European Stars and Stripes (Newspaper) - September 19, 1994, Darmstadt, Hesse                                Over Here Douglas Gibson right Waits with other spotters at the British rail station in Acton. Right photo cameras and notepads come out As a train passes by. Loys of Tram a by Jessica Baldwin the associated press t he rumble of a Distant train stops All conversation. Tape recorders binoculars cameras and notepads Are readied. As the train passes men carefully document the presence of locomotive no. 47803 pulling a Load of gravel. Quot that s the yellow submarine she was painted in Stratford Quot says Douglas David Gibson returning his two cameras to his briefcase. Gibson 56, and the others perched on platform 4 of the Acton mainline station just West of Busy Paddington terminal in London Are devotees of train spotting a British pastime that involves seeing and noting everything that runs on British rail s 11,000 Miles of track. There Are about 2,000 locomotives 11,000 passenger cars Quot carriages Quot to the British and 16,000 freight cars. Decades ago train spotting was a popular Hobby for men and boys transfixed by the gleaming glamorous steam engines. Now those who practice it have an image problem. Murray Brown editor of rail Magazine even bristles at the term  he prefers Quot railway enthusiasts Quot and estimates them to number about 250,000. Quot it s a very much derided Hobby Quot Brown said Quot it s of to sit by a River in the rain or to hit balls in holes you can t see. But if you Are a rail enthusiast you Are perceived As a head Case and the Media tends to Latch onto this dreadful name  train spotters Are a familiar sight to British rail passengers particularly at such Busy English junctions As Crewe Carlisle Clapham in South London and new. Street station in Birmingham the one Man play Anorak of fire which ran for five months in London and is now a cult hit on a six month tour portrays the spotter As a mind of a single track. Quot it is True though that spotting is a destroyer of relationships Quot the character says. Quot it is hard to spot and to have what they Call  a you know a Girlfriend. Spotting is a dosed world. Not very attractive to women. There Are some women spotters but it s hard for them to both spot and bring up a family so mothers Don t seem to encourage it in their  to much of the wider world the train spotter is a nerd. He is Scruff ily dressed with Black rimmed glasses that May be held together with tape wearing a Parka or windbreaker. He carries a flask of Tea and a notebook camera video or tape recorder or All of the above. Quot it s not portrayed As hip and trendy Quot said Martin Jenkins 21, an engineering student who photographs trains during vacations. The stigma is Daft. Now you go into a school and you won t find one boy who is willing to admit he is a rail  David weeks a clinical psychologist in Edinburgh Scotland has studied eccentric English behaviour including , which he describes As Quot a Happy obsessive  Quot for some trains become so exclusive it Clouds out other thoughts in their. Minds Quot he said. Quot it even goes to lengths a where you be got those who work for British rail and train spot on Days  Gibson is one such. He works the night shift As a signalman goes Home to sleep for a couple of hours then grabs his briefcase and is Back at the rails As a train spotter by Day. He is part of a hard Core group of four or five who alternately stake out the Acton mainline for the diesel locomotives and Wandsworth Road where the electrics run. When traffic lags Gibson Aims his binoculars skyward toward passing planes. Quot it s an american Quot he tells comrades sitting in the Shade of Steps leading Down to platform 4. But before Gibson can finish relaying the plane s numerical information a fellow spotter interrupts with news of train movement at the depot Down the line. Then All eyes return to Earth notebooks and cameras come out and the passing of another train is faithfully  subject Kohl wants to give Boot to red socks by Lance Gay Scripps Howard news service when Pushy West germans appeared to take Over East Berlin in 1990, Herta Plache 83, was prompted to fight Back the Only Way. She could she picked up her knitting Needles. Sitting it her Bleak Eastern Berlin apartment the widow completed knitting her 3,600th Woolen red sock earlier this month. Plache gives the knitted socks to former East Germany a communist newspaper Neues deutschland which Sells them for $3 each at rallies and fairs on behalf of the party of democratic socialism the successor to East Germany a former communist party. The nickname of the ads is a red  Quot i am not satisfied since the breakdown of the Berlin Wall a she said. Quot we lived More satisfied in the old Days. Now Money is the Only thing and everyone is cheating each other and the people have different relations with one another. There was no possies East germans Are dirty and vessles West germans Are good1 Here  Plache a communist party member and director of a group of state run companies under the old regime has a list of things she does no to like about today s Berlin including the higher costs of transportation food and rent. But her major complaint is that the government pays Only one third of the monthly $620 pension she got from the old regime. / a a a 1 �?�1. V a her Hope is that the ads will win at least three parliamentary seats in the oct. 16 Federal elections. That s the minimum number required to be recognized As a National party in Germany a bundestag. Chancellor Helmut Kohl takes that threat so seriously that he has made the ads Ted socks the bogeyman of this years elections. He has warned voters that the disgraced communist party is mounting a comeback in Germany just As reformed communists have done in Poland and Hungary. Koht charges that Germany a main opposition party the social democrats is reversing its Post unification policy of refusing to Deal with the former communists and is prepared to make alliances with the communists to take Power. He cites the elections in Saxony an Haft earlier this year where the ads Lent its support to a coalition of social democrats and Green party environmentalists to oust Kohls Christian democrats in Dresden. The social democrats have angrily filed suit charging Kohl slandered them by saying they re soft on communism. Ads spokesman roman Hanno Harnisch a 42-year-old former East German radio announcer said his party is thankful for All the attention Kohl is giving it but he scoffs at the idea that the sex communists Are Strong enough to take Over Germany s government. Harnisch said the ads has Only 130,000 dues paying members and is Only seeking to gain enough influence to push issues in parliament and represent the interests of Eastern germans ill treated by the economic changes brought by unification. There s no wish to return to the old Days he said. Quot but we done to want to be conquered by the West either. The Way unification was done we Are treated As second class  monday september 19, 1994 the stars and stripes