17th of January 2004 in Dortmund main-station. Operations by three steamers of classes 50, 52 and 78. Hundreds of railroad fans equipped with all kinds of optical devices. Only few registered the real sensation: 624 501 in normal service. Nothing against the steamers, but there are still 'many' in operations of the named classes. "And of class 624 are much more in service today. So what?" will be your question. Yes, but this one is not a common one. For testing this class was built two pre-series. One series of four DMUs and two cars by MAN which looked nearly like the main-series (one surviving vehicle). And the other pre-series in same quantity was built by Waggonfabrik &Uuml;rdingen. 624 501 is the last surviving vehicle of the &Uuml;rdinger pre-series.<p>
Was it an ironic trainspotter-test of the dispatcher of DBAG? I don't know, but I have to thank the unknown man. Caused through this picture I learned something new about the "boring-red-white" company. Thank you.
<br>
Photo by Arnim v. Herff (arnimvherff@uni-duisburg.de). Many thanks to Rolf Pabst for his support with a camera-accumulator.