Railway line Nördlingen – Wemding

Noerdlingen – Wemding
Route number :	5332
Course book section (DB) :	ex 884
Route length:	17.317 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Top speed:	60 km / h
Legend from Donauwörth 0.00 Nordlingen to Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt to Dombühl 1.60 to Pleinfeld 2.80 Connection of Sped. Döderlein / Roman Mayer Logistik Group 4.36 Löpsingen 6.20 Eger 6.54 Deiningen (near Nördlingen) Connection to the operational airfield 1935–45 Connection of the lignite mine 1920–22 10.33 Fessenheim 10.70 Wörnitz 11.73 Muttenau 16.29 Wildbad-Wemding 17.32 Wemding Connection of lime works

The railway Nördlingen Wemding is a former branch line in Ries in Bavaria administrative region of Swabia . The line was 17.3 km long, and another 1.5 km long track led from Wemding station to a lime works.

history

Disused railway line Nördlingen-Wemding

The line was opened on October 4, 1903 by the Bavarian State Railways . One of the tasks of the railway was to remove lignite extracted from the middle Ries. The railway was nicknamed "Wemde-Hans" by the people of Nördlingen.

Around 1918 a large number of wells were drilled in the area around Möderhof (between 1858 and 1877 there had already been test wells around Nördlingen, Pfäfflingen, Bettendorf and Heuberg, among others) in order to search for mineral resources. In what was then Riessee , layers of lignite were created that were to be mined in order to supply the lime works in Wemding. A layer of clay about 1 m thick was found next to the coal. The intention was to use this clay to produce roof tiles, for example. Mining began in 1920, for which a wooden headframe with shaft and a weather shaft, which was used to extend and retract the workforce, were built. The electricity was generated by means of a locomobile , which was housed in a wooden hall, a living barrack (also used as an office) was also available, and a 250 m long siding was laid from the railway line near Deiningen in the direction of Möderhof to the “Mariengrube” lignite mine. In August 1922, however, the dismantling was stopped again. The reason was the insufficient output and the inferiority of the coal, which had too high a sulfur content.
The Rieser coal project was considered twice more: in 1937 the NSDAP made an inquiry from experts to the state government and around 1950 for the production of chemical coal, but nothing was mined. The reason that these projects were not pursued further lay in the nature of the deposits, which are only available in fragments and are therefore not commercially viable.

In Deiningen there was a simple train station building from the beginning, with the construction of the airfield it was rebuilt in 1936 and equipped with the most modern technology at the time. Deiningen airfield was part of the Roth B school . He received a 1.5 km long siding.

After the top speed was increased to 60 km / h at the end of the 1950s, there were speed restrictions and a decline in freight and passenger traffic from the 1970s.

Wemding station, 2006

On May 30, 1981, passenger traffic was stopped. On June 30, 1995 , Deutsche Bahn formally stopped operating goods traffic as well; the official shutdown by the Federal Railway Authority took place on January 1, 1996. Only a siding near Nördlingen was still served until May 30, 2003.

In the following years, the Bavarian Railway Museum occasionally carried out special trips with steam trains until the line was interrupted in 2001 near Nördlingen. Since then the tracks have been dismantled.

In 2005 the Schutzgemeinschaft Wemdinger Ried took over the railway embankment in a section between Fessenheim and Wemding from the property of Deutsche Bahn. The dam is used to network dry biotopes as part of the Natura 2000 program .

From 2011, the Döderlein forwarding company established a new logistics center in Nördlingen. Products from the Henkel Group / Schwarzkopf in particular are dispatched from there. The removed track was reinstalled by 2013. It is secured with a track barrier in front of the switch to the Gunzenhausen line .

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Walther Zeitler, Helge Hufschläger: The railway in Swabia . Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-87943-761-0 .
2. ↑ https://www.lfu.bayern.de/natur/historische_kulturlandschaft/kulturlandschaft_ries/doc/gemeinde_deiningen.pdf
3. ↑ Printed matter of the German Bundestag 13/2569 of October 10, 1995
4. ↑ Message: " Company shutdowns also in southern Bavaria" . In: Eisenbahn-Journal . Issue 3/1996, p. 45 .
5. ↑ Gerald's web pages, data partially out of date
6. ^ Post in a web forum
7. ^ Protective community Wemdinger Ried
8. ↑ https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/noerdlingen/Roman-Mayer-will-erweitern-id9448886.html