Niederbiegen – Weingarten railway line

Niederbiegen – Weingarten
Route number (DB) :	4520
Course book section (DB) :	ex 306g ex 279a
Route length:	4.04 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Route class :	D4
Maximum slope :	1:67 = 15  ‰
Minimum radius :	180 m
Top speed:	25 km / h
Legend 0.000 Ulm southern runway 0.465 Bending Down (1914–1938) Southern Railway to Friedrichshafen 0.850 former industrial connection 2.100 Abzw Weingarten (until 1999 Abzw Baienfurt West ) to Baienfurt Gbf 2.300 Baienfurt West (1914–1938) 2.480 Side canal of the Wolfegger Ach 2.610 Wolfegger Oh 2.800 Baienfurt South (1914–1938) Tram from Baienfurt Ort 2.930 Beginning of the three-rail track 3.280 Grape farm 3.800 End of three-rail track Tram to Ravensburg Iron foundry Stoz 4.040 Weingarten (Württ) Gbf Müller Weingarten

The Niederbiegen – Weingarten railway was originally a 4.04 kilometer long standard-gauge branch line in Baden-Württemberg . It was built in 1911 by the private Lokalbahn Aktien-Gesellschaft (LAG) and at the time supplemented the narrow-gauge Ravensburg – Weingarten – Baienfurt tram, which was also part of the LAG , and later became the Ravensburg – Weingarten – Baienfurt tram . It was operationally closely connected to this until 1959 via a three-rail track that was almost a kilometer long . After the nationalization of the LAG, the line came to the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1938 , later to the Deutsche Bundesbahn or the Deutsche Bahn AG . The section between the Baienfurt West junction and Weingarten has been closed since 1999, and the first 2.1 kilometers followed in 2015.

Track side of the Weingarten freight yard

prehistory

Weingarten had already had a rail connection with the narrow-gauge local railway to Ravensburg since 1888, but the narrow-gauge railway was no longer able to meet the increasing demand for freight in the long term. Above all, the desired expansion of freight transport by rail was not possible with the existing infrastructure. In particular, in the course of advancing industrialization , the Weingarten AG machine factory - today's Schuler AG - ensured corresponding demand. Freight traffic by narrow-gauge railroad was problematic in two respects: on the one hand, because the goods had to be reloaded from the narrow-gauge to the standard gauge at the Ravensburg State Railway Station, and on the other hand, because the goods from Weingarten had to be transported through the center of Ravensburg beforehand. In the course of the planned extension of the narrow-gauge railway to Baienfurt, the LAG therefore decided to connect Weingarten and Baienfurt directly to the standard-gauge network via a new route from Niederbiegen. The plans were combined between Weingarten and Baienfurt, where a three-rail track, almost a kilometer long, was created.

The standard-gauge railway as a supplement to the narrow-gauge railway

Railroad crossing at the hamlet of Rainpadent (kilometer 1.78): State road 284 crossed the route there

On October 1, 1911, shortly after the narrow-gauge railway was extended to Baienfurt (which took place on September 13, 1911), Localbahn AG put the standard-gauge railway line between the southern line and the two new freight stations at Weingarten and Baienfurt into operation. At the same time, freight traffic on the meter gauge was abandoned as planned. The new standard-gauge line (which only supplemented the narrow-gauge railway because passenger traffic was still almost exclusively handled by the narrow-gauge railway) branches off the southern line 465 meters north of the Niederbiegen state railway station, passes the Niederbiegen station forecourt and leads from there in an easterly direction to Baienfurt . At kilometer 2.10 - at the Baienfurt West junction - the railway line Abzw Baienfurt West – Baienfurt Gbf, which was closed in 2015, branches off to the left .

The rest of the route has now been closed, it turned south after the Baienfurt West junction and passed the center of Baienfurt. The line finally ended on the southern outskirts of Baienfurt in the route of the narrow-gauge railway coming from the center. This was followed by a three-rail track for a length of almost one kilometer, ending at the entrance to the Weingarten freight yard. There the tracks split again, the narrow-gauge railway drove past the station building to the left in the direction of Weingarten town center, while the standard-gauge freight trains branched off to the right to reach the Weingarten freight station shortly afterwards. There were two sidings at the freight station: one of them was a direct extension south of the freight station and led directly into the company premises of the Weingarten machine factory. A second siding branched off to the right shortly before the station building of the freight station and from there led to the Stoz iron foundry on Ettishofer Strasse.

Operation on the three-rail track

The three-rail track began at the southern exit of Baienfurt, here the meter gauge coming from the left from the direction of Baienfurt Ort merged into the standard gauge

The former Traubenhof stop was also in the area of ​​the three-rail track, with the eponymous hamlet of Trauben in the background

The three-rail track between Baienfurt and Weingarten became a characteristic of the railway line. Between October 1, 1911 (start of standard-gauge freight traffic to Weingarten) and June 30, 1959 (cessation of remaining trams on the northern section), both meter-gauge electric passenger trains and steam-powered standard-gauge freight trains ran on the same track on this section. From a legal point of view, after 1938 the trams in the area of ​​this short section continued to operate in accordance with the Railway Construction and Operating Regulations (EBO).

The common section of the route was secured with the help of a special signal board, stationary signaling did not exist. Only the train whose staff was in possession of the only one-time signal board was allowed to use the section of the route. Train journeys on the normal-gauge route had to be announced by telephone to the management in Weingarten. The operations manager there only gave his consent if he had the signal board. This principle is similar to the rod method that was previously often used on single-track tram routes .

The electric vehicles on the Ravensburg – Weingarten – Baienfurt route used classic railway wheel tires , which were a little wider than is commonly used on trams. This ensured that they could also pass the section in the area of ​​the three-rail track, especially the two frogs when threading in and out, without any problems.

The sparse passenger traffic from 1914 to 1938

Although the non-electrified standard-gauge line from Niederbiegen to Weingarten was built primarily for freight traffic, there were occasional scheduled passenger trains on it between 1914 and 1938. These trains ran in addition to the electric narrow-gauge trains to Ravensburg and enabled passengers in the direction of Ulm or the state capital Stuttgart to have a shorter and faster connection than via Ravensburg. The two stops at Baienfurt West and Baienfurt South were set up especially for this purpose, and the Traubenhof stop was served jointly by the electric narrow-gauge railway. However, this traffic was always very sparse. B. a timetable from 1914, according to which four pairs of trains were used on weekdays and three pairs of trains on Sundays. The number of passengers was also far behind that of the narrow-gauge railway, according to Raimund Kolb, the following data has been handed down over the years for the standard-gauge route:

• 1914: 16,519 people
• 1919: 9,284 people
• 1920: 243 people
• 1921: 13,948 people
• 1926: 1,352 people
• 1927: 736 people
• 1928: 312 people
• 1929: 982 people
• 1930: 993 people
• 1931: 2,172 people
• 1932: 1,812 people
• 1933: 6,128 people
• 1934: 3,136 people
• 1935: 2,328 people
• 1936: 1,340 people
• 1937: 3,863 people

For the years not listed here either no data are available (1915 to 1917 or 1938), or there was no passenger traffic (1911 to 1913 and 1922 to 1925). Under the direction of the state railway, there was no longer any passenger traffic on the route.

Regular locomotive

LAG 7 "Füssen"

The LAG 7 “Füssen” steam locomotive has become the long-standing master locomotive on the railway line discussed here . The C-coupler, built by Krauss in 1889 , was moved in 1911 (when the line was opened) from the Marktoberdorf – Füssen railway to Upper Swabia, which was also part of the LAG at the time . In 1928 it was finally sold to the Baienfurt paper mill and has been preserved to this day.

From 1938: The Deutsche Reichsbahn takes over operations

On August 1, 1938, the Deutsche Reichsbahn took over all lines of the previously dissolved Localbahn AG across the empire, including the standard-gauge goods line Niederbiegen – Weingarten. Although passenger traffic on the standard-gauge route to Weingarten was discontinued in the same year, the route is interestingly still recorded in the course book route map in 1944, although an associated table does not exist.

Charter trains to Weingarten

Regardless of the discontinuation of scheduled normal-gauge passenger traffic to Weingarten in 1938, the line was still used in later years not only for freight trains, but also for special trains. For one thing wrong even to 1963 pilgrims -Sonderzüge Weingarten (they brought faithful from different parts of southern Germany to the Basilica of St. Martin ), on the other hand the Weingarten organized retail until 1998 once a year in the spring of a cruise (Society special train) to all interested citizens was open to the city. These trips took place under the name Lauratal -Express - Weingarten goes on trips and led to changing destinations in southern Germany, such as Lake Starnberg , Bad Tölz , Oberammergau or the Black Forest .

Abandonment of the route

In the year after the last special train, freight traffic to Weingarten also ended on October 26, 1999, on that day the last train ever ran on this route, a freight train for the Müller Weingarten company. On December 1, 1999, the 1.94-kilometer section between the Baienfurt West junction and the Weingarten freight yard was finally officially closed.

Due to the very seldom use of the route and upcoming investments, DB Netz put the remaining Niederbiegen – Weingarten branch and the branching route to Baienfurt out to tender for other railway infrastructure companies to take over from December 2014 to March 2015 . Since no new IM could be found within the deadline, the route was closed with the approval of the Federal Railway Authority on July 2, 2015 with effect from July 9, 2015. Since then, the former track has been used as a siding within the Niederbiegen station.

literature

• Peter-Michael Mihailescu, Matthias Michalke: Forgotten railways in Baden-Württemberg . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0413-6 , p. 225-233 .

Web links

Commons : Niederbiegen – Weingarten railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Illustrated route description on www.vergessene-bahnen.de

Individual evidence

1. ^ Stephan Kuchinke: The Localbahn Actiengesellschaft . transpress-Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 978-3-613-71125-9 , p. 97 and 101 .
2. ↑ Raimund Kolb Bähnle, mill, train and bus: The railway in the middle Schussental . Wilfried Eppe, Bergatreute 1987, ISBN 3-89089-007-5 , pp. 526-527
3. ↑ http://www.pkjs.de/bahn/Kursbuch1944/Teil4/map-baden.html
4. ↑ Surrender of railway infrastructure. Section 4520 Niederbiegen - Abzw. Weingarten and route 4521 Abzw. Weingarten - Baienfurt. Call for applications from December 19, 2014 to March 19, 2015. (PDF; 73 kB) (No longer available online.) DB Netz AG, Southwest Regional Area, December 19, 2014, archived from the original on December 20, 2014 ; Retrieved December 20, 2014 . 
5. ↑ ^{a b} List of state-owned lines in the state of Baden-Württemberg that have been closed since 1994. (XLSX; 13.4 kB) Federal Railway Authority , accessed on July 20, 2020 .