Gelting / Markt Schwaben - The couple Rosemarie and Adolf Leister from Gelting have made detailed reading of the Ebersberger Zeitung a daily duty for decades. "Without our newspaper we are missing something," says the 77-year-old and looks at her husband. Of course, the couple had noticed a preliminary report on the meanwhile opened annual exhibition of the Markt Schwabener Heimatmuseum on the subject of "150 years of the railway line". Garnished with a large photo of a steam locomotive from 1952 that drove through the market town station.
A locomotive that her father Michael Schmidt operated for three decades.
It is quite possible, according to the girl from Gelting, that he was also the one who drove the last steam locomotive ever through the market town station.
Michael Schmidt was still working in the driver's cab of the legendary "52" when the Deutsche Bundesbahn had long since converted its train fleet to electric and diesel locomotives.
The route from Munich to Mühldorf was the one that Dad once used almost every day: in both passenger and freight traffic.
Sometimes, as Rosemarie Leiser remembers, it was also used on the Salzburg route.
Rosemarie Leister thinks of her father, the train driver Michael Schmidt, with respect
At that time the family lived in Trudering with their father, mother and three children.
Rosemarie was "the middle one".
From the “railway man's house”, as they said at the time, Michael Schmidt took the bike in wind and weather to get to the depot in Berg am Laim, where he began his train driver service.
Often, the girl from Gelting recalls, her father was out at night.
Not infrequently, he also had to spend the night away at night.
What remains in the memory of the now 77-year-old is above all the boundless love of his father for his job.
And to his steam locomotives.
But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, a lot changed in the railway sector. Steam steeds disappeared more and more. Michael Schmidt, at that time almost 60 years old, had no choice but to be trained on electric trains. "He did the apprenticeship, but he was unhappy with it," says Rosemarie Leiser still today, a good 50 years later, with certainty.
What the family was particularly happy about at the time was the fact that the Federal Railroad showed its loyal steam engine driver with exceptional empathy in his final years of service. So much so that even a Munich tabloid became aware of Schmidt and published a large report on September 17, 1970. Michael Schmidt had never made a secret of the fact that the electric locomotives did not suit him. But the railway did not want to simply retire the well-deserved employee. Therefore, reported the "Bild" newspaper in 1970, they had a good old steam locomotive come from Mühldorf, with which Schmidt then shunted every day in Munich for a while. A gesture by an employer that is still far from commonplace today, and which was even worth commenting on by colleagues in the newspapers at the time.With this decision, the Munich Federal Railway Directorate has proven that people are the measure of all things; "Even in this time of tough technocrats".
Bahn activated a steam locomotive specifically to keep the well-deserved employee busy
Incidentally, Rosemarie Leiser never had the pleasure of experiencing the fascination of steam locomotives with Dad in the front of the driver's cab.
But she remembers one special experience: Back then, when she was 13 or 14 years old, there had been a trip by train to Kreuzstrasse with some other girls of the Catholic youth.
When the ladies got off and passed the locomotive at the front of the station, Rosemarie noticed that the train was being pulled by Papa and his locomotive.