I was in the Karlshorst area of Berlin, looking to see if I could get into the former Soviet base there. However it was heavily into being converted into flats, and as such covered in workmen during the day. I busied myself with GES113, which turned out to be a bore. While heading back into central Berlin, I spotted this decaying beauty by the tracks. Intrigued, I double backed on myself, and set off to try and get to it.

It was easier said than done, as there didn't appear to be any road reaching it according to my smartphone's GPS map. I walked along beside the tracks in the warm sunshine. Passing neat little bungalows with clipped lawns and yapping lapdogs, in-line skaters making the most of the smooth pavement. I eventually came to a bridge over the tracks, and then started walking back on myself. Passing around the back of a Lidl, and then a piece of waste ground that looked like it was being prepared for development. I found what looked like an old station building. There were rail worker vehicles parked all over the place, and someone painting their fence across the road. I decided to just go for it, and nipped around a heras fence. The building's yard was overgrown, and the station roof not in a good shape. You can also see in this picture on the left, the Berliners propensity for putting all their pipes above ground, rather than below as in most other cities.

The empty station building is below. Not much of interest. I looked out the window to see track workers walking back and forth, while dump trucks delivered stones for the tracks they were building.

Out the window the elusive rail tracks I was now realising i'd have to cross.

I went back on myself to the waste ground area between the station and the Lidl store. And 'disappeared' like magic or something, into the thin smattering of bushes. I was now at the end of a steep bank up to the tracks. I walked along the wall i'd just climbed, and was about to jump onto the bank, when a train came by. So I sat on the wall with my back to the tracks. 'Nothing happening here Mr.Driver, just chilling on the wall.' As soon as he'd gone I leapt up to the tracks and tried to hide as best I could by a track signal. Not easy in hot sunshine on a clear day. I now realised there were two pairs of tracks, a lower set were down a bank on the far side of the tracks I was next to. Weighing up the options of being seen running across the tracks, an intercity train shot down the lower tracks as it headed out of the city. I figured now or never, and legged it across the tracks I was next to. Then dropped into the scrub at the top of the bank, checked around, and then ran down the bank and crossed the second tracks. I was now in some bushes just down from the Betriebsbahnhof/Train Operating Station (TOS). And checking no trains were imminent, jogged into the TOS. I relaxed on a window ledge in the warm sunshine coming through the TOS's roof. It was a beautiful building, with lots of old ironwork about.

Here where the tracks used to allow trains to come in and out after being turned around. The tracks I'd just crossed, are on the other side of the green strip.

Vandals and mother nature have taken care of the windows, and I don't think the roof is going to be that far behind. The centre of the roof structure's shadow moves slowly across the floor like some huge static spider.

The remains of the turn-table, sitting in it's dish bowl.

Some fisheye action, carrying the normal idiosyncrasies of the fisheye. There's a walkway around the top of the pillars, but no way of getting up there without some awkward climbing action.

I sat for awhile here, just soaking up the wonderful afternoon sunshine and the solitude. The only real noise being the occasional intercity train rumbling past and shaking the building.

Looking at the building on GoogleEarth, the structure must have only lost the central part of the roof in recent years, as it appears to exist when looking down.