Molli bathing railway

Bad Doberan – Ostseebad Kühlungsborn West
Route number :	6996
Course book section (DB) :	186
Route length:	15.43 km
Gauge :	900 mm ( narrow gauge )
Top speed:	40 km / h
Legend Transition to the Wismar – Rostock railway line 0.00 Bad Doberan 0.60 Bad Doberan town center 0.90 Bad Doberan Severinstrasse (until 1940 Bad Doberan Poststrasse) 1.10 Bad Doberan Goethestrasse 3.80 Racetrack 4.80 Front Bollhagen 6.61 Heiligendamm (until 1910) 6.50 Heiligendamm (since 1910) 9.40 Behind Bollhagen 10.20 Steep coast / Wittenbeck (since 1969) 11.50 Fulgen 12.70 Ostseebad Kühlungsborn Ost (until 1938 Brunshaupten) 13.10 Ostseebad Kühlungsborn Mitte 15.43 Ostseebad Kühlungsborn West (until 1938 Ostseebad Arendsee)

Molli on the line

The Bäderbahn Molli , also known as the Molli or Molli ( line number : RB 31 ), is a steam-powered narrow - gauge railway in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . Their track width is 900 millimeters. The 15.43 km long route today from railway companies Mecklenburg Molli railway (MBB) operated and connects Bad Doberan with Heiligendamm and Kuehlungsborn . The journey time is around 40 minutes. Within Bad Doberan, the train travels on grooved rails that lie in the pavement, similar to a tram , through the Mollistraße named after it. In the further course it is laid out on Vignole rails along an avenue of lime trees. Between Heiligendamm and Ostseebad Kühlungsborn, the route runs parallel to the Baltic coast over fields.

history

Locomotive No. 2 with a train of the Doberan-Heiligendammer Railway around 1890

Steam train of the Reichsbahn in the terminus Ostseebad Kühlungsborn West 1992

On June 19, 1886, Friedrich Franz III, Grand Duke of Mecklenburg granted the concession to build and operate a narrow-gauge railway from Doberan station to Heiligendamm, this first section went into operation on July 9, 1886. It was built by the private railway construction and operating company Lenz & Co GmbH from Stettin and run by the Doberan-Heiligendammer Railway , or DHE for short . Traffic on the 6.61-kilometer route, which was operated as a steam tram and was later classified as a small train , initially only took place during the summer season from May 1st to September 30th. On March 13, 1890 , the Grand Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin nationalized the railway and incorporated it into the Grand Ducal Mecklenburg Friedrich-Franz Railway .

On December 18, 1908, it was decided to extend the railway to the Baltic Sea resort of Arendsee , which in 1938 was merged with the neighboring communities of Brunshaupten and Fulgen to form the Baltic Sea resort of Kühlungsborn. This extension went into operation on May 12, 1910, and at the same time Heiligendamm station was moved 200 meters to the south. In the same year the freight traffic was started; the train now ran all year round. From April 1, 1920 it belonged to the Deutsche Reichsbahn . On December 1, 1928, this reintroduced the (old) 2nd class , after previously only trains with 3rd class cars operated.

The reloading of goods from the standard gauge Wismar – Rostock to the narrow-gauge railway turned out to be time-consuming and unprofitable. The transport of standard gauge wagons on narrow-gauge trolleys , as was common on the Saxon narrow-gauge railways , was ruled out from the outset due to the narrow town through Bad Doberan. Thus, the freight traffic was stopped on May 31, 1969.

The route was served by 13 pairs of trains a day. In 1976, the then Rostock district added the railway to the district monument list. On October 1, 1995, an operating company consisting of the Bad Doberan district and the cities of Ostseebad Kühlungsborn and Bad Doberan took over the route from Deutsche Bahn AG . Today the mixed-economic company operates as Mecklenburgische Bäderbahn Molli GmbH , based in Bad Doberan. The terminus Ostseebad Kühlungsborn West houses the Molli Museum and the depot .

Steam locomotive 99 323 in Bad Doberan

On February 27, 1997, the Mecklenburgische Bäderbahn Molli, together with the Rostocker Straßenbahn AG transport company , DB Regio AG Nordost, Coastal Regional Transport , White Fleet and antaris, founded the Warnow transport association . Since then, the Bäderbahn Molli has accepted weekly and monthly tickets from the network range. This means that the trains are operated as local public transport trains and officially run under the regional train line designation RB 31. However, tickets from the Deutsche Bahn price system have not been recognized since the operator change.

Molli achieved worldwide fame as the official and only means of transport for the press to the G8 summit in Heiligendamm in 2007 .

At the end of 2012, plans were presented to extend the railway line to Warnemünde . Representatives of the cities of Bad Doberan, Kühlungsborn and Rostock hope that this will result in a significant increase in demand. The costs for this are estimated at a double-digit million amount. The reconstruction of the Neubukow Obere Weiche – Bastorf narrow-gauge railway and its connection to the bathing railway , presented for the last time in April 2014, was also rejected because of the estimated costs of 33 million euros.

In the 2017 timetable, the route will be operated daily from 10–11 in the summer and by 4–5 train pairs in the winter.

Companies

Mecklenburg Spa Railway Molli GmbH
legal form	GmbH
founding	1995
Seat	Bad Doberan
management	Michael Misslitz
Number of employees	66 (average 2009)
sales	4.1 million EUR (2009)
Branch	traffic
Website	www.molli-bahn.de

The company is partly owned by the district of Rostock (64%), the city of Bad Doberan (19.7%), the Ostseebad Kühlungsborn (14.8%) and three natural persons (1.5%).

year	Train kilometers	Passengers	Employee	Sales in million euros	Balance sheet total in million euros	Profit in million euros
2009	91,969	546.415	66	4.1	15.5	0.7
2008		607.994	67	4.0	16.4	0.7
2007	84.198	609,000	68	3.6	13.5	0.5
2006	89,844	558,000	67	3.4	11.6	0.2

Vehicle use

Steam locomotives of both today's Molli series in Kühlungsborn West

When operations began, two locomotives were available. These machines, which were later included in the XVIII class , were designed as tram locomotives and were in use until 1915. In 1891 and 1898 the vehicle fleet was supplemented by the triple-coupled locomotives of class XIX .

From 1910 the locomotives of the class T 7 (99 301-303) drove on the line and at the same time the locomotives of the class XIX were transferred to the Neubukow beet railway . The locomotive park was strengthened in 1923 by the DR series 99.31 (99 311-313). These locomotives are all decommissioned.

In 1932, the Deutsche Reichsbahn had the significantly larger, faster and more powerful locomotives of the DR series 99.32 (99 321–323) built. These three locomotives are still in use today under the numbers 99 2321 to 2323. In 1961, three more locomotives came from the SDAG Wismut works railways to the Molli and were classified here as the DR series 99.33 (99 331 to 333). One of the three, the 99 331 (later 99 2331), is operational and serves as a reserve or as a train locomotive in winter due to the higher safety against derailment. 99 332 is a memorial at the Molli Museum in Bad Kühlungsborn West train station; the locomotive 99 333 was scrapped.

From 2008 to 2009 the locomotive 99 2324 was rebuilt for the Molli in the Meiningen steam locomotive works, which is a replica of a standard locomotive 99 321–323. is. For the first time in almost 50 years in Germany , a steam locomotive for regular service was built. Production was carried out by adapting the historical plans to today's manufacturing processes. In order to avoid a rush of photographers, the new locomotive ran with the locomotive number of its sister locomotive 99 2323-6 during the test drives before the official commissioning.

Current timetable

Narrow gauge railway

In the summer high season, as well as other selected dates is the day the hourly down with two trains, each just before the hour in Heiligendamm cross . In Bad Doberan there are good connections to and from Rostock as well as from and to Wismar . Due to the lower demand from tourists, only one train set runs every two hours with a slightly shorter total travel time in winter, as there is no crossing in Heiligendamm.

The Rennbahn station is only served on racing days there or at other events such as the Zappanale and during construction work on the route to change to the rail replacement service (SEV).

Mollibus

The canceled trips in winter were served by the so-called Mollibus until 2009 in the rail replacement service, which was operated by Regionalverkehr Coast . The journeys then took over the line 121 of the RvK (today Rebus GmbH). It runs from Rostock ZOB via Bad Doberan, Heiligendamm and Ostseebad Kühlungsborn to Rerik .

gallery

View from the driver's cab to the railway line

• 

  The Bad Doberan thoroughfare in 1990

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  Train crossing in Heiligendamm

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  Interior view of the saloon car

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  Wintry ride

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  Tickets

• Play media file

  Bad Doberan through-town in the film

• 

  Molli stamps from the series "Narrow Gauge Railways in the GDR"

music

• The Mecklenburg duo De Plattfööt sings in their song “Holiday up'n Molli an de See”, published in 1989 on the Amiga LP “Wenn du ok Plattfööt hest”, in Low German about the Molli spa.
• In 1991 Gerd Rüdiger Enzmann published the song "Halt dich fest, der Molli comes".

literature

• Hans-Ulrich Pfeiffer, Jan Methling, Ludger Kenning: The Bad Doberan - Kühlungsborn bathing railway and the Neubukow - Blengow - Bastorf beet railway. Kenning, Nordhorn 2005, ISBN 3-933613-75-2 .
• Lothar Schultz: The Molli: the narrow-gauge railway Bad Doberan - Kühlungsborn West. Transpress, Stuttgart 2003, ISBN 3-613-71208-3 .
• Jan Methling, Roland Hertwig: 125 years of Molli - The fastest among the small ones Eisenbahn-Kurier Special 101, EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2nd quarter 2011, ISSN  0170-5288 .

Web links

Commons : Bäderbahn Molli  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature about the Molli bathing railway in the state bibliography MV
• Homepage of the Mecklenburgische Bäderbahn Molli GmbH
• Vehicle list

Individual evidence

1. ↑ 125 years of Molli: Anniversary review on the Eisenbahn-Kurier website, accessed on May 19, 2020
2. ↑ Line profile on the website of Verkehrsgesellschaft Mecklenburg-Vorpommern mbH, accessed on February 1, 2020
3. ↑ The history of the “Molli” bathing railway , accessed on June 6, 2011
4. ^ Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Official Gazette of the Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz of October 20, 1928, No. 46. Announcement No. 589, p. 287.
5. ↑ Idea: Molli steams to Warnemünde . In Ostsee-Zeitung , local edition Rostock, December 14, 2012
6. ↑ LänderBAHN - Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania - short messages . In: Bahn-Report . No. 2 , 2013, p. 37 .
7. ↑ Beet railway remains a beautiful dream . In Ostsee-Zeitung , local edition Rostock, April 5, 2014
8. ↑ ^{a b} Search in the electronic Federal Gazette Bäderbahn Molli: Annual financial statements as of December 31, 2009
9. ↑ Society
10. ↑ The replica steam locomotive 99.2324-4 ( Memento of 12 December 2013, Internet Archive )

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