Length of Stay 3 Nights

Train: 13:47 1058 Koebenhavn H - Malmö C 14:26

We begin our rail journey by flying into the capital of the Danes, Copenhagen. With a history that dates back to 1043, Copenhagen is full of historic landmarks, significant buildings, and interesting sights and museums.

All that being said we’ll occupy our first day, checking to make sure our luggage has arrived safe and sounds and that other travel and lodging arrangements are in place. Afterward, we’ll spend an easy afternoon at Tivoli Gardens, an amusement park and pleasure garden that was opened on 15 August 1843 making it the second-oldest operating amusement park in the world.

Later, in the next day or two, we’ll visit the Nyhavn district that was long a haunt for sailors and writers, including Hans Christian Andersen. These days the area is popular with tourists due to its colorful gabled townhouses, ship masts, and plentiful ale. Behind its democratic bustle is Frederiksstaden. One of Copenhagen's most elegant quarters, it's here that you'll find some of the capital's most famous icons, including the royal palace, Marmorkirken (Marble Church) and, further north, the obligatory Little Mermaid which we’ll need to take a few snaps of to convince our family back home that we are truly in Copenhagen.

After our stay in Copenhagen which will include a day trip to Odense and the Danish Railway Museum, we’ll make our way to Malmö, Sweden. The Copenhagen – Malmö train crosses the dramatic 16km bridge connecting Copenhagen and Malmö. This international journey involves crossing the Øresund Bridge, which is the longest combined road and rail bridge in Europe, which carries both the railway line and the E20 motorway between Denmark and Sweden. The journey between Denmark and Malmö is interrupted with a change of trains at Copenhagen Airport for passport control purposes.

The Øresund Bridge gave its name to the Nordic noir television series The Bridge, as the series was set in the region around the bridge.

Length of Stay: 1 Night

Train: 17:00 (Berlin Night Express) Malmö C - Berlin Hbf 06:45

Malmö is the third-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm and Gothenburg, of 316,588 inhabitants out of a municipal total of 338,230. If you take into account the entire Øresund Region, which includes Malmö, the population jumps to 4 million people.

It will be interesting to see, our short stay notwithstanding if you notice any difference in the two Scandinavian cities.

Malmö was one of the earliest and most industrialized towns of Scandinavia, but it struggled with the adaptation to post-industrialism. Since the construction of the Øresund Bridge, Malmö has undergone a major transformation with architectural developments, and it has attracted new biotech and IT companies, and particularly students through Malmö University, which was founded in 1998

On our sole day in Malmö we’ll spend an easy day walking amongst the gabled Dutch-Renaissance buildings of Gamla Staden (Old Town). The main squares Stortorget and Gustav Adolf Torg are connected by Södergatan, the principal shopping street of Malmö.

Shades of an old Agatha Christie murder mystery we’ll take the night boat train from Malmö to Berlin. Hopefully, we’ll live to tell of our journey!

Night Train: Malmö - Berlin

The sole direct train from Sweden to Germany includes a night cruise across the Baltic Sea. At 5pm the Berlin Night Express putters through Malmö’s leafy suburbs en route to the Swedish port of Trelleborg. Here carriages are eaten by a special train-ferry, before trundling out four hours later in the ritzy German period resort of Sassnitz. The final leg is a straight shot through the former East Germany to Berlin for a 7am breakfast.

The Berlin Night Express operates in spring and summer. Sleeper berths cost £60 (0046 40 669 62 00; snalltaget.se).

Length of Stay: 4 Nights

Train: 12:59 EC 175 Berlin Hbf - Dresden Hbf 15:07

Berlin, capital and chief cultural center of Germany, lies at the heart of the North German Plain, athwart an east-west commercial and geographic axis that helped make it the capital of the kingdom of Prussia and then, from 1871, of a unified Germany.

Berlin’s former glory ended in 1945, but the city survived the destruction of World War II. It was rebuilt and came to show amazing economic and cultural growth. Iggy Pop and David Bowie, called the city home in the 1970s. It has become the European if not world center of modern art and film and has a thriving food scene.

Berlin hosts one of the highest densities of scientific research institutions in Europe. It is Germany’s biggest city for media and tech – and its economy has been growing faster than the country as a whole for more than a decade.

While in Berlin we'll visit a couple of hobby shops. The first one is Modellbahnen am Mierendorffplatz GmbH for model trains, and Berliner Zinnfiguren for toy soldiers, especially the zinnfiguren which are flat pewter soldiers or other figures commonly in 30mm scale.

Museumsinsel

Berlin’s Museum Island (Museumsinsel) is a magnificent total art work, a truly outstanding ensemble of five world-renowned museums. Apart for the legendary bust of the Egyptian queen Nefertiti, the most famous and important cultural exhibits on show here include the breathtaking Pergamon Altar and the stunning Ishtar Gate. In 1999, the Museum Island complex was inscribed as UNESCO World Heritage.

In September the Bahnbetriebswerk Schöneweide opens its doors to the Berlin Railway Festival with more than 20 locomotives and cars to discover, ride and photograph on the turntable. One-hour sightseeing tours with historic trains begin right on the festival grounds. Attendees can take the place of the train driver and look at locomotive boilers or the huge locomotive engines. In the engine shed, there is a model railway while a historic dining car and in the beer garden there is home-style cooking.

Length of Stay: 5 Nights

Train: 12:10 ICE 1558 Dresden Hbf - Erfurt Hbf 14:15 <-> 14:31 Erfurt Hbf - Nurnburg C ICE 509 15:51

Next comes Dresden, the phoenix that rose from the ashes of WWII. Dresden is a city of culture with its magnificent museums and its world-famous Staatskapelle orchestra.

The area around Dresden is home to numerous heritage rail lines. Before you embark on this journey we suggest that you go to the Deutschland Bahnnostalgie website in order to better plan your stay in this area.

Zittauer Schmalspurbahn

The Zittauer Schmalspurbahn narrow-gauge railway provides a varied programme of themed trips and package deals cleverly combining a trip on a steam train with the sights of the Zittau Mountains.

One special treat is two steam trains leaving Bertsdorf station together; a spectacle that can only be experienced here on the 750 mm track. As well as the scheduled daily steam train services, the Sachsenzug, the Reichsbahnzug and the Zittauer Triebwagen run on alternating weekends between May and October.

Sächsisches Eisenbahnmuseum

The railway museum at Chemnitz is located in the Hilbersdorf locomotive depot which closed in 1992. Its buildings, now designated historical monuments, include two roundhouses with 20 m turntables, water cranes, facilities for supplying locomotives with coal and sand, and inspection pits. Its large collection of locomotives includes examples on loan from the transport museums at Dresden and Nürnberg, and from private owners. The collection reflects principally the railways of the former kingdom of Saxony and the former DDR.

The Heizhausfest has been organized every since 1991 and today it is one of the most famous railway festivals in eastern Germany and takes place every August. The name "Heizhausfest" refers to the two roundhouses that contain a great part of the museum exhibits.

Besides the locomotive exhibition, you can watch a large parade (Saturday and Sunday) of all operational locomotives. Visitors who are more interested in technology can enter a cab for a little trip. Each year many operational steam locomotives come from various parts of Germany. There are many round trips in Saxony ("Heizhausexpress") during the festival.

Apart from the standard gauge, there will be an exhibit of narrow gauge trains called "Field Railway". More than 30 locomotives and an adjusted sand pit show how they would operate 30 years ago.

Dampfbahn-Route Sachsen

When not traveling in August there is the option of regular train excursions on various heritage lines in Saxony. The Saxon Steam Railway Route is comprised of mainly 700 km of old narrow gauge railway lines through Saxony - from Leipzig to Zittau, from the Fichtelberg mountain in the Ore Mountains (Erzgebirge) to the Lößnitzgrund valley, and from Hubertusburg castle (Wermsdorf) to Königstein Fortress.

Length of Stay: 3 Nights

Train: 11:40 IC 2068 Nürnberg Hbf - Stuttgart Hbf 13:53

Nuremberg, a city in northern Bavaria, is distinguished by medieval architecture such as the fortifications and stone towers of its Altstadt (Old Town). At the northern edge of the Altstadt, surrounded by red-roofed buildings, stands Kaiserburg Castle.

Nuremberg has a long history in toy making dating back to the Middle Ages. From tax records of the time, we know that people making dolls were registered in about the year 1400. The Nuremberg International Toy Fair (Spielwarenmesse) held annually since 1949, is the largest international trade fair for toys and games.

Before we leave Nuremberg we must go to the Zirkelschmiedsgasse, a cobbled street where stood during the middle ages a leading bratwurst kitchen originally known as “Auf dem Hohen Pflaster”. Today No. 26 is still home to Nuremberg’s leading bratwurst restaurant. It was first mentioned in 1419, though it was built in 1380.

Length of Stay: 4 Nights

Train: 13:24 ICE 576 Stuttgart Hbf - Frankfurt Hbf 14:52

While in Stuttgart we will rent a car to visit several nearby attractions over several days. On our first day, we will visit the hobby shop Eisenbahn-Treffpunkt SCHWEICKHARDT in the morning before we head off to Göppingen and the Marklin Museum.

The next day we will visit two car museums, those of Porsche and Mercedes-Benz. Our last day will be spent at the Railway Vehicle Preservation Company (GES). It’s important to check their schedule for the day of our visit. In the morning before retuning our car and taking the train to Frankfurt we will visit one of the largest railway bookstores in the world at the Stuttgarter Eisenbahn Paradies book shop.

Length of Stay: 3 Nights

Train: 11:42 IC 2024 Frankfurt Hbf - Mainz Hbf 12:18 <-> 13:20 Mainz Hbf - Köln Hbf IC 2312 15:05

Frankfurt, a central German city on the river Main, is a major financial hub that's home to the European Central Bank. It's the birthplace of famed writer Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, whose former home is now the Goethe House Museum. Like much of the city, it was damaged during World War II and later rebuilt. The reconstructed Altstadt (Old Town) is the site of Römerberg, a square that hosts an annual Christmas market.

Length of Stay: 4 Nights

Train: 10:09 IC 2028 Köln Hbf - Hamburg Hbf 14:14

Notice I didn't say great photographs but if you take enough decent photos some "great" ones will invariably slip in. The first step in taking decent photographs is understanding your camera. We will assume that you are using more than a point and shoot and can change the focal length of your lens either through zooming or by changing the lens. This is not to say you cannot take good to great pictures with a point & shoot, a fixed lens camera or a smartphone. Many of the suggestions I will make apply to any device you can use to record images.

Drachenfelsbahn Cog Railway

The cog railway leading to the top of the Drachenfels was put into operation in the summer of 1883. Now, more than 125 years later, the entire complex has been rebuilt. With a fresh outfit and a modernized station, the “Bergbahnen im Siebengebirge AG” have been given a new look, älteste Zahnradbahn German cog railways will continue to be in service in the Rhineland. On its way to the top, it manages an elevation gain of approx. 220 metres with inclines of up to 20 %.

Length of Stay: 3 Nights

Flight: We'll be flying out of Hamburg at the end of our journey.

Hamburg is the second-largest city in Germany with a population of over 1.8 million, after the capital Berlin. A major port city in northern Germany it is connected to the North Sea by the Elbe River.

We'll pick an early weekday to visit Hamburg’s most popular attraction.

Miniatur Wunderland

In 2000 two brothers Frederik and Gerrit Braun set out to build the largest model railway system in the world. Today, this miniature world comprises 1000 square meters, with even more sites to follow. The latest construction was dedicated to the various landmarks of Italy. Small-scale versions of France and England are expected to follow.

On the day prior to flying back home we’ll take a day trip to Lübeck in Schleswig-Holstein, northern Germany. On the river Trave, Lübeck was the leading city of the Hanseatic League, a commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Northwestern and Central Europe.