Narrow gauge railway Nagold – Altensteig

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Nagold – Altensteig
Route of the narrow-gauge railway Nagold – Altensteig
Route number (DB) : 4852
Course book section (DB) : 304g (1944)
325b (1934)
Route length: 15.110 km
Gauge : 1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Maximum slope : 25  ‰
Minimum radius : 80 m
Legend
Route - straight ahead
 from Pforzheim
Station, station
 0.000 Nagold
   
 to Hochdorf (b Horb)
   
 Connection to the Klinger & Barthel sawmill
   
 1.170 Goethestrasse
   
 1.300 Waldach
   
 1.370 Waldachtal siding
   
 1,880 Nagold city
   
 2.600 Nagold (22 m)
   
 3.410 Connection of August Reichert & Cie. Oil factory
   
 5.330 Connection to the Koch & Reichert cloth factory
   
 6.143 Rohrdorf
   
 8.517 Ebhausen
   
 13,182 Berneck
   
 13.300 Koellbach (7 m)
   
 15.110 Altensteig

The Nagold – Altensteig narrow-gauge railway - known locally as Altensteigerle or, more rarely, Rütschle - was a 15.110-kilometer-long, meter- gauge narrow - gauge railway in the northern Black Forest . From December 29, 1891 to 1967, it connected Altensteig with Nagold as a branch line . There, at Nagold station, there was a connection to the Württemberg Black Forest Railway or the Nagold Valley Railway, which had existed since 1872 . Today a railway bike path runs for the most part on the former route .

history

Nagold station (2004): the station forecourt was the starting point for the route to Altensteig until 1967
The former steam locomotive 99 193 of the railway, built in 1927
Former Deutsche Bahn passenger car number 6, built in 1935
The former diesel locomotive V 29 952 of the DB was in service in the Nagoldtal from May 1956 to 1967, today it is a museum locomotive at DEV

The Altensteigerle was opened in 1891 as the first narrow-gauge railway of the Royal Württemberg State Railways . It was built primarily for freight traffic because the logging industry was increasingly facing difficulties. In addition, the wood was to be sold through trading centers in Württemberg instead of being transported to Baden (Pforzheim) on the Nagold River. In order to save construction costs, the route originally ran mainly in the road surface of today's federal highway 28 . It was based on the model of the steam tram from Rappoltsweiler in Alsace - a narrow-gauge railway of the simplest design operated by steam locomotives - and initially also referred to as a tram. Formally, however, it was always a railway. Because the railway and the increasing amount of motor vehicle traffic later hindered each other, the line was extensively expanded in the mid-1930s. At that time it was largely given its own track structure next to the road. In 1927, the Deutsche Reichsbahn purchased four new steam locomotives that were replicas of the Saxon class 99.64-65 . Used passenger cars from the Filderbahn went to the Altensteiger Bahn. A set of elegant new passenger cars followed in the mid-1930s, as two passenger trains ran simultaneously for the first time due to the increasing number of excursions and special traffic, especially because Nagold became the preferred destination for special trains run by the “ Kraft durch Freude ” organization . After the Second World War , the railway then lost its importance, primarily because there was no direct rail connection to the major employers in the Böblingen / Sindelfingen area. The German Federal Railroad examined a switch to modern railcars, but this seemed too expensive.

First, passenger traffic was stopped in August 1962, before freight traffic also ended in May 1967. Long-term efforts by the branch line interest group in Altensteig, to which around a hundred local companies belonged, were in vain. However, in recent years many companies have only used the railways for low-profit freight, while lucrative goods have tended to be given to trucking companies. In this respect, the residents also had their share in the decline. The German Federal Railroad, on the other hand, made no promise about a possible minimum continuation of the railway, so that the freight customers geared their logistics less and less to the rail. The railway line was completely dismantled in the summer of 1967. Efforts by politicians to preserve the infrastructure for “strategic” reasons - both militarily and because of the dependence of road transport on oil - were unsuccessful. The city of Nagold described the railway as a traffic obstacle because of the repeated crossings with roads and operated the abandonment of the route, although only one pair of trains has been running since 1962.

As a special feature, the line to Altensteig has been used by the Esslingen machine works over the years as a test route for testing narrow-gauge vehicles intended for export . With a maximum gradient of four percent in Nagold, the Altensteiger Bahn was the steepest public railway line in Baden-Württemberg and therefore interesting for test drives.

Route

From the exit station in Nagold, the route initially descended into the valley of the Nagold , and then rose again after the Nagold Stadt stop. The meter-gauge railway then followed the course of the river to the Altensteig terminus, which with its numerous tracks was always the operating center of the route.

Vehicle use

First of all, two steam locomotives of the special type " Klose " were procured. Adolf Klose originally developed the basic design principle for the cogwheel locomotives of the Appenzeller Tram (today Appenzeller Bahnen). The design has also proven itself excellently in Bosnia for decades. In 1927 these early Altensteiger locomotives were replaced by four of the 99.19 series mentioned above . Two locomotives were lost due to the effects of the war (one machine came to the RBD Halle , the other to Yugoslavia ), so that after 1945 only two machines were available. After one machine was taken out of service, the 99 044 came as a replacement in 1956 . From the same year, a type V 29 diesel locomotive was also available. Operational service was carried out with these machines until they were shut down in 1967. The V 29 as well as one passenger and one freight car have been preserved and used by the German Railway Association . Another passenger car is available at the Öchsle Museum Railway .

Monument and model layout

On the occasion of the State Horticultural Show 2012 in Nagold, the Nagold History Association built an open-air museum with four vehicles on narrow and standard gauge as well as other exhibits, such as a meter-gauge track system and a trestle pit , on the former railway line. However, the show pieces come from various other railways in Germany and Switzerland.

In Altensteig there is an exhibition on the railway (open with trains every first Sunday of the month, additional dates are published) with the complete model of the route in 1:87 scale.

literature

  • Reinhard Schwarz, Gerhard Reule: The Altensteigerle, memory of a hundred-year-old local railway . 7th supplemented and expanded edition. Sparkasse Pforzheim Calw, 2012, ISBN 3-928116-08-8 (1st edition 1992)
  • Peter-Michael Mihailescu, Matthias Michalke: Forgotten railways in Baden-Württemberg . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0413-6 , p. 192-196 .

Web links

Commons : Nagold – Altensteig railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files