Halle Belgium - a PS
Above is the delightfully named Ninoofsesteenweg in the Belgian Halle, the one we visited in yesterday's blog. fbb is grateful to correspondent Colin who sent a picture of a Tramways Vicinaux unit (car plus two trailers) that had travelled all the way from Gare du Midi in Brussels.
Although much has changed, the "witches hat" atop the dome gives a good clue to todays location.
The tram stop is now a bus stop!
And also in this Halle ...
A carpet of bluebells in the Hallerbos - the Woods of Halle!
Halle Saale Part 1
Our third, and final, Halle is in the former East Germany, the state of Sachsen Anhalt. For a time the town was known as Halle Saale after its river and to distinguish it from the other Halle in Germany. The name Saale has its origins in words for "salt water" and the area was well known for salt extraction and brine bathing.
This massive extraction tower ...
... was part of the salt evaporation process. The town of Halle escaped the worst of WW2 bombing so retains much of its historic architecture.
It rapidly became an important railway hub, a status it retains today.
The blue lines are conventional inter-urban services whilst the yellow routes have "S" Bahn status with more frequent local stops. Typical of the latter is the branch to Halle Nietleben ...
... where a variety of local stock shuffles into an out of the platform next to the former station building, now boarded up and awaiting its fate.
The main station in Halle arrived quite late in the history of the railways of the area as previous buildings proved inadequate for the burgeoning traffic. Here is the Hauptbahnhof with a couple of horse trams awaiting their loads.
Later, horse drawn carriages sit alongside electric trams ...
... followed, in a few years, by the dreaded internal combustion engine!
In the late 1960s the Communist authorities decided to modernise the station by adding cladding.
The trams were kicked out but, thankfully, the "modernisation" was undone and the original building refurbished in the mid 1980s. Trams rumble by on the main road ...
The main station concourse is particularly splendid ...
... whence subways lead to the platforms on the viaducts.
Even the "other end" of the station block is magnificent, although it is not used by passengers,
The station plan is impressive ...
... but shows six platforms with Umbrella Testing signs. Google earth reveals that this is/was part of a massive rebuild of the station at track level.
The work was to rationalise and simplify the layout, but also to provide a clean and tidy route for a spur of the new high speed line that runs from Erfurt to Leipzig. There will be more on this in due course, But tomorrow we are going to leave the station via a second exit just peeping in bottom left on the platform diagram above.
What may we find once we step outside via the side entrance?
Just HAD To Pass This On
Signs Of The Times
Look closely (very closely!) and you may be able to read ...
So instead of catching Covid, we could, without too much effort, catch pneumonia instead.
A treat from First Bus in Sheffield.
Stay safe?
Next Halle blog : Saturday 6th February
No comments:
Post a Comment