Kahl – Schöllkrippen railway line

Kahl (Main) - Schöllkrippen
Route number :	9361
Course book section (DB) :	642
Route length:	23.0 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Route class :	CM4
Maximum slope :	12  ‰
Minimum radius :	117 m
Top speed:	80 km / h
Legend from Frankfurt (Main) Süd 0.0 Bald (Main) to Aschaffenburg 1.1 Kahl Kopp / Heide 2.5 Alzenau trout / Giesbert 3.8 Alzenau Industriestrasse 4.0 Alzenau north 4.6 Alzenau Mahle 5.0 Alzenau (Unterfr) 5.7 Alzenau Castle 7.0 Rough calves 8.5 Michelbach (Unterfr) 9.7 Michelbach (Unterfr) Herrnmühle 10.5 Hahnenkamm-Dörsthof 12.4 Niedersteinbach 13.5 Mömbris-Strötzbach 14.8 Mömbris canteen buttocks 17.0 Schimborn 18.5 Koenigshofen (Kahl) 20.5 Blankenbach Langenborn 23.0 Schöllkrippen 203 m

The Kahl – Schöllkrippen railway line , also known as the Kahlgrundbahn , is a branch line in Bavaria . It branches off the Frankfurt Süd – Aschaffenburg railway in Kahl am Main and leads in the Kahlgrund to Schöllkrippen in the Spessart . It was largely initiated by Valentin Kihn , the father of Karl Kihn , doctor from Großauheim . The trains on the route are popularly called Bembel , which goes back to the ringing of the bell on the steam locomotive.

history

The route was built on the basis of the Bavarian concession on September 17, 1897 by the railway construction and operating company H. Christner in Hanau. With the Bavarian concession of April 26, 1899, the concession was transferred to the Kahlgrund-Eisenbahn AG , based in Schöllkrippen. The route was opened on October 30, 1898.

The 1939 summer timetable recorded five pairs of passenger trains between Kahl (Main) and Schöllkrippen on weekdays and four on Sundays. The trains took almost an hour to cover the 23 kilometers, which corresponds to a cruising speed of just 25 km / h.

Passenger train in Mömbris-Mensengesäß (around 1952)

In 1951 the Kahlgrund-Eisenbahn AG was insolvent and had to file for bankruptcy. Kahlgrund Verkehrs-GmbH (KVG) was constituted as legal successor on October 28, 1952 , and continued operations unchanged.

Since 1997, almost all passenger trains to and from Hanau Hbf have been linked, where there is a direct connection to Frankfurt (Main) Hbf . The route is in the tariff area of ​​the Verkehrsgemeinschaft am Bayerischen Untermain (VAB), and its transitional tariff also applies to trips to and from the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV). The RMV runs the Hanau Hbf – Schöllkrippen route as a regional train line RB 56 .

From 1997, the KVG has comprehensively renewed tracks and systems. After the work was completed, the line speed between Alzenau Nord and Kahl Kopp / Heide could be increased to 80 km / h. The train stations and stops have been modernized to be handicapped accessible and equipped with electronic passenger information systems. Crossing stations were equipped with fallback switches . Most of the level crossings were technically secured.

The light signals set up in 1997 are a special design from ADtranz . They show signal aspects of the H / V system . (Michelbach station, 2015)

Furthermore, electronic passenger information systems were installed at the stations so that the Kahlgrundbahn has a well-developed infrastructure. With 15 stations served over 23 kilometers, the average distance between stops is around 1.6 kilometers. The journey time for the approximately 30 kilometers from Schöllkrippen to Hanau is approximately 50 minutes, which corresponds to an average speed of 36 km / h.

Following a tender, the Hessische Landesbahn (HLB) took over passenger transport as a railway company (EVU) in December 2009 , while the KVG, as the owner of the line, has only acted as a railway infrastructure company (EIU) since then . The KVG workshop in Schöllkrippen is now rented to DB Westfrankenbahn.

The trains now run every hour, on Saturdays from 3:00 p.m. and on Sundays every two hours. The first car class is not offered. In order to cope with the busy school traffic from the Kahlgrund to the secondary schools in Alzenau, an amplifier train runs from Schöllkrippen to Kahl every morning on school days. Since the timetable change on December 11, 2005, the traffic has been carried out exclusively by the Hessische Landesbahn (HLB), following a tender carried out by the Bavarian Railway Company and the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund in 2003 the order to operate the Kahlgrundbahn for the next ten Years had received. The HLB procured six new diesel multiple units for the route , which were serviced in the workshop of the HLB branch in Butzbach . When the timetable changed in December 2015, DB RegioNetz ( Westfrankenbahn ) took over travel.

Repeater trains for rush-hour traffic and, above all, a connection to Frankfurt - as is the case with the Bad Vilbel – Glauburg-Stockheim or Taunus Railway - were repeatedly discussed in the local press, but have not yet been implemented. An employee of the Bavarian Railway Company in Munich referred to the Kahlgrundbahn railcars in this context as "cookie jars", which have no place on one of the most heavily used main lines in Germany. This is one of the reasons why the operating concept has stagnated since 1997 when it was connected to Hanau Hbf.

For several years now, the district and the local transport officer have also endeavored to minimize the number of unsecured level crossings. These stand in the way of an acceleration of the route. For example, speed limits had to be set up at Flederichsmühle (in the direction of Schöllkrippen) and in Niedersteinbach .

According to the concept of the Bavarian state government for more electric mobility on the rails in Bavaria, Interior Minister Joachim Herrmann proposed the route to Hanau from a Bavarian perspective as a pilot project for operation with Eco Train (diesel / battery hybrid with pantograph).

Vehicle use

Regio-Shuttle VT 95 of the KVG (2005)

The KVG last used NE 81 railcars, a Stadler Regio-Shuttle RS 1 and three vehicles from the 642 series on the route . HLB and currently DB Westfrankenbahn uses multiple units of the DB class 642 (Siemens Desiro Classic).

Two historical vehicles of the Kahlgrundbahn, the multiple units VB 165 and VB 167 from the years 1952 and 1955 were preserved in a museum and were destroyed in a fire in a hall of the former depot in Worms on November 8, 2019. (See here .)

Web links

Commons : Kahlgrundbahn  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• The Kahlgrundbahn between Hanau and Schöllkrippen
• Kahlgrund-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft mbH
• Formerly the official website of the HLB for the route ( Memento from 29 August 2012 in the Internet Archive )
• Early documents and newspaper articles on the Kahl – Schöllkrippen railway line in the 20th century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Our Kahlgrund 1989 . Homeland yearbook for the Alzenau district. Published by the working group for homeland research and homeland maintenance of the Alzenau district, district administrator. ISSN  0933-1328 .
2. ↑ Handbook of German Railway Lines ", reprint 1984 of" The German Railways in their Development 1835-1935 ", edited by Deutsche Reichsbahn, Berlin 1935
3. ↑ Summer timetable 1939
4. ↑ Announcement of awarded contracts . ted.europa.eu. Retrieved April 2, 2016.
5. ↑ No more stopping at Waldstadt. (JavaScript required) Retrieved September 3, 2016 . 
6. ↑ More electromobility on the rails. Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior, for Sport and Integration, January 23, 2018, accessed on June 2, 2019 . 
7. ↑ schr: Shed fire in Worms destroys many vehicles . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International 1/2020, p. 8.