Hello,
I am of northern German origin and thus my mother tongue is "Platt", this special language made up from mixing German, Dutch, English and Scandinavian laguages, and this language cannot be understood outside the northern parts of Germany. But I'm now livig during many years in Baden. At age 7, my father had to move due to his job (teacher in primary scool) and thus I received contact to the railway: the new home (offering nearly undisturbed sight to line over a distance of about one mile) is situated on Elsenztalbahn (Elsenz Valley Railway), the village's railway station was just in a distance of half a mile from home, and my way to school crossed the line near station building. You must not wonder: in this way I was infected seriously by the "railway virus" and there will be never a help against, you know! At age of 11, I changed to secondary school at Sinsheim in the Kraichgau landscape, so I became permanently a commuter passenger at Deutsche Bundesbahn rail. At age of 20, nearly every day I travelled for many years to Heidelberg, where I had a specialized job in data processing, organization, consulting, and commercial affairs at hospital complex of University -- and the window of my office offered a permanent view to a tram line! Since 2009, unfortunately I live in a distance of 5km (3 miles) to Elsenztalbahn and have to use taxi to reach next station.
Since 1980, I am active member in a regional railway fan club, and in this way (and compounded with Club's activities) since 1994, I'm, too, member of volunteer's staff of a museum railway company housed also in the Kraichgau landscape.
My contributions to Wikipedia started 2011-04-13 in German and 2011-06-04 in English. Previously I restrict my contributions just posting in Discussion pages; in future, as soon as experiences are increased, I plan to translate German articles and adding informations to rail & public transport in Germany, espacially concerning the regions around Heidelberg.
P.S.: my pseudonym is made up from Elsenztalbahn and the Swedish word for "railways". As I suppose it's a lttle unusual for English speaking people, I wiil sign my conributions to English Wikipedia by "inhabitant-living-on-Elsenztalbahn" (with link).
--Elsenz-JärnvägernaElsenz-Järnvägerna (talk) 18:13, 5 June 2011 (UTC)
