Mosbach – Mudau railway line
| Mosbach – Mudau | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route number (DB) : | 4123 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course book section (DB) : | 321f (1953-1964) 303g (1944) |
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| Route length: | 27.51 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1000 mm ( meter gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maximum slope : | 1:40 = 25 ‰ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minimum radius : | 100 m | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top speed: | 30 km / h | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Mosbach – Mudau railway was a meter- gauge narrow - gauge railway in Baden-Württemberg . It connected Mosbach with Mudau from 1905 to 1973 and opened up the southeastern Odenwald . Their route length was 27.51 km with a height difference of 305 meters. It was the only state narrow-gauge railway and the only privately operated state railway in the former Grand Duchy of Baden .
The vernacular called the railway also Odenwald Express , Zügle , Bähnle , 's Bembele or duck killer . The latter name is an allusion to the low speed at which the train is said to have been dangerous only for ducks sitting on the tracks .
Topography and administrative affiliation
topography
The alternative name of the Odenwaldexpress is the name given to the low mountain range that gave it its name, through whose southeastern part, which belongs to Baden-Württemberg, the route ran. The area in northeastern Baden has always been structurally weak, which is why it is popularly referred to as Baden Siberia . The railway line was in a rural area that is now part of the Rhine-Neckar metropolitan region .
The route began on the forecourt of the old Mosbach train station, where it shared a platform with the bus service . After it ran parallel to the Neckarelz – Osterburken railway line for about two kilometers , it spanned it and led through a partly densely forested area to finally end in Mudau. Despite the geographically rather difficult conditions, the engineering structures on the railway line were limited to bridges, they did not have tunnels . The largest bridge structure along the route was the Bieberklingen Bridge , which still exists today, between Hasbachtal and Lohrbach , which has three pillars.
After crossing the main railway, the route rose significantly, especially between Hasbachtal and Sattelbach , where the incline was sometimes 1:40, i.e. one meter of incline on a 40-meter route.
On its way, the route followed different rivers, all of which belong to the Neckar river system . From Mosbach to the junction from the main line, it was based on the Elz , then to Lohrbach on its tributary Hasbach , which was also the namesake of the Hasbachtal stop. From Fahrenbach to Krumbach it ran in the valley of the Trienzbach and finally from Limbach to the end point Mudau again on the Elz.
Administrative affiliation
In the course of Baden-Württemberg's district and community reform around 1970, the administrative situation changed. If the Mosbach-Limbach section was within the Mosbach district , the remaining part between Laudenberg and Mudau was in the Buchen district . Since 1973, the route has been completely within the boundaries of what is now the Neckar-Odenwald district . The following four communities were passed: Mosbach (from the starting point Mosbach to Sattelbach), Fahrenbach (from Fahrenbach to Robern), Limbach (from Krumbach to Laudenberg) and Mudau (from Langenelz to Mudau).
history
planning
From the 1890s onwards there were efforts to connect the area around the north Baden Odenwald community of Mudau to the railway network. Although the southern, Baden part of the Odenwald had already been developed over the course of the decades by means of the Badische Odenwaldbahn Heidelberg - Würzburg , the Neckar Valley Railway Neckargemünd - Jagstfeld and the Seckach – Miltenberg (Madonnenlandbahn) railway line, the one part of Baden was the one was at the immediate border triangle with Hesse and Bavaria, remained without connection. As a result, this area suffered from migration and the economic situation there developed unfavorably.
In order to open up this region for rail traffic, a total of two variants were examined: One should lead from Mosbach to Mudau, another from Eberbach via Mudau to Buchen.
The driving force in the early years of the project was the then Limbach main teacher Karl Trunzer . From the start he favored the narrow-gauge route from Mosbach to Mudau. After the mayor of Eberbach, John Gustav Weiß, began to campaign again for the route from Eberbach to Buchen, this was the drive for Trunzer to campaign even more for the Mosbach – Mudau route. As the first ally he was able to inspire the state parliament member Julius Breitner , in Mudau the factory owner Julius Link , his brother Kronenwirt Heinrich Link and mayor Isidor Linz and in Mosbach the mayor August Strauss for the railway project. At the suggestion of Trunzer, a railway committee was founded in 1897 with representatives from all the communities on the route from Mosbach to Mudau, which he initially chaired. Another committee was also founded in 1897 with representatives from Eberbach and Buchen, but could not find any advocates in Mudau, as the representatives there were already members of the committee founded by Trunzer for the Mosbach – Mudau route variant. After Trunzer was transferred to Buchen in 1899, Mosbach's mayor Strauss took over the chairmanship of the railway committee.
In an appraisal that was completed in March 1901, the route from Mosbach to Mudau turned out to be the cheaper route in terms of both construction costs and settlement density, which is why it was finally given preference.
In the meantime, the Mosbach mayor Strauss, who also headed the railway committee, had grown tired of his office. His successor as mayor of Mosbach and chairman of the railway committee was Jakob Renz , who from 1902 also chaired the executive committee founded by the communities involved in the railway project. For his clever negotiation and leadership skills, Renz was awarded the Knight's Cross, 2nd class, from the Zähringer Löwen in 1905.
On July 23, 1902, the Baden state parliament passed a law to build the railway line. Both for financial reasons and because of the topographical conditions, it was decided to run the route in a narrow gauge. The Grand Ducal Baden State Railways were supposed to own the line, but had it built and operated by the Berlin company Vering & Waechter . The reason for this decision was that the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways had no experience with narrow-gauge railways and therefore showed no interest in operating one. The contract between Baden and Vering & Waechter came into being on October 21, 1902.
A land acquisition committee was elected to acquire all the required land, chaired by the Leiningen forester Arnoldi from Lohrbach. A total of 689 plots of land in twelve municipalities were to be acquired. Acquiring land turned out to be complicated. The owners were initially called to the respective town halls to negotiate sales, the unwilling were invited to "expropriation trips" to discuss the route and any objections with them on site. If all efforts are unsuccessful, an expropriation was planned. While it was hoped that expropriations would only have to occur in individual cases, the cases soon increased. In Fahrenbach alone, 21 expropriation proceedings had to be initiated because practically all landowners there opposed the construction of the railway or the amount of the proposed compensation. The expropriation often meant accepting personal hardships. The Mosbach factory owner Haas, for example, was planning an expansion of his factory and his house, but then had to accept that the route running close to the development in Mosbach cut through the property planned for this purpose and he was unable to realize his business and structural plans. His claims for compensation initially amounted to ten times the amount of compensation offered and, even after long negotiations, they could not agree, so that in the end the expropriation came into play. In addition, there were protracted negotiations because of crop failures of the farmers affected by the railway construction and because of the remuneration of individual fruit trees that were felled or moved in unmanageable numbers. Another problem was that the construction of the railway destroyed some meadow irrigation systems or that the land was cut off from irrigation by the railway line, so that further compensation claims were made. Negotiations to acquire the land and to compensate the previous owner dragged on long after construction began in 1903. The final accounts of the land purchase fund could only be drawn up in 1910, long after the railway had already opened.
Construction and opening
In the spring of 1903 the route was marked out. The property owners have been asked not to build on the property any more and to move any bushes and trees that are worth preserving. However, the approval of the State Ministry for the construction of the line was delayed until the end of September. It was a rainy autumn and construction work could not start immediately due to the weather. In November, the landmarks previously in the route were cleared and the trees there were marked for felling.
The actual construction work then took place in the course of 1904. The largest construction tasks were the construction of a total of 13 bridges, the layout of the station areas in Mosbach and Mudau as well as various landscape-related earthworks. After the first trains for ballasting the track were already running on the line towards the end of 1904, the Grand Ducal Government was given the prospect of completing the work before the end of 1904. Then, with the onset of winter, there were numerous landslides, so that the railway embankments had to be reworked again in the spring of 1905. At the intersection with the Neckarelz-Osterburken railway line, there were also constructional problems, so that the opening, which had meanwhile been planned for May 14, 1905, was postponed again for a few days.
The route was officially opened on May 31, 1905 in the presence of Hereditary Grand Duke Friedrich von Baden. On the following two days, operations were tested with a total of four pairs of trains before regular traffic began on June 3, 1905.
Development until 1945
On April 19, 1912, a serious accident occurred between Hasbach and Mosbach as a result of a derailment that left two dead and several injured. The train had to be closed for two days. The subsequent intensive research into the causes of the railway accident was even discussed in the Baden state parliament. It turned out that a broken rail had caused the derailment, eliminating human error.
At around the same time, it was also evident that the route was not profitable. The lease agreed that Vering & Waechter would operate the line until 1925. However, the company decided to hand over the railway to its subsidiary Deutsche Eisenbahn-Betriebsgesellschaft AG (DEBG), which took place on April 1, 1917. But the change in operator did not improve the critical situation either.
After the Reichsbahndirektion Karlsruhe gave its approval, trolley traffic , with which standard-gauge wagons could run on the narrow-gauge line , began on April 1, 1926 . In the period that followed, the criticism that the line was operated by a private owner increased. Due to constant disputes between the owner and the leaseholder of the railway, the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft , owner of the line since 1920, took over the management of the line from May 1, 1931 and made it subordinate to the Karlsruhe Railway Directorate .
Decline after 1945 and closure
After the Second World War, the German Federal Railroad (DB) took over the route. However, for many places the road had the advantage of a direct and therefore faster connection in the direction of Eberbach - Heidelberg - Mannheim . Motorized individual transport therefore withdrew more and more passengers from the railway in the 1960s, as did bus lines that ran parallel to the railway. The Deutsche Bundesbahn itself also contributed to the latter, as it had most journeys carried out by rail bus , so that from 1964 only one pair of trains remained. In addition, the Hasbachtal stop , which was mainly used for excursion traffic, was abandoned in 1965 due to low traffic.
Nevertheless, the state of Baden-Württemberg made an attempt to maintain the branch line by financing the purchase of two narrow-gauge diesel locomotives of the V 52 series as well as new four-axle passenger cars in the same year 1964 , which replaced the steam locomotives and two-axle passenger cars previously used. The reasons for the interest on the part of the state were, on the one hand, the poor road conditions in the region in winter and, on the other hand, the fact that freight traffic was still of certain importance.
However, since sufficient income could not be achieved in either passenger or freight traffic and all rationalization measures failed, the Deutsche Bundesbahn continued to plan to shut down. The electrification of the main line from Heidelberg to Osterburken finally led to the closure of the Mudau line, which crossed the standard gauge route on a bridge shortly before the former Hasbachtal stop. This was too low for the new contact line, so either the branch line should have been raised or the main line should have been lowered. With effect from June 3, 1973 all traffic was therefore stopped. Efforts to set up a museum railway in the Lohrbach – Mudau section were not successful, so that the line was subsequently dismantled.
Relics
Since 1980, the route between Hasbachtal and Mudau has largely been used as a long-distance hiking and cycling route , which is also signposted as a "hiking railway ". While the route ran everywhere on the outskirts of the town when the railway was in operation, with the exception of Sattelbach and Robern (Fahrenbach) it was overtaken by new development areas everywhere; in Krumbach near Limbach, for example, it is interrupted by a sports field.
In addition, some station buildings have been preserved. The Lohrbach train station now houses a restaurant, the bus shelter at the Hasbachtal stop serves as weather protection for hikers, and others such as Sattelbach train station have been converted into residential buildings. There is also a form signal at Limbach train station , which was only set up symbolically a few years ago. The narrow-gauge railway never had such signals. Along the route you will also find bell and whistle boards, which were only set up again when the trail was prepared, as well as some signs on bridges.
business
Stop on the go
The railway started in Mosbach at a four-track narrow-gauge freight station in the direction of the Odenwaldhöhen. At the level of the Mosbach station forecourt, there was a platform for changing from the Heidelberg-Osterburken railway line to the narrow-gauge railway . The operation of the locomotive shed and the handling of goods took place a few meters away.
The Hasbachtal stop was named after a nearby river valley and was used exclusively for leisure traffic. The low level of use led to the stop being abandoned as early as 1965, eight years before the line was closed. Although it wasn't a train station, it initially even had a siding.
The subway stations Lohrbach, Sattelbach, Krumbach, Limbach and Laudenberg had connecting and loading tracks. Limbach station also had, just like the starting and ending points Mosbach and Mudau, a trolley pit with a three-rail track on which standard-gauge freight wagons could be parked. Apart from the Hasbachtal stop, the Robern stop recorded the lowest demand in passenger traffic; because the place of the same name was about two kilometers from the railway line.
The Mudau terminus was also the operating center of the line. In addition to a train station and administration building, it had extensive track systems with a locomotive and a wagon shed. A workshop was also located in the northern area of the station. Nevertheless, the Mudau station was not the absolute end of the tracks: north of the station, after a street crossing, there was a siding that served a warehouse.
vehicles
At the beginning, four wet steam locomotives with the C wheel arrangement were in operation, which were supplied by the Borsig locomotive factory in Berlin and which were also referred to as the Badische C in the literature. The machines had the serial numbers 5324 to 5327. With their output of 160 hp, which they transferred to the rails via three coupled axles, the locomotives were often used in difficult terrain (maximum gradient 1:40, with a smallest curve radius of 100 meters) at their performance limit. After the operation was taken over by the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the locomotives were given the road numbers 99 7201, 99 7202, 99 7203 and 99 7204.
From April 1, 1939 to April 4, 1941, the Fairlie locomotive 99 162 from Saxony had a guest appearance on the route, it was mainly used for freight trains with high freight volumes. Then she came back to the Saxon Rollbockbahn Reichenbach-Oberheinsdorf , from which she was previously borrowed. Since there were bottlenecks in train transport from the spring of 1952, the steam locomotive 99 291 was temporarily used on the Odenwaldexpress, which had previously been stationed on the Walhallabahn . During its brief deployment on the route, it served exclusively passenger trains before it was retired at the end of 1955. Interestingly, there are no photos showing them in action on this railway line. This locomotive was scrapped near Ingolstadt as early as 1960 .
In 1964, the four remaining steam locomotives were two modern, developed for the track diesel locomotives of the series V 52 by the company Gmeinder in Mosbach with numbers V 52901 and V 52,902 (1968: 252,901 and 252,902 ) replaced. These locomotives, with their two bogies and long stems of the V 100 series (later 211/212 series), looked similar and well-proven, had an output of 2 × 270 hp and a maximum speed of 40 km / h.
From 1905 until retirement in the mid-sixties, two-axle passenger cars that had been built in Görlitz were used; from 1965 newly built four-axle vehicles from the Karlsruhe Aw with state funds , which were handed over to the Wangerooger Inselbahn after the closure .
Whereabouts
All four steam locomotives used on the route were preserved. The 99 7201 got a new home at the Hirzbergbahn in 2008 , after it had previously been in a garden near Passau. The 99 7202 is set up as a monument locomotive at the Mudau terminus. The 99 7203 was temporarily in use during the dismantling work on the Busenbach – Ittersbach railway line ; today it is used in museums on the Amstetten – Oppingen line . The fourth machine, the 99 7204, is now with a collector in the Netherlands, after having been at a sawmill near Aichach for many years and from 1994 to 2014 at the Sauerland Kleinbahn near Plettenberg.
In addition to the steam locomotives, some of the earlier passenger coaches have been preserved. The former passenger car 9 (141) has been running as number 14 on the Bruchhausen-Vilsen-Asendorf museum railway since 1966 , the passenger car 124 and the baggage car 15 "(172) are on the Sauerland Kleinbahn. Passenger car 8 (140) and luggage car 17 ( 182), meanwhile also with the Sauerländer Kleinbahn, are owned by a collector in the Netherlands. Two of the new-build passenger cars, a purely passenger car (114) and the half- baggage car 117, now run on the Brohltalbahn and the baggage car 16 on the "Selfkantbahn" In addition, after a long stay on the site of the former sewage treatment plant in Mudau , the body of passenger car 2 (136) is now at the IG Hirzbergbahn.
Freight transport
Freight traffic was of relatively great importance on the route: an operation with trolleys enabled the transport of standard gauge freight wagons on the narrow gauge. The implementation took place in Mosbach and at individual train stations with cargo handling, where a few meters of standard gauge tracks (as a three-rail track) with a trolley ramp were also installed, on which the standard gauge cars could be parked during loading and unloading so that the few trolleys were not too long To withdraw from operation.
There were several sidings along the train stations, for example the Reimuth honey factory had a siding at the level of the Sattelbach train station, and the Grimmolite factory in Krumbach . The Limbach train station had a particularly high volume of goods, as there were a total of three lamp factories in the town. Accordingly, lampshades were the main cargo in Limbach train station. In addition, it was even equipped with a goods shed. Mudau station was also of great importance in freight traffic, as it even had two sidings. But not only the stations were important for freight traffic, but also the Trienz and Robern stops , so that they at least had a loading platform. The tariff point Robern was canceled in 1954 due to the rather weak demand.
The railway line in literature
In Willi Heinrich's novel Das Geduldige Fleisch , the soldier Hollerbach hangs over his memories of his childhood and youth in Mudau; Before the war he was a clerk at the Mudau train station.
literature
- Josef Högemann: Narrow gauge railway Mosbach – Mudau . Kenning, Nordhorn 1993, ISBN 3-927587-15-X .
- Peter-Michael Mihailescu, Matthias Michalke: Forgotten railways in Baden-Württemberg . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0413-6 , p. 17-21 .
- Dietmar Weber: The Mosbach – Mudau narrow-gauge railway. Origin, function and use of a branch line . Bezirksmuseum Association, Buchen 1999, ISBN 3-923699-20-4 .
- Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: Railways between Neckar, Tauber and Main . tape 1 : Historical development and railway construction . EK-Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) 2001, ISBN 3-88255-766-4 .
- Hans-Wolfgang Scharf: Railways between Neckar, Tauber and Main . tape 2 : Design, operation and machine service . EK-Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) 2001, ISBN 3-88255-768-0 .
- Gerd Wolff, Hans-Dieter Menges: German small and private railways, Vol. 2, Baden . EK-Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) 1992, ISBN 3-88255-653-6 , p. 78-91 .
- Axel Priebs: From the Odenwaldexpress to the hiking railway. The history of the Mosbach – Mudau branch line spanning 8 decades . Verlag Laub, Elztal-Dallau 1982, ISBN 3-88260-017-9 .
- Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft: Map of the REICHSBAHNDIREKTION KARLSRUHE district - as of November 1, 1930 .
Web links
- The Mosbach – Mudau railway line on the "Schmalspur in Baden-Württemberg" website
- From the Odenwaldexpress to the hiking railway on the website of the city of Mosbach
- verkehrsrelktionen.de - Railway relics in the Odenwald
- Excerpt from the course book from 1944
- on forgotten tracks
