Herbertingen – Isny railway line

Herbertingen – Isny

Route number (DB) :

4550

Course book section (DB) :

752 (Aulendorf – Bad Wurzach)
753 (Sigmaringen – Memmingen / Hergatz)
754 (Aulendorf – Pfullendorf)

Route length:

84.539 km

Gauge :

1435 mm ( standard gauge )

Route class :

D4

Maximum slope :

1: 125 = 8 ‰

Minimum radius :

573 m

Legend

	from Sigmaringen
0.000	Herbertingen	548 m
	to Ulm
1.914	Herbertingen place	560 m
3.200	Mieterkingen
8,997	Bad Saulgau	593 m
13.100	Hochberg	617 m
	from Schwackenreute
19,463	Altshausen ( wedge station )	572 m
23.600	Steinenbach - Blönried	567 m
	from Friedrichshafen
28.012	Aulendorf	547 m
	to Ulm
	Shot
37.487	Bad Waldsee	597 m
	from Bad Wurzach
45.345	Rossberg	651 m
48.146	Alttann	670 m
50.853	Wolfegg (until 2005 train station)	677 m
55.600	Hahnensteig - Krumbach
	from Hergatz
57.665	Kisslegg	651 m
60.300	Reipertshofen	658 m
62.000	Freeload
63.300	Gebrazhofen	665 m
65.900	Heggelbach	665 m
68.612	Leutkirch ( wedge station )	652 m
	to Memmingen
72.060	Rauns
73.680	Eschach
73.830	Vacation (stopping point until 1935)
74.020	Holiday loading point (from 1976)
	Heeresmunitionsanstalt Urlau (1935–1948)
75.830	Eschach
77.260	Friesenhofen (until 1976)
78.400	Laiblesgraben
78.600	Dirt road near Rimpach
80.000	Friesenbach
80.830	Aigeltshofen
81.600	Rohrdorfer Bach
82.400	Dirt road near Rohrwies
82.700	Municipal road to Ratzenhofen
82.830	Lower Argen (34 m)
	from Kempten
84,539	Isny	697 m

Herbertingen train station

Altshausen station

Aulendorf station in 2011 with trains from three different companies

Kißlegg train station

Isny annex at Leutkirch station

Former track system towards Isny at Leutkirch station

Friesenhofen station

Aigeltshofen stop on a historical postcard

Isny station

The Herbertingen – Isny railway line , also known as Württembergische Allgäubahn or Württemberg-Allgäu-Bahn , is a standard-gauge and continuously single-track railway line in Baden-Württemberg . It is supported by the Deutsche Bahn operated with its subsidiary DB ZugBus regional traffic Alb-Bodensee the rail transport on behalf of the transport company Baden-Wuerttemberg provides (NVBW).

When building the route connected Herbertingen on the Danube with Isny is today but as of Leutkirch decommissioned . Originally it was a 84.539 kilometer long main line , in the end the section, which is no longer in operation, was only a branch line . By December 2020 the Kißlegg – Leutkirch section will be electrified as part of the expansion of the Munich - Lindau route . The Herbertingen – Aulendorf section used to be part of the so-called Zollernalb Railway from Tübingen to Aulendorf .

history

Construction and opening

In order to better connect the Württemberg part of the Allgäu to the heartland, a so-called "Railway Committee" was set up in 1860 with the aim of connecting Leutkirch and Isny to the network of the Royal Württemberg State Railways . On August 13, 1865, the Chamber of Deputies in Stuttgart finally decided to build the line, which went into operation in five sections:

July 25, 1869	Saulgau – Waldsee	28.490 kilometers
October 10, 1869	Herbertingen – Saulgau	08.997 kilometers
September 15, 1870	Waldsee – Kißlegg	20.178 kilometers
September 1, 1872	Kisslegg – Leutkirch	10.947 kilometers
August 15, 1874	Leutkirch – Isny	15.927 kilometers

In the Aulendorf station , the new line was linked to the Ulm – Friedrichshafen line , making the place an important rail hub in Upper Swabia . At the former Reipertshofen stop , the route also crosses the main European watershed between the Rhine and the Danube at a height of 658 meters .

Further development

After the Leutkirch – Memmingen line was opened in 1889 , the section from Leutkirch to Isny lost its traffic importance and was consequently relegated to a branch line in 1890. The last section was always lightly frequented, characteristic of the route was the low passenger potential on the en route stations, all three of which were away from the actual settlements:

the holiday stop was about 600 meters from the center of the municipality of the same name,
the Friesenhofen train station was about 1300 meters from the center of the municipality of the same name,
The Aigeltshofen stop was about 1000 meters from the center of the municipality of Rohrdorf, Aigeltshofen itself is only a hamlet .

In addition, the Isny terminus was about 900 meters from the market square. It was only when the Wehrmacht began to build the Heeresmunitionsanstalt Urlau in the Urlauer Tann forest near the route in 1935 that the last section became more important, at least for goods traffic. For example, a 2.5-kilometer-long connecting railway was built from vacation time , which led into the grounds of the ammunition plant. Extensive track systems were laid within the restricted area, including five ring tracks. In order to carry out the numerous shunting trips, the holiday stop was upgraded to a train station. Although the siding was dismantled on behalf of the French occupation troops in 1948, the newly founded Bundeswehr resumed military transports in 1961. From then on, however, the ammunition was loaded onto trucks in Friesenhofen and transported from there by road to the ammunition depot.

A nearby stop was opened in Herbertingen before the Second World War , because the route's exit station is unfavorable to the location. The best- known train on the route was the Kleber Express hedge cable train from Freiburg to Munich, which ran from 1954 to 2003.

Gradual discontinuation of the Leutkirch – Isny section

On June 1, 1969, with the beginning of the summer timetable, passenger traffic between Leutkirch and Isny was discontinued and taken over by rail buses . The cessation of freight traffic - and with it the closure between Friesenhofen and Isny - took place on May 30, 1976, again at the beginning of the summer timetable. Only the Leutkirch – Friesenhofen section continued to operate due to the extensive military traffic to the Urlau ammunition facility. Immediately after the route was shortened, the German Federal Railroad began building a loading point for military traffic a little south of the Urlau station . When it was put into operation on December 7, 1976, the Urlau – Friesenhofen loading point was shut down and the ammunition could now be reloaded in Urlau. The loading point was also used by civilian goods customers. Since 1976, the route to the Urlau loading station was only a siding to Leutkirch station. Nevertheless, it was extensively renovated between 1990 and 1993. At that time it received both a new superstructure and new rails , as well as the kilometer boards known from modern main railways , which replaced the old kilometer stones. At the same time as the upgrading began in the 1990s with the end of the Cold War, the decline of military traffic began. In the end, the siding was only rarely used; it was shut down on December 31, 2001 and dismantled in summer 2004.

The southern endpoint of Isny, on the other hand, was still connected to the railway network via the Kempten route until April 18, 1983, and it was used for both freight and passenger traffic until recently. The Leutkirch – Isny connection is still served by buses on line 7551 of the DB ZugBus Regionalverkehr Alb-Bodensee . To this day, continuous tickets can be purchased from any train station in Germany to destinations on the former Leutkirch – Isny line.

In July 2020, the Baden-Württemberg Ministry of Transport announced that the Leutkirch-Isny line would be included in a study to reactivate local rail transport.

Integration into the Allgäu-Swabia cycle

With the introduction of the Allgäu-Swabia cycle in 1993, an hourly cycle was introduced between Aulendorf and Leutkirch, which meant a significant increase in attractiveness. For the timetable change in December 2004, however, this was thinned out every two hours due to allegedly insufficient passenger numbers, although studies on the Aulendorf – Memmingen route between 1993 and 2003 showed an increase in passenger numbers of 386 percent.

As a result, the commuter initiative “Allgäubahn im Hourly” tried to enforce the reintroduction of the hourly service from the beginning of 2005. It achieved a partial success when, for the next timetable change in December 2005, individual trains that had previously been canceled were used again for work and school transport. In October 2006, the "Allgäu Railway Initiative" was founded, in which the towns along the route campaigned for an improvement in the offer. Among other things, the initiative coordinated by the Mayor of Kißlegg, Dieter Krattenmacher, commissioned Ulrich Grosse, Tübingen's local transport consultant, to provide an expert opinion. His concept of having bus lines no longer run parallel to the rail, but at right angles to it, was implemented in the summer of 2008 for the Kißlegg area.

With the timetable change to the winter timetable 2011/2012, the timetable was condensed again to an almost hourly cycle - but with remaining gaps at the times of the day with less traffic. The new Baden-Württemberg Minister of Transport, Winfried Hermann , used the contractual penalties to be paid by the railways due to the failure of tilting technology trains to finance the additionally ordered transports .

Freight transport

Today, freight traffic is essentially limited to the delivery of raw materials for the Saint-Gobain glass factory in Bad Wurzach ; in Roßberg these are transferred to the Roßbergbahn branching off there .

Relics in the disused section

The rails have been almost completely removed over the years, most recently in the remaining Leutkirch – Urlau section, where the track was dismantled in summer 2004. In three places there are still tracks left over. For example, in the area of the loading station Urlau - where the rails are embedded in the asphalt - when crossing a field lane at the level of the center of Urlau and when crossing a field lane at the former railroadman's post 79. The embankment was completely removed in two places, on the one hand at the hamlet of Rimpach To gain additional agricultural land, on the other hand in the hamlet of Speckenloch , where a flood retention basin was created for the Eschach . In addition, the station area in Isny was built over with an industrial area in the second half of the 1980s, and the “Bahnhofsarkaden” shopping center was built in Leutkirch in 2006 on the former route . However, all the station buildings as well as the guard post 79 have been preserved, they are used today as follows:

Vacation: residential building
Friesenhofen: inn
Aigeltshofen: residential building
Guard post 79: residential building
Isny: Video library

A total of five street names are still reminiscent of the railway, these are Urlau Bahnhof and Am Bahndamm in Urlau, Friesenhofen Bahnhof and Alte Bahnlinie in Friesenhofen and Bahnhofstraße in Isny.

Bike path

Around 2001, a graveled footpath and bike path were set up on an approximately 2.7 km long section of the former route . This begins at the hamlet of Oberhofen and ends at the gatekeeper post 79 at kilometer 81.83.

reception

Parts of Christian Wagner's film Waller's last course were shot in 1988 on the Leutkirch – Isny section. Essentially, however, this takes place on the neighboring Kempten – Isny railway line .

literature

Peter-Michael Mihailescu, Matthias Michalke: Forgotten railways in Baden-Württemberg . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0413-6 , p. 223-225 .
Thomas Scherer: Railways in Württemberg. Volume I: The Württemberg Allgäu Railway . Ulm 1981, DNB 821062026

Web links

Commons : Allgäubahn (Württemberg) - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Ministry investigates reactivation of the Leutkirch - Isny railway line . leutkirch.de - official website of the city of Leutkirch. July 16, 2020.

[1] Ministry investigates reactivation of the Leutkirch - Isny railway line . leutkirch.de - official website of the city of Leutkirch. July 16, 2020.

Herbertingen – Isny ​​railway line