – which had formed a viable industry in the 19th century – to already established standard-gauge railways. But even shortly after 1900, some of the railways would become important for tourism in the area.
Germany has an extensive number of tramway networks. Some of these networks have been upgraded to light rail standards, called Stadtbahn in German. Straßenbahn and Stadtbahn schemes are usually operated on the legal foundation of the BOStrab, the Tramways Act of Germany.
A Feldbahn, or Lorenbahn, is the German term for a narrow-gauge field railway, usually not open to the public, which in its simplest form provides for the transportation of agricultural, forestry and industrial raw materials such as wood, peat, stone, earth and sand. Such goods are often transported in tipper wagons, known in German as Loren, hence such a railway is also referred to as a Lorenbahn.
Die Länderbahn GmbH, formerly Vogtlandbahn GmbH, is a German rail transport company based in Viechtach, operating transport services originally only in the Vogtland, but now also on a regional basis. Die Länderbahn is a subsidiary of Regentalbahn AG, which is owned by Ferrovie dello Stato subsidiary Netinera. The term vogtlandbahn remains in use as a trademark of Die Länderbahn in Vogtland.
Ferrocarriles de Cuba (FCC) or Ferrocarriles Nacionales de Cuba, provides passenger and freight services for Cuba.
The Royal Saxon State Railways were the state-owned railways operating in the Kingdom of Saxony from 1869 to 1918. From 1918 until their merger into the Deutsche Reichsbahn the title 'Royal' was dropped and they were just called the Saxon State Railways.
Maschinenfabrik Christian Hagans was a German locomotive manufacturer founded on 1 July 1857 in Erfurt, Germany, by Christian Hagans.
The Halle–Bebra railway, known in German as the Thüringer Bahn, is a 210 kilometre-long railway line from Halle (Saale) via Erfurt and Gerstungen to Bebra, mainly in Thuringia. As far as Gerstungen the line originally belonged to the Thuringian Railway Company. From Gerstungen to Bebra, it was owned by the Frederick William Northern Railway (Friedrich-Wilhelms-Nordbahn), named after the Prussian king, Frederick William IV. It is now a two-track, electrified, standard gauge mainline operated by DB Netze. It was opened between 1846 and 1849 and was the first railway line in Thuringia. All types of trains from Regionalbahn to ICE currently run on the line except Interregio-Express. Four of the six largest cities in Thuringia are located on the line.
The Leipzig–Hof railway is a two-track main line in the German states of Saxony, Thuringia and Bavaria, originally built and operated by the Saxon-Bavarian Railway Company. It runs from Leipzig through Altenburg, the Werdau wye junction, Reichenbach and Plauen to Hof. The Werdau–Hof section is part of the Saxon-Franconian trunk line (Sachsen-Franken-Magistrale), the line connecting Dresden and Nuremberg. Its first section opened in 1842 and it is one of the oldest railways in Germany.
Interhotel was an East German chain of luxury hotels. It was founded in 1965 as a chain.
Görlitzer Park is a major park and recreation area in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. The 14-hectare park area contains, among other things, a petting zoo, several sports and football fields, and a small lake. At its north-west end is the Görlitzer Bahnhof U-Bahn station.
The Parkeisenbahn Chemnitz (PEC) is a narrow gauge children's railway in Chemnitz, Saxony, Germany. It is 2.3 kilometres long and has one station, two stops, one depot and one block post. Until 1990 it was operated as a Pioniereisenbahn. The Parkeisenbahn has six diesel locomotives, two steam locomotives, nine passenger wagons and some other vehicles. It has the route number 12248.
The Košice Children's Heritage Railway is a 4.2 km (2.6 mi) long single-track heritage railway with a track gauge of 1,000 mm. The railway was opened on 20 September 1955 as a pioneer railway near Košice in Slovakia and is still in operation today. It is located in the rural part of the city's Košice-Sever borough.