Mertingen – Wertingen railway line
| Mertingen train station – Wertingen | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route number : | 5311 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course book section (DB) : | ex 911 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 17 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Mertingen – Wertingen line was a branch line in Bavaria . It branched off the Augsburg – Nördlingen railway line in Mertingen and ran along the Zusam to Wertingen . The route could possibly be reactivated.
history
The line was opened on June 8, 1905 after only about a year of construction as a connection between the city of Wertingen and the Augsburg – Nördlingen line at the Mertingen station. It was a single-track, non-electrified branch line. The route turned in a wide arc from the main route in Mertingen and then ran straight through flat agricultural land.
In the course of the 1970s, passenger transport became less and less profitable, which is why scheduled passenger train operations were completely stopped on May 29, 1981. In the end there were only a few trains (" alibi trains ") that were still used by many students. Accumulator railcars of the 515 series and rail buses were used as locomotives in the 1970s . The last passenger trains on the route ran on the occasion of the WERTA district exhibition in Wertingen from September 30 to October 3, 1995.
Freight traffic was maintained until 1997. On December 20, 1997, the last freight train drove from Wertingen to Mertingen. Mainly sugar beets were transported to the Südzucker company in Rain via Mertingen, Donauwörth and Rain / Lech Bf.
On August 27, 1998, the Federal Railway Authority approved the closure of the line, which was completed on October 15, 1998. From June to September 2004, the line was largely dismantled. After the closure, there was initially a short section from Mertingen station to the siding of a steel construction company, which was converted into a siding at Mertingen station for further use in freight traffic, but was also dismantled in the middle of the decade.
On July 9, 2020, the line was named as a test case of a railway line to be reactivated in the position paper of the VDV . An examination is necessary because “attractive destinations cannot be reached directly, but there are attractive connections in the direction of Donauwörth and Augsburg”.
Whereabouts
The Buttenwiesen station area was partially rebuilt by the Buttenwiesen Railway Friends . The association bought a railway car from the Schwaben-Dampf Neuoffingen association, which was set up in the station area.
At the former terminus in Wertingen, a goods shed and an imposing agricultural warehouse are reminiscent of the railway line. The station building was probably demolished and replaced by a residential building.
Web links
- Timetable on the route in the timetable year 1939
- Timetable on the route in the timetable year 1944/45
- Condition of the railway line in 2008 on vergessene-bahnen.de
- Picture gallery at bahntrassenradeln.de
- On the agenda: reactivation of railway lines (PDF file)
Individual evidence
- ↑ Markus Hehl: The steam locomotive era in Swabia. Klartext Verlag, Essen, 2011, ISBN 978-3-8375-0613-6 , page 36.
- ↑ Alteneder, W., Schüssler, C .: The branch lines of the BD Munich, Bonn 1987, p. 164
- ↑ List of federal lines closed since 1994 (Germany as a whole) , accessed on August 30, 2020.
- ^ VDV: reactivation of railway lines. Retrieved August 5, 2020 .