Thurow – Feldberg railway line

Thurow (Meckl) –Feldberg (Meckl)
Railway line on the Schlesersee near Carpin
Route number :	6957
Course book range :	187 (2000)
Route length:	18.8 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Top speed:	50 km / h
Legend from Neustrelitz Süd 0.0 Thurow (Meckl) to Strasburg 5.4 Carpin 8.2 Bergfeld (Meckl) 12.8 Dolgen (Meckl) (formerly Personenbf) 15.3 Weitendorf b. Feldberg (Meckl) 18.8 Feldberg (Meckl) (formerly Personenbf)

The Thurow – Feldberg railway , always operated in continuous traffic on the Neustrelitz – Feldberg route, is a railway line in the south of Mecklenburg . Traffic on the single-track branch line was discontinued in 2000 and the line was subsequently closed. In 2005, ELS Eisenbahn Logistik und Service took over the route and reactivated it in the period that followed. Occasional special trips took place there until 2015.

history

Prehistory and construction

The Mecklenburgische Friedrich-Wilhelm-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (MFWE) opened the routes from the Prussian border at Buschhof to Neustrelitz in 1890 and from Blankensee to Strasburg in 1893 . Both sections were initially only connected via the state-run Berlin Northern Railway. After the Prussian State Railway wanted to prevent the MFWE from using its route, it built its own Neustrelitz MFWE station (today: Neustrelitz Süd) and a connection parallel to the state railway line via Thurow and Rödlin to Blankensee, which was opened on December 15, 1907. A few years later, on December 21, 1910, the connection from Thurow to Feldberg went into operation after a construction period of over half a year. The route was laid out undemanding. There were no major cuts or dams, only a few stream passages.

Later development

The traffic volume was always moderate. Until the end of the Second World War, three to four passenger trains drove between the two end points, depending on the day of traffic. All trains have already departed from or to Neustrelitz MFWE (called Neustrelitz Süd since the MFWE was nationalized in 1941). In 1947 the Thurow – Strasburg line had to be dismantled as a reparation payment to the Soviet Union ; the Neustrelitz – Thurow section and the line to Feldberg remained in operation. The traffic volume did not change much; there were three to four passenger trains a day in each direction. Until the turn of 1990, one or two pairs of trains were used as passenger trains with goods transport . The travel times of these trains were eighty minutes for the 27 kilometers between Neustrelitz and Feldberg, the other trains took around 50 minutes. Freight traffic was stopped on December 31, 1994.

Train to Neustrelitz at Feldberg station, January 1995

After a brief attempt in 1993/94 to increase the attractiveness of the route with an express train on weekends, the train service was condensed in 1996. Since then, eight trains have been running every day at approximately two-hour intervals. The travel time of the trains could be improved a little and with a little over 40 minutes for the journey from Neustrelitz to Feldberg, a level similar to that before the Second World War was reached. However, nothing changed in the basic condition of the route. With the exception of a few sections, the tracks on the route remained in gravel. From the timetable change in May 1998, passenger traffic was taken over by the Ostmecklenburgische Eisenbahn (from 2005 Ostseeland Verkehr ) of the Connex Group (today: Veolia ). It used partly modern Talent railcars and partly older railcar models. Until then, with the exception of a few trains in the 1930s, only locomotive-hauled trains had been used during the entire operating time of the line.

On May 27, 2000, local rail passenger transport on the route was canceled by the state of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. A few special trains ran in the following summer. The last special trip was on December 21, 2000 on the occasion of the 90th anniversary of the route. Immediately afterwards, the line was closed with effect from December 22, 2000.

To date, the bus line 619 operates the Mecklenburg-Vorpommerschen transport company (MVVG) as a replacement rail transport parallel to the track.

Development after 2000

After the closure, the track structure was retained. The route has now been taken over by the Neustrelitz company ELS Eisenbahn Logistik und Service GmbH . This is now responsible for the infrastructure and put the line back into operation. On May 1st, 2008, a special trip took place for the first time in several years. There were also special trips on the route in 2009 and 2010, as well as in the following years. In March 2015, for the first time in a number of years, a freight train that transported wood from Feldberg ran over the route.

Route description

course

From Neustrelitz Süd station , located next to Neustrelitz main station, the route of the former line to Strasburg runs almost parallel to the northern line to Neubrandenburg through wooded areas. The actual route to Feldberg begins eight kilometers east of Neustrelitz in Thurow train station. However, Thurow has not been recognizable as a branch station for a long time, as the line to Strasburg was dismantled after the Second World War. This made Thurow a normal train station on the way from Neustrelitz to Feldberg. From there, the route leads east through forest areas that are left at Carpin. The route then runs through a more open, hilly landscape with several small lakes over Bergfeld and Dolgen. Behind the former Weitendorf stop, you will once again pass a small wooded area before you reach Feldberg station after a short drive south-east. The station is in the south of the former small town, which today forms the center of the Feldberger Seenlandschaft community and is located in the nature park of the same name , a terminal moraine landscape with many lakes . A few hundred meters east of the train station is the long lake Schmaler Luzin .

Operating points

Reception building in Carpin (2010).

Thurow (Meckl)

The Thurow station originally had a through and a siding as well as two loading tracks. The branch was to the east of the other station facilities. The station building is a listed building.

Carpin, Bergfeld (Meckl), Dolgen (Meckl)

All three stations are stops with a through and a siding. They have small, practically identical, one-story reception buildings. They are used as residential houses. The station buildings in Carpin and Bergfeld are listed. Except for the continuous main track, the tracks in Carpin and Bergfeld have been dismantled, which still exists in Dolgen and was used for train crossings during special trips in 2010 on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the line.

Weitendorf b Feldberg (Meckl)

Feldberg (Meckl) train station, February 2015.

Weitendorf was a stop without a station building. The station was closed as early as 1993, seven years before passenger traffic on the route ceased.

Feldberg (Meckl)

Feldberg (Meckl) train station has a through and a transfer track as well as several loading tracks. The reception building has two floors and an additional attic and extensions on both sides, in which there were goods sheds and a restaurant. There was also a storage facility and a locomotive shed, which are no longer preserved. A siding ran from the station a few hundred meters as an extension of the line in an easterly direction to a grain factory that was located there in GDR times. The station building with goods shed is a listed building, as is the former water tower at the end of the route, which is now used as a residential building.

literature

• Erich Preuß: Archive of German small and private railways. Brandenburg / Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . transpress, Berlin 1994, ISBN 3-344-70906-2 .

Web links

Commons : Thurow – Feldberg railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Route description (.html) and track plans for Thurow (PDF; 25 kB) and Feldberg (.pdf; 27 kB) at Ralfs-Eisenbahn.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Preuss, p. 291.
2. ↑ various course books
3. ↑ Urs Kramer, Matthias Brodkorb: Farewell to the rail - freight lines 1994 to today. Transpress, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-613-71333-8 , p. 156.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Bahn-Report , 4/08, p. 42.
5. ↑ European Private Railways '07 . DVV Media Group, Hamburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-7771-0365-5 , p. 124 .
6. ↑ ^{a b} Bahn-Report , 2/2011, S. 36/37
7. ↑ Bahn-Report , 3/2015, p. 41/42.