Train Watching in Asperg

I had some time and headed over to the Asperg train station. The old freight shed is a very decorative and interesting building.

Asperg is located on the 4 track main line from Stuttgart via Ludwigsburg. The tracks split in Bietigheim-Bissingen towards Heilbronn/Wuerzburg and Karlsruhe/Mannheim. Until the construction of the high-speed line Stuttgart - Mannheim, every train going north or east from Stuttgart came through here.

I hung out near track 1 for about 45 minutes. Even though high-speed traffic is not coming through here, it was quite busy with the regularly scheduled trains as well as several freight trains diverted from the Rhine valley.

The video below covers 20 minutes starting off at 19:10 with a diverted northbound freight train led by a crossrail class 185 and an egp class 66. Shortly after, a diverted southbound freight train led by OEBB 1016 005 passes southbound S-Bahn S5 in Asperg station at 19:13. Northbound S-Bahn S5 arrives in Asperg at 19:17. 2 minutes later another southbound freight comes through. Due to train length I suspect it's a regularly scheduled train. RE 4952 to Wuerzburg departed Ludwigsburg on time 19:18 and comes through Asperg at 19:20.  At 19:25 another northbound freight, I think also diverted from the Rhine Valley. At 19:27 we see RE 19515 Heidelberg - Stuttgart led by 147 009-1, an engine class I had not seen yet. RB 39935 from Heilbronn led by 114 006-0 comes through at 19:29 right on time. The video ends at 19:30 with another southbound freight and 152 144-4 on the point. There was a northbound S-Bahn that came through before the last freight, but I figured I had enough of those on video already.

To round out the collection, I took some stills as well. This is RE 4939 Wuerzburg - Stuttgart led by 112 161-5. Next stop in Ludwigsburg at 19:37.

S-Bahn 423 501-6, 423 845-7, and a third unit are dead-heading to Stuttgart.

S-Bahn BR 423 series running as S5 train 7992 to Bietigheim-Bissingen.  At 19:37 it's running 5 minutes behind schedule.

My vantage point was on top of this pile of construction debris.

For the passenger trains, I used current schedules from Deutsche Bahn's Elektronisches Kursbuch to pull train numbers and line them up with the trains I saw. The schedule pages for KBS 790.4/5 (northbound, southbound) were particularly useful.