I'm really not into trains except cog railways that do the apparently impossible and climb very steep mountains.One of the best of these has to be the Schafberg Bahn which climbs the Schafberg from St Wolfgang on the Wolfgangsee near Salzburg in Austria. The little red train was apparently featured in The Sound Of Music-a film I have so far managed to avoid seeing in its entirety.
The view from the top of the Schafberg at nearly 2000 metres is stunning.I have been up it twice-16 years apart -and luckily both times the weather was crystal clear and Julie Andrews was nowhere to be seen. If it was all smothered in cloud it would be a very different story I'm sure.
Whilst I was at the top of the mountain last year two Red Bull Dornier Alpha jets from the Red Bull Hangar 8 aircraft collection at Salzburg Airport flew past.When I say flew past they flew round the mountain and so I was looking down onto them. They were going too quickly and were too small to photograph.
The locomotive featured in the photos is steam powered and a relatively recent build and the boiler is oil fired which is much more convenient than coal. It still smells like a steam engine but without the soot and smut and all the hard work of shovelling coal into the firebox. There is still one original coal fired heritage locomotive on the railway which does a run once a week.
If you are anywhere near Salzburg the railway is really worth a visit but it is very popular so your best option is to catch the first train of the day as I did. Photos taken with a Leica X1-June 2014.
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