Cham – Bad Kötzting railway line

Cham – Bad Kötzting
Route number :	5811
Course book section (DB) :	877
Route length:	22.429 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Schwandorf from Waldmünchen 0.000 Cham (Oberpf) 374 m Bundesstrasse 22 2,595 Cham (Oberpf) Schwedenschanze to Furth im Wald Chamb 5.600 Runding (until 2005) 9,081 Chamerau 14,525 Miltach 383 m to Straubing (until 1984) 17.683 Blaibach (Oberpf) 384 m to Gotteszell (until 1991) 19.300 Pulling (near Kötzting) (until 1922) 22,429 Bad Kötzting according to Lam Swell:

The Cham – Bad Kötzting line is a branch line in Bavaria . It runs in the Upper Palatinate from Cham to Bad Kötzting .

history

The Cham – Lam railway was built by the Royal Bavarian State Railways . An extension to Lam was carried out by the private AG Lokalbahn Lam – Kötzting ( LLK ) in 1891.

Station building in Bad Kötzting

Since June 1, 1905, the Straubing – Miltach railway has joined this line. On December 20, 1927, the Gotteszell – Blaibach line built by the Regentalbahn was opened to traffic, providing another connection to the south.

On September 28, 1984, the Miltach – Steinburg section of the branch line to Straubing was closed for passenger traffic. Freight traffic between Miltach and Konzell was handled by the Regentalbahn until 1995. In 1991, rail operations between Blaibach and Viechtach were discontinued. With this setting, there was no longer a direct rail link between the Regentalbahn routes.

Freight traffic was terminated on June 30, 1994, initially from Miltach and on September 25, 1994 also between Cham and Miltach.

Passenger traffic is operated today by the Regentalbahn with Regio-Shuttle- multiple units as " Oberpfalzbahn ". The Regentalbahn works as a direct contractor for the Bavarian Railway Company .

From the early 1990s to 2005, most trains had to change trains in Kötzting for operational reasons. With the changeover of the line to the train control operating procedure at the beginning of the 1990s , the points in the local station were dismantled to manual points (i.e. non-powered points ) and the staffing of the station was abandoned. Encounters ( "crossings" ) of two trains were therefore only possible with greater expenditure of time, as the switch operation was carried out by the train driver in consultation with the train conductor by telephone . As planned, almost all trains coming from Lam or Cham were routed to one track each in Kötzting, where they also turned, so that the position of the points did not have to be changed. In 2001 the Bad Kötzting – Lam route was included in the validity area of ​​the Bayerwald Ticket . On December 11, 2005, two fallback switches were put into operation at Bad Kötzting station , which now makes it possible to run all Cham – Lam trains without having to change trains.

Train traffic

VT 35 of the Upper Palatinate Railway in Miltach

In 2006, the Upper Palatinate Railway runs 13 pairs of trains on workdays under the timetable number 877 and nine pairs of trains on weekends, with a journey time of one hour. It used to be a lot different. In the summer of 1897, the Bavarian State Railroad ran only three pairs of trains a day on the Cham - Lam route, each taking two and a half hours. In 1913 the local railway ran its own route with a connection to the state railway with three pairs of trains. Despite a transfer time of around 15 minutes, the travel time for the entire route was only two hours. In 1936 the situation had improved significantly. With five pairs of trains a day and a transfer time of usually only a few minutes, the total travel time was sometimes only 70 to 80 minutes.

The train services on the railway line from December 14, 2014 were part of the tender by the Bavarian Railway Company called the "Regional Train Network East Bavaria" . The Regentalbahn continues to operate this route as the winner.

Nowadays this route is known under the line OPB4 (Cham – Lam). There is no regular regular service on this route, although there has recently been an evening train between Lam and Cham. Train crossings take place regularly in Bad Kötzting.

Tariff

The railway line is fully integrated into the association tariff of the Verkehrsgemeinschaft des Landkreis Cham (VLC) and is divided into eleven tariff zones.

The Bayerwald-Ticket is also valid on the Bad Kötzting – Lam section owned by the Regentalbahn . Between May 1, 2010 and June 30, 2011, the Guest Service Environment Ticket (GUTi) was only valid on this route. With the accession of several municipalities in the district of Cham to this system, the tourist cards of the participating municipalities are now accepted as travel documents on the entire route and beyond in the entire VLC.

literature

• Andreas Fried, Klaus-Peter Quill: Regentalbahn . Bufe-Fachbuch-Verlag, Egglham 1999, ISBN 3-922138-72-1 .
• Handbook of the German railways . Dumjahn Verlag, Mainz 1984, ISBN 978-3-921426-29-6 (Unchanged reprint of a publication published by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1935, The German Railways in their Development 1835-1935 ).
• Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways, Volume 7: Bavaria . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2002, ISBN 3-88255-666-8 , p. 95-114 .

Web links

Commons : Category: Cham-Lam railway line  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ^ Andreas Fried, Klaus-Peter Quill: Regentalbahn . Bufe-Fachbuch-Verlag, Egglham 1999, ISBN 978-3-922138-72-3 , pp. 92 .
4. ↑ "Acceleration Cham – Lam": Communication from the Bavarian Railway Company of July 25, 2005
5. ↑ Photo report about the fallback switches in Kötzting station