Eisfeld – Sonneberg railway line

Eisfeld – Sonneberg (Thür) central station
Route number (DB) :	6693 (Eisfeld – Rauenstein) 6692 (Rauenstein – Sonneberg)
Course book section (DB) :	569
Route length:	32.89 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Maximum slope :	27.8  ‰
Minimum radius :	225 m
Legend from Eisenach Narrow-gauge railway from Schönbrunn 0.000 Ice field 438.66 m to Lichtenfels 4.870 Katzberg 505.41 m 9.110 Bachfeld 410.00 m 10.628 Schalkau 403.47 m 11,311 Schalkau Mitte (since 2004) Grümpentalbrücke ( Ebensfeld – Erfurt ) 13.65 Grumble 427.55 m 15,970 Rauenstein (Thür) 448.33 m 20.235 Rare village 410.66 m 21,526 Effelder (door) 405.20 m 25,460 Mengersgereuth hammering 487.70 m Mengersgereuth Viaduct (97.4 m) 26,867 Mengersgereuth-Hammern Ost formerly Forschengereuth 490.50 m Viaduct Sonneberg West (171 m) 30.533 Sonneberg (Thür) West formerly begging hedges 399.00 m from Coburg 32.865 Sonneberg (Thür) central station 387.25 m to Ernstthal am Rennsteig

The Eisfeld – Sonneberg railway line (also known as the hinterland railway ) is a branch line in Thuringia . It runs through the Sonneberg hinterland along the southern foothills of the Thuringian Slate Mountains from Eisfeld to Sonneberg .

history

Mengersgereuth-Hammern viaduct

Viaduct Sonneberg

In 1897, the then District Administrator of Götting founded the “Committee for the Establishment of a Railway Link Eisfeld – Schalkau – Sonneberg” in Sonneberg with the aim of opening up the “hinterland” with a standard-gauge branch line and connecting it to the main Werrabahn line. In its memorandum of January 27, 1898 to the ducal state government in Meiningen, the committee gave preference, among other things, to a route with a curve and a viaduct near Grümpen and a branch line to Rauenstein. However, the lack of approval of subsidies for railway construction by the state government in Meiningen delayed the implementation of the project.

It was not until January 11, 1906, that the Meiningen Landtag approved the construction of the railway, which now also included the development of Rauenstein with a hairpin. Since the project planning and construction was to be carried out by the Royal Prussian Railway Administration, a state treaty between the Kingdom of Prussia and the Duchy of Saxony-Meiningen with construction costs of 4.4 million marks followed on February 1, 1906 . The municipalities had to surrender land free of charge and free of encumbrances. The land acquisition costs for the communities totaled 360,000 marks. The city of Schalkau gave grants of 40,000 marks and the porcelain factory Rauenstein with 50,000 marks.

The forced economy and the difficult terrain resulted in some structural compromises. This affected, among other things, the bypass of the summer mountain near Bachfeld and the hairpin of Rauenstein. Additional costs resulted in particular from the poor building ground in some areas. On September 14, 1909, the first 21.5 km from Eisfeld to Effelder were put into operation; the entire 32.9 km long route was inaugurated on March 31, 1910. The construction costs came to 4.9 million marks.

Until 1945 the line was mainly used to develop the Sonneberg hinterland, but for more than 40 years it became the lifeline of the city of Sonneberg thanks to the zone boundary that interrupted the Sonneberg – Stockheim and Sonneberg – Coburg lines . Almost all of the goods traffic ran through it to Eisfeld. After the turning point and the closing of the gap between Coburg and Sonneberg, the route lost its importance and drastically in terms of travelers. Due to high operating costs and the lack of line maintenance, Deutsche Bahn ceased operations on January 22, 1997.

In 1999, the Free State of Thuringia commissioned the Erfurt industrial railway to operate local rail passenger transport, including the company Thüringer Eisenbahn GmbH (subsidiary of Erfurter Gleisbau GmbH) as the rail infrastructure operator and Süd-Thüringen-Bahn GmbH (subsidiary of a consortium of the Erfurt industrial railway and the Hessian state railway) ) were founded as a transport operator. The line was leased from DB Netz AG and, after extensive line renovation, operations were resumed on October 3, 2002.

traffic

At the time of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , the passenger trains needed at least 62 minutes for the 32.9 km long route, the change of direction alone with the relocation of the locomotive in the Rauenstein railway station took twelve minutes. Today the fastest journey with the railcars of the Süd-Thüringen-Bahn takes 42 minutes. The route with a maximum route speed of 60 km / h is operated in train control mode. The train conductor, who is also the dispatcher in the Sonneberg signal box , uses radio to determine who is on the route when and where. The train drivers report to the dispatcher before departure and after arrival at the Eisfeld, Rauenstein, Mengersgereuth-Hammern and Sonneberg train stations, and the journey continues after verbal instructions.

On December 10, 2004, a new type of safety technology was also installed. It automatically monitors the actions of the dispatcher and the driver. The occupancy of a section of the route is determined through independent evaluation of the axle counting circuits , and the PZB magnet controlled by this at the beginning of each section of the route prevents the unauthorized entry of a train into this section by means of automatic braking. Personnel are not deployed at the Rauenstein and Mengersgereuth-Hammern railway stations, where train crossings are possible, as there are fallback switches .

Considerations of linking the route near Rauenstein via several tunnels with the high-speed line from Nuremberg to Erfurt were rated by an expert report at the beginning of 2009 as not financially viable.

features

The railway line has the route number 6692 between Eisfeld and Rauenstein and 6693 between Rauenstein and Sonneberg. The greatest gradient of the 32.9 km long single-track branch line is 1:36 at Sonneberg, the smallest curve radius 225 m. Of the engineering structures, the viaducts from Mengersgereuth-Hammern and from Sonneberg-West with a length of 171 m and a height of 23 m should be mentioned. A special operational feature in Rauenstein is the switchback station, in which the trains change the direction of travel.

Renaming

Forschengereuth station was named Mengersgereuth-Hammern Ost in 1935 and the Bettelhecken stop was named Sonneberg West in 1935 .

literature

• Wolfgang Beyer: Railway in the Sonneberger Land . Eisenbahn-Fachbuch-Verlag Neustadt / Coburg, 2004. ISBN 3-9807748-5-6

Web links

Commons : Eisfeld – Sonneberg railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Course book 1944

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Wolfgang Beyer: Eisenbahn im Sonneberger Land , pp. 125–127
2. ↑ ICE from Thuringia to Coburg costs 100 million. (No longer available online.) In: nn-online.de. April 2, 2009, formerly in the original ; Retrieved April 3, 2009 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )