Prignitzer Kleinbahnmuseum Lindenberg (Pollo)

Updated: August 2026 – The Prignitz is one of the landscapes from which the rails have almost entirely vanished. All the more striking, then, is what stands in Lindenberg: a rebuilt piece of 750 millimetre track, operated by the Prignitzer Kleinbahnmuseum Lindenberg – the last visible remnant of a network the region knew for decades under the nickname Pollo.

Don't miss rare running days

Small heritage railways run on only a few days a year – keep track of when you saw which operation.

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Light railway is not a term of endearment

The term light railway sounds quaint today but was a precise legal term. The Prussian Light Railways Act of 1892 created a category below the full railway: simpler to build, simpler to operate, with lower requirements for alignment and signalling technology – and slower in return.

Without this law there would never have been rails in areas like the Prignitz. Building a full railway didn’t pay off there. A light railway with 750 millimetre gauge, tight curves and stations of brick and timber, on the other hand, did.

The consequence is visible to this day: what was built for opening up areas lost out to the lorry. Nationwide, light-railway networks almost entirely disappeared in the 1960s and 1970s.

A line built twice

After closure the tracks were dismantled. What lies in Lindenberg today is therefore not a preserved stock, but a rebuild: securing the trackbed, relaying the superstructure, restoring station facilities. Through volunteer work, over years, with no public transport mandate behind it.

That shapes the visit too. You see historical fabric next to freshly laid track, finished sections next to construction sites. Anyone who sees that as a flaw has missed the point – that’s exactly where the achievement of these railways lies.

Small locomotive, end-platform carriage, work equipment

The fleet of a rebuilt light railway follows availability, not a concept. Traction is provided by narrow-gauge small and diesel locomotives with a box-shaped body and short wheelbase – comparable types from East German manufacturing are the LKM Ns 4 and the more powerful LKM V 10 C.

Carriages are two-axle passenger carriages with open end platforms, often of timber construction, plus freight and works wagons for line maintenance. The two-axle design with end platform is the visual hallmark of German light railways par excellence.

There’s no reliable public listing of the specific fleet in Lindenberg. So note type, wheel arrangement, body form and colour scheme instead of a number you haven’t read with certainty – for vehicles without a data panel that’s the more meaningful documentation anyway.

Small operations belong in the archive too

With Traintrack you record type, place and date – even where no data panel helps.

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How to plan the trip

Photographing on the plain

Heritage railways are photographically rewarding: slow trains, short train formations, a timetable you know in advance. At announced special runs, many railways add photo stops, where the train halts at an agreed point for photographs. That’s the difference between waiting and planning.

The Prignitz sets its own challenge, though. There are no slopes, no bridges, no natural elevated viewpoints – and no shade. That leads to a different composition: the sky becomes the main subject, avenues and field tracks become leading lines, and a low viewpoint is almost always the better choice. Harsh midday sun is harder to rescue here than in a forest, because nothing breaks it.

If steam does run, the usual priorities apply: wind direction and exhaust beat above all else. The basics are covered in the article How to photograph steam trains; for motion in the picture, the panning shot is the simplest exercise at this speed.

Does the visit suit you?

Where the source situation stays thin

With small association-run operations, research quickly hits its limits. Line length, vehicle list and construction sections change with every work session, and no one maintains a public database on it. Anyone still wanting to document cleanly records what they’ve actually seen – date, place, type, condition – and marks everything else as a guess.

That’s exactly where the value of such visits lies for an archive. What you write down in Lindenberg probably isn’t recorded anywhere else. How volunteer-run operations organise themselves and where you can get involved yourself is described in the overview of railway associations; a bundled entry point into the sector is provided by the umbrella body VDMT.

For a weekend round, a comparison with other light-railway concepts suggests itself: the 600 mm site of the MPSB in Mecklenburg and the electrically operated Buckow light railway east of Berlin. Three operations, three answers to the same question of how to open up a sparsely populated area.

Verdict

The Pollo isn’t a spectacular destination, but a stubborn one. An association has brought a piece of light railway back to a landscape without rails and has kept it running for decades – with few running days, a small fleet and a lot of volunteer work.

Anyone wanting to understand what Prussian light-railway law meant for areas like the Prignitz gets the most vivid answer still available here.

Record what no one else documents

Small heritage railways are rarely recorded – your sighting closes real gaps.

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