Notes

If Vienenburg looks boring to you, at all, on this picture, it’s because it is. However, there are historic trains, so it’s not all bad.

After the second world war, both german railroad companies were left with a huge supply of pre-WWI carriages with two or three (or four, but I ignore those here) axles that were way past their useful lifespan, but which were still needed and couldn’t be replaced fast enough. DB and DR independently started to rebuild these vehicles, keeping large parts of the old chassis, but creating a completely new body. This did extend the lifespan of these vehicles significantly (some ran until 1991), and later they could and occasionally still can be found in construction work.

The GDR version was known under the name Rekowagen and is still known pretty well by current and former users of TT scale model railways. This here is (in contrast to the locomotives, which are both former DR) the DB (west german) version, which looks slightly different, but still generally similar, as you’d expect seeing that they were based on the same donor cars. Unlike the DR version, the DB ‘Umbauwagen’ only comes with three axles (two-axle donor cars received a new third one) and is always coupled with another of the general type to run as a pair.

I guess the ones here are former MoW vehicles and now work as support vehicles for the steam engine.