Assmannshausen – Jagdschloß railway line
| Assmannshausen hunting lodge | |||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Overview map of the cog railways to the Niederwald
| |||||||||
| Route length: | 1.53 km | ||||||||
| Gauge : | 1000 mm ( meter gauge ) | ||||||||
|
|||||||||
The Assmannshausen – Jagdschloss railway line was a 1.53-kilometer-long, meter-gauge rack railway from the Assmannshausen valley station , now a district of Rüdesheim am Rhein , to the Niederwald hunting lodge . From there a 2.5 km long forest path led to the Niederwald monument . It operated in the summer season from 1886 to 1917, and since 1953 the Niederwald cable car has replaced the one that was broken off in 1922. The operating company of the rack railway was the Niederwald-Bahn-Gesellschaft , or NWB for short .
technology
The Riggenbach cogwheel system was used to overcome the steep stretch up to the Jagdschloss with a height difference of 230 meters . The trains were driven by steam locomotives that always ran down the valley.
history
The railway was the smaller sister project of the Niederwaldbahn from Rüdesheim to the Niederwalddenkmal. Both railway lines, started from different initiatives, but executed with the same technology, were ultimately combined in the Niederwald-Bahn-Gesellschaft.
The Aßmannshausen – Jagdschloß railway was opened in trial operation on October 10, 1885.
It was a purely touristic railway line : it only ran from Palm Sunday , Easter or May 1st until the end of October. With the First World War , tourism and thus demand collapsed drastically, traffic had to be restricted and stopped entirely on August 6, 1917.
In 1920, the operating company applied for release from the operating obligation, which was granted in 1921. In 1922 the facilities were demolished and the tracks and vehicles scrapped.
The tourism industry in Assmannshausen soon regretted not using the train. In 1925 efforts were made to build a new railway with funds from the Kleinbahnfonds. In 1927 Orenstein & Koppel worked out the project of an electrified meter-gauge railway that was to lead from Assmannshausen via the hunting lodge to the Niederwald monument. The project was not carried out, rather a bus line was set up. On July 8, 1953, a chairlift was finally put into operation between Assmannshausen and the Jagdschloss , which is still running today.
literature
- Gerd Wolff and Andreas Christopher: German small and private railways. Volume 8: Hesse . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2004, ISBN 3-88255-667-6 , p. 94 ff .
- Heinz Söhnlein: Niederwaldbahn Rüdesheim am Rhein. The former cog railway from Rüdesheim am Rhein to the National Monument on the Niederwald, a historical view. Mainz-Gonsenheim, self-published by Heinz Söhnlein (last manager of the cogwheel mountain railway), 1976
Web links
- History of Assmannshausen on the information page about Assmannshausen