WORLD : Train to Berlin Makes Last Trip

Britain’s Military Train, a vestige of 45 years of Allied rights in Germany, pulled out of Berlin for the last time today after more than 16,000 trips through a Cold War corridor.

“It’s the end of an era,” military spokesman Mervyn Wynne-Jones sighed earlier as he watched workers load boxes of food and specially labeled wines.

“It was a unique facet of garrison life,” he said, stamping his feet against the cold at Charlottenburg station.

Britain had run daily trains for its forces from Berlin along a so-called “corridor” through then-Communist East Germany to West Germany since World War II.

Today’s final run to Braunschweig and back was the 16,118th trip for the seven-carriage “Berliner,” which started life as a troop train and ended more as a family day out carrier.