Neusorg – Fichtelberg railway line

Neusorg – Fichtelberg
Fichtelberg with terminus in front of the highest mountains of the Fichtelgebirge
Route number :	5030
Course book section (DB) :	last 846
Route length:	14.7 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Maximum slope :	17  ‰
Legend by Cheb 0.0 Neusorg to Nürnberg Hbf 3.9 Ebnath (Oberpf) Süd (until 1939: Ebnath Ort) 4.6 Ebnath (Oberpf) (until 1939: Ebnath Bahnhof) 7.5 Fire (Fichtelg) 11.0 Unterlind 11.7 Flour chisel 14.7 Fichtelberg

The Neusorg – Fichtelberg railway was a branch line in Bavaria . As the southernmost branch line into the Fichtel Mountains, it connected the community of Fichtelberg in the Upper Franconian district of Bayreuth with the Neusorg train station in the Upper Palatinate district of Tirschenreuth on the Nuremberg – Cheb main line .

history

The standard-gauge , single-track local railway was opened on December 20, 1890 by the Bavarian State Railway. Passenger traffic suffered from the fact that the residents of the communities on the upper Fichtelnaab were oriented towards various central locations that could only be reached by train via long detours. In addition, were operating stations fire and Mehlmeisel far away from the settlement centers.

route

The 14.73 km long route led in a north-westerly direction in the valley of the Fichtelnaab up through extensive forests into the Fichtel Mountains. It left Neusorg at an altitude of 556 m and first led into the valley floor of the river. Via Ebnath , which even had two stations, and Brand it reached its end point, the climatic health resort of Fichtelberg, where mining was also carried out for centuries. Its station, at an altitude of 650.7 m, was the highest terminus of all branch lines in the Fichtel Mountains.

A massive stone building was erected in Fichtelberg, while simple wooden structures were sufficient in the Ebnath, Brand and Unterlind stations .

business

In the first few decades there were usually three pairs of trains running on weekdays, four in 1939 and eight in 1970. On Sundays, the number of trains increased over the years from three to six. As the Deutsche Bundesbahn withdrew more and more from the area, from 1975 the offer was limited to a train that ran Monday to Friday morning from Fichtelberg to Kirchenlaibach and returned from Schirnding in the evening. The rest was done by a train bus . On May 30, 1976, rail passenger traffic was stopped, and freight traffic between the Schiettinger and Fichtelberg junction was discontinued on September 29, 1984 . A siding on the other side of Brand to the former Goetz paper mill was still operated until the end of the year. On December 31, 1984 the line was closed.

Reuse

After the line was dismantled, the former railway line was expanded into a cycle path that is completely paved from the government district border to Upper Palatinate. Of the former station buildings only those in Neusorg and Fichtelberg remain, the building in Unterlind was demolished in 2015.

literature

• Gerald Hoch, Andreas Kuhfahl: Branch lines in the Upper Palatinate. Neustadt near Coburg 2000
• Dieter Hempel, Harald Enes, Patrick Mindel: The Fichtel Mountains and the Railway - Part 2. Contributions to the history and regional studies of the Fichtel Mountains, Volume 22. Wunsiedel 2000
• Wolfgang Bleiweis, Ekkehard Martin, Stefan Winkler: Franconian branch lines then and now - Upper Franconia. Egglham and Munich 1986

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Robert Zintl: Bavarian branch lines . 1st edition. Motorbuch Verlag, Stuttgart 1977, ISBN 3-87943-531-6 , p. 24 .
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Bernd Schmitt and Gerald Hoch: Branch lines in Upper Franconia . 1st edition. Michael Resch, Coburg 1999, ISBN 3-9805967-4-5 , p. 172 ff .
3. ↑ No train to somewhere at onetz.de, accessed on June 9, 2018