Notes

Something old I wanted to share, mainly because shenanigan87 claims that when you search DA for “Bügelfalte” you’ll only find his pictures, which obviously can’t be left that way. :D

Regular usage of class 110 units on the routes to and from Aachen has stopped, but apparently nobody told them, because you’ll still find them driving around the region or standing in rail yards much the same as previously. Here is one thing I never thought I’d see: This unit has received a new twelve digit UIC number (only at the sides), which fully reads 91 80 6 110 377-9 D-DB. I wouldn’t have thought that these units, which DB clearly does not love anymore, would get them, but I’ve seen two or three others with these numbers as well since.

The idea of these numbers is that every locomotive (carriages had them for far longer) can be uniquely identified all over the UIC area, which includes Europe, but also, for example, large parts of the near east. I wonder whether it also applies to Great Britain, though.

A side effect is that this numbering scheme might well mark the sixth age of european railroading. Currently, model railroaders divide railroading history in five epochs, which are from the beginning of railroads to the end of world war one, then to the end of world war two, then to 1970 in East Germany and 1968 in West Germany, when the six digit number you see on the front of this locomotive was introduced, then to 1994, when the DB AG was founded (the end of communism in half of Germany did apparently not count). A sixth epoch has been vaguely defined, and now every country is asked to implement it in a way that works best for them, with the starting point having to be between 2005 and 2010.