Common joke in Germany about (mosty narrow gauge) "little trains" or "Kleinbahnen" was the alleged sign: "Getting off and plucking flowers during the movement of the train is strictly forbidden".
Fichtelbergbahn, Lößnitzgrundbahn, Weißeritztalbahn and Zittauer Schmalspurbahn do regulary steam Service every day. 365 day every year. Thats really amazing.
Fun fact: Why do all (!!) German non-standard gauge steam locos have that "99" class numbers? They are definately not similar enough for just one class when you look at them. It all started in the 1920s with the new "Weimar" constitution. In 1871 some 25 German states plus three independent cities had united, we know that, but that did not mean that the German states gave up their souvereignty in a lot of domestic matters. Rail, commerce and transport remained in their local hands. Most of the railway system was then unified as "Deutsche Reichsbahn" and all that rolling stock plus locos were then incorporated into its new classification system. A broad variety of so-called "Einheitslokomotiven", unity-class locos, appeared on the drawing boards, starting with the "01"-class for fast express locos, and so on. There were the heavy freight locos with their numbers ranging from the "40s" till the "50s". And older ex-Prussian, ex-Bavarian locos were compared to the new designs and got numbers that came close to the new ones so that it was clear which purpose they could fulfill. The ex-Prussian "P 8" became class "38", for example. All this work was done by some office and it took years to re-class all that abundance of locomotives. And when all this had been completed the order came to do it again with the huge amount of narrow gauge trains that were the backbone of local transport in either rural or mountainous regions. There were so many different designs that the numbering system came to its end. The number 98 had been used for some standard-gauge tender locomotive and so there was only the number 99 left for the entire fleet of narrow-gauge locos, no matter what they looked like, how many driving wheels they had, whether they ran on 660, 750, 990 or 1000mm gauge.
Before Covid I was going to Dresden twice a year to spend a week travelling each day on one of the lines around Dresden Most are easy to reach by local trains but the museum trains are rather isolated and not easy to access by train or bus. There are reasonably priced hotels next to Dresden main station. I book all my rail tickets to and from the narrow gauge railways online DB and pay at the steam railways when I get there. My route was train from Milton Keynes Central - Euston - Eurostar - Brussels - Frankfurt - Leipzig - Dresden. Not so easy as I found trains cancelled every time I went but the refunds are easy to obtain. Of course rail fares are expensive compared with air fares. I like Dresden very much - few tourists with a very relaxed way of life. Wonderful and cheap trams and very pleasant cycling and walking. All the German cities do this and put the car dependent UK to shame. Unification did not help industry in the old East Germany. I travelled through both sectors in the 1950s while in the RAF in West Germany and afterwards en route to the USSR. At the time and until unification the factories and the towns and villages that housed the workers were vibrant. Today the factories often lay in ruins and the towns and villages seem to be dying. A wonderful film and I hope you are encourages to visit these railways.
