Meiningen depot

STB regional shuttles in front of the Meiningen depot

The Meiningen (Bw) depot was built in 1863 by the “Werra-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft” as an operating workshop. The plant belonged to the Prussian State Railways from 1895, to the Deutsche Reichsbahn from 1920 and to the Deutsche Bahn from 1994 . The branch of the railway operating company Süd-Thüringen-Bahn (STB) has been established here since 1999 .

location

The depot is opposite the station building in Meiningen station on the Werra Railway, on the Eisenach - Meiningen - Sonneberg railway line .

history

Factory workshop of the Werra Railway

When the Werra Railway went into operation in 1858, the railway company built a locomotive shed with a repair shop at Meiningen station . Major maintenance and repair work on locomotives was carried out in the central workshop of the Thuringian Railway Company in Erfurt . The constantly growing vehicle fleet and the cumbersome transport to Erfurt soon made it necessary to set up a workshop. Thus, at the end of 1863, the "Meiningen workshop" was opened with the inclusion of the Lokomotiv Remise. It had a roundhouse with 12 stalls and a turntable with a diameter of 15 meters. The initial stock was 19 locomotives and 367 wagons, which were looked after by around 80 workers.

After the opening of the Meiningen – Schweinfurt railway lines by the Bavarian State Railways in 1874 and Neudietendorf – Grimmenthal in 1884, Meiningen developed into the most important rail hub in southern Thuringia . The plant was then expanded, including another locomotive shed with a 10-meter turntable and a paint shed. In 1901 two locomotive lifting cranes followed. The number of employees rose to 350 in 1902.

Main workshop

After the Werrabahn was taken over by the Prussian State Railroad in 1895, the facility was converted into a main workshop on April 1, 1902 . The plant was expanded further. The number of repair stands was increased to 26 and a further six stands were set up in the engine shed. In 1904 a gunmetal foundry and a coppersmith were added, and a heated water tower was built. The buildable area in Meininger Bahnhof was now exhausted.

The steady increase in repair work, general inspections and other special work made it necessary to build a new plant. Not far to the north of the city, the new main workshop was inaugurated on March 2, 1914, which later developed into a repair shop , which still exists today as the Meiningen steam locomotive works .

Depot

The old main workshop now continued its work independently as a "Bahnbetriebswerk". As a result of the incorporation of the state railways into the Deutsche Reichsbahn , the depot was subordinate to the Reichsbahndirektion Erfurt from 1920 . At the same time, the Bavarian locomotive workshop, which had existed since 1874 and was located on the south-western part of the station area, was integrated into the depot. To the north of the locomotive shed, a modern locomotive treatment line was then built with a sanding and coaling system with a water crane and slagging channel. In the years that followed, all the stands were lengthened due to the steadily growing size of the locomotives, and the factory was given a new turntable with a diameter of 23 meters.

During the Second World War, the facilities were not damaged during the war. Since 1949 the depot was operated by the Deutsche Reichsbahn . From 1965, locomotives of the DR series 44 with main oil firing were used. In 1967 the first diesel locomotives with the classes 106 , 118 and 120 were introduced. With the closure of the last narrow-gauge railway in southern Thuringia, the last narrow-gauge locomotives disappeared from the inventory in 1974, so that only standard-gauge locomotives were maintained. After the old, dilapidated locomotive hall was torn down in 1973, the Reichsbahn built a new roundhouse with a new turntable from 1975 to 1980. The last steam locomotive was retired in 1980.

Since 1999 the Süd-Thüringen-Bahn, a company of the Erfurter Bahn (EB), has been operating several railway lines in South Thuringia instead of the DB and is based in Meiningen. Since then, it has been using the Meiningen depot as an operating facility. Today 32 Stadler Regio-Shuttle RS1 locomotives are serviced and repaired here.

Locomotive fleet in the Meiningen BW

model series	1863	1865	1933	1949	1958	1971	1989	2006	2018
1Bn2	11	13
Cn2	8th	10
38			8th	5	5
41					7th	4th
44				14th	11	4th
55				1
57			6th
58			13	7th
60				1
62			2
74				1
75				1
78				4th	8th
86					12
91			2
93				8th	8th
94				6th	6th	3
98				4th
99			3	4th	7th	2
101							8th
106						4th	7th
110							1
112							11
118						5	8th
120						4th
131							3
132							14th
RS1								32	37

literature

• Thielmann / Lohr, Reichsbahndirektion Erfurt - Bw Meiningen , Bahn & Bild Verlag, Berlin 1994

See also

• List of depots in Germany

Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 27 ″  N , 10 ° 25 ′ 19 ″  E