Hacktrain

The Hacktrain was a train chartering project, which was organized by Enno Lenze, (Hacker scene), and Simon Kissel (Demoscene). It provided "geek-compatible" travel to a hacker congress in Germany.

History

In the European hacker scene there are several events during a year. The highlight of every year is the Chaos Communication Congress, held by the Chaos Computer Club. This event lead to the first plans for the Hacktrain by Enno Lenze.

Inquiris to railway about travel arrangements companies was not very successful, since the costs were much too high. But a discussion in a German train related newsgroup lead to new hope. One of the readers of the newsgroup, Simon Kissel, was an active member of the demo scene, and his father owned a small train company. He was very interested in the project and helped a lot with programming a jukebox system for the music and a web interface for booking tickets. Via mouth-to-mouth propaganda, as well as an article in Germany's most popular IT Newsticker, heise.de, the Hacktrain became popular.

First Hacktrain

The first Hacktrain rode to the 19th Chaos Communication Congress, Berlin in 2002. It Started at Mainz, with a route taking the train through Cologne, Düsseldorf, Bochum, Hamm, Bielefeld and Hannover. From the beginning there were minor problems in the organization. While the train driver and the catering team were preparing the train at the train station Bingen, the organizers were not there. Two of them did not find their hotel and did not know where the train was located, the others were sleeping because their cellphones and alarm-clocks were set on silent by mistake. The people who did not find their hotel found the train in the last minute, while the others had to catch the train at the next station.

The train was composed of a railcar and a control cars. Both were built by the German company Esslinger in the 1950s. There was no passageway between both wagons. 195 of the 200 available tickets were sold. A two-way ticket was priced at 90 Euros (about 110 US Dollars), regardless of when one joined the train. Using the web based ticket system, which was coded for the hacktrain, one had the ability to check for free seats and see the name or nickname of the people who had already bought tickets.Before the train left the first station it was prepared with special HackTrain identification plates, balloons, extra tables and generators.

In the train there were several WLAN access points as well as a 100mbit cable network. In every wagon, speakers were mounted for music and general information. The music was chosen by the passengers, who had the ability to upload their own music and vote for it. The Jukebox was coded especially for the HackTrain.

Most passengers chose a train station close to their city. But there were also two people from Switzerland, who travelled several hundred miles to Mainz to get the HackTrain there. In the second wagon there were problems with the heater, which could not be solved locally. Free warm drinks were handed out to the passengers. Also there was a journalist of the WDR (public TV of North Rhine-Westphalia) who wrote an article for their online editorial.

The journey time from Bingen to Berlin Alexanderplatz was about 18 hours.

Second HackTrain

For the 20th Chaos Communication Congress, a second HackTrain was planned. It had to be cancelled because of discrepancies within the community.

Third HackTrain

In the summer of 2005 the hacker gathering "What the Hack" took place in the Netherlands. The third HackTrain should have travelled there. The route was changed a few times during the planning process. In the first version it should have started in Bingen, travelled through Cologne and to the Netherlands. But since this route was too short and would have attracted too few passengers, it was reconsidered. The second route went through Bremen and Berlin, but in both cities the interest was too low. The final route was from Bingen via Gießen, Hannover, Bielefeld, Hamm, Bochum, Düsseldorf and Venlo to Den Bosch (Netherlands).

This time a more advanced train should have been used, the special train "rolling wine route" of the train company "Centalbahn". In that train, 386 seats (an allusion to the 386 processor) would have been available. Additionally a wagon for luggage was planned. But since the time schedule of organizing was very short there was the need of 200 sold tickets within the first 14 days, which failed. This HackTrain was cancelled as well. This was presumably the last HackTrain.

External links

* http://www.hacktrain.de (German)
* http://www.wdr.de/themen/computer/1/hacktrain/index.jhtml (German)
* http://wiki.whatthehack.org/index.php/HackTrain