Fun fact: In communist Eastern Germany, state-owned #DeutscheReichsbahn operated more than 100 snowploughs on its small railway system. After the German reunification, most of these were scrapped.
Today, the whole country of Germany has 43 ploughs for 34.000 kilometres of railways.
As a result, hundreds of trains are cancelled every time it snows, because the #DeutscheBahn doesn't have enough ploughs. 🤡
(photo: GDR snow plough | author: Störfix @ Wikimedia Commons | license: CC BY-SA 3.0)
@anke @kernpanik effective No, they were not. They were only ‚prepared to‘. So the State has every option to revert it.
@kernpanik Watching trains to plow through snow is just mesmerizing.
https://invidious.snopyta.org/watch?v=3gEfX8-g7Dw
@kernpanik It doesn't really make a difference, as most of the railway network was decomissioned at the same time :person-facepalming:
@kernpanik also, ploughs aren't enough, depending on the amount of snow.. check out this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cQYerfVlNqI&t=3
@das_aug @kernpanik I saw one of those in a (volunteer) railway museum. Maybe Deutsche Bahn would like to buy it back. 🙃
@kernpanik Meanwhile in the Netherlands where we cancel all trains after 1cm of snow: "ploughs?"
@kernpanik that explains a lot
@kernpanik if they are used similar to the photo then 40 ploughs are only 20 ploughs. ;-)
@kernpanik Natch. Deutsche Bahn was privatised, so they had to cut as many corners as possible for shareholder profits -_-