Wuppertal; Sunday, 24 September, 2023

I had a relatively early start, mostly because the queues for breakfast the previous day had been quite big and I’d wanted to avoid that again. After breakfast I packed my bag, left my luggage with the hotel and checked out before heading over to the Hauptbahnhof to have a little wander round there before picking up a bus out to Wuppertal-Dorp station on the Nordbahn.

The Nordbahn was built on a terrace up the hillside from the main railway running alongside the river in town, and consequently was much less successful, to the point that services were finally withdrawn in 1991 and the line abandoned. However, a local group saved the line and over a number of years converted the former track bed in the Nordbahntrasse a long-distance walking and cycling path.

The actual path starts close to Vohwinkel station several miles further back from where I joined the route, but the former Dorp station is a good place to start as it’s where the most interesting parts of the route start, with Dorp tunnel being just a few meters after the station.

Along the line all of the stations have been retained, either just as the outline of the old platform with a station sign, or in the case of Loh station a couple of miles down the track as the full platforms complete with canopies, signage and even a station clock that still works. The yellow departure posters found at every German station is even provided, though here it shows what you can see at each kilometre of the route rather than listing the zero trains that the station would see.

I walked all the way from Dorf station to Wichlinghauser station taking in the many different tunnels and viaducts along the way, including the LEGO bridge – one of the many bridges on the line that has been repainted to make it look like it’s made out of giant Lego bricks.

At Wichlinghauser the route of the former line continues on for many more kilometres, but its also the point that the former Schwarzbach line up from Oberbarmen joined the Nordbahn and as this too has been abandoned it’s also been converted into the Schwarzbachtrasse, in this case an interesting long sweeping loop that slowly takes the line back down hill to the valley floor to join the mainline, over an impressive viaduct, through a tightly curving tunnel and over a second LEGO Brücke before reaching the actual still operational railway in Langerfeld where it’s a short walk down to a bus stop to catch a bus back into Oberbarmen.

By the time I reached the bus stop I’d walked nearly 10 miles, so I was quite glad to sit down for a little while, and after we got to Oberbarmen to hop off and visit the station café for quite a bit of water as well as a very late lunch.

I didn’t have much time left in Wuppertal, but I did have just enough time to take the Schwebebahn one more time out to Vohwinkel – this time taking one of the seats in the main part of the carriage, before heading back to the station closest to my hotel to pick up my luggage and then head back to the Hauptbahnhof.

I’d decided to leave myself quite a bit of spare time as the old stereotype of ruthless German efficiency with their trains timekeeping is now long gone and the railways in Germany appear to be performing almost as badly, if not worse, that they are in the UK so I needed to make sure I had spare time to get back into Düsseldorf and out to the airport. In the end it turned out I’d picked about the only train that day which was running on time and wasn’t standing room only, so I had a pleasant and quick journey back to Düsseldorf and an equally quick journey back out to the airport terminal to start my journey home.