Plettenberg – Herscheid railway line

Plettenberg – Herscheid (1915–1996)
Route number :	2860
Course book section (DB) :	239b (1963) , 239k (1944)
Route length:	16.22 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
State :	North Rhine-Westphalia
Legend Main route to Siegen 0.0 Plettenberg Main line to Hagen Bridge over the Lenne 4.9 Plettenberg stop Plettenberg tram 6.3 Plettenberg Oberstadt Handover of PStB 8.7 Koebbinghausen 10.6 Hüinghausen Rammberg tunnel (117 m) 12.9 White ahe 14.0 Birkenhof 16.2 Herscheid
Köbinghauser Hammer – Hüinghausen (since 1987)
Route length:	2.3 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Legend 8.3 Köbbinghauser Hammer (set up by MME) 8.7 Koebbinghausen 9.5 Seissenschmidt (set up by the MME) 10.6 Hüinghausen

The Plettenberg – Herscheid railway was a 16.22 km long, single-track, standard-gauge branch line in the Sauerland . The route of the railway line is now used in sections by the Märkische Museum Railway as a narrow-gauge museum railway line.

history

Until the construction of the route

The station building in Hüinghausen

After the Sauerland was connected to the growing German railway network with the construction of the Ruhr-Sieg route by the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in 1861 on the one hand and with the Volmetalbahn from Hagen to Bruges (1873) and on to Lüdenscheid (1879) on the other the municipality of Herscheid , located between Lenne and Volmetal, soon also demanded a rail connection in order to keep the local iron industry competitive. Initially, the municipality preferred a design that provided for a 14-kilometer branch line from Plettenberg train station to Herscheid. With the completion of the Altenaer Eisenbahn (KAE) route from Werdohl to Augustenthal in 1888, the advantages (lower construction and operating costs, easier routing) of a narrow-gauge railway were recognized and from now on a branch from this route to Herscheid was requested.

The plans changed again when the Plettenberg tram opened its route from the train station in Eiringhausen to the city of Plettenberg and on to Holthausen . From now on, the district administrator in particular campaigned for a further extension of this route to Herscheid. However, this extension was opposed to technical reasons, so a Rollbock operation would not have been possible in the Elsetal. So the focus was initially again on building a route through the KAE. Various planning and preparatory work for this project had been carried out by 1903, but it failed because the municipality of Herscheid could not raise the necessary funds.

At about the same time, however, long-term plans were made to shorten the connection between Cologne and Kassel with a route between Lenne- and Volmetal. In 1908, the Prussian State Railway Directorate Elberfeld finally received approval to build the first section of the Plettenberg – Herscheid line. The construction of this 16-kilometer section took seven years to complete, partly because of the outbreak of World War I. After the outbreak of war, the route was finally completed with the help of prisoners of war . Another reason for the long construction time is the complex equipment of the line, which should also have served long-distance traffic after the extension to Lüdenscheid was completed. For this reason, the bridges, above all the Lennebrücke near Plettenberg, as well as the other structures, were laid out generously and at great expense. In some cases, the route , which mostly ran along the slope, first had to be built up. A 117 m long tunnel was also built through the Rammberg between Hüinghausen and Birkenhof. The route rose steadily from Plettenberg to Herscheid, the mean slope was 1:50, the total height difference 200 m.

Operation and shutdown

The first train from Herscheid to Plettenberg (1915)

The former Köbbinghausen stop already at the time of the museum railway

The line was opened on July 8, 1915 after the last stagecoach had reached Plettenberg from Herscheid. In Plettenberg-Oberstadt, in addition to Eiringhausen, a second transfer station to the Plettenberger tram was built, which also received a trolley pit .

In the war years, no further building to Lüdenscheid was to be considered, and differences of opinion, especially between the city of Lüdenscheid, the rural community and the railway administration, meant that this extension was not built after the war. The main point of contention was a planned tunnel in the Lüdenscheid urban area, the cost of which made the project uneconomical. At the latest with the inflation in 1923 all plans for a railway line between Herscheid and Lüdenscheid failed.

Since the railway to Herscheid remained a branch line, the volume of traffic was never very high. In freight traffic, there was a certain need for transport, especially due to the transfer station between the Plettenberg train station and Oberstadt; the stations further in the Elsetal were almost exclusively served by freight wagons carried by passenger trains. The uphill travel time of 65 minutes was around 10 minutes longer than downhill because of the maneuvering work.

After the locomotives of the series 74 or 93 were mainly used since the opening of the railway line , since January 1955 rail buses of the series VT 95 were used to rationalize operations . However, the load was still too low, so that passenger traffic was discontinued on September 25, 1965 when the summer timetable expired. Freight traffic on the upper section of the route was also too low, the Plettenberg-Oberstadt-Herscheid route was shut down on September 1, 1969 and soon dismantled. The tracks between Oberstadt and Hüinghausen were not removed until 1976, as the city of Plettenberg was still hoping to win new customers in a newly created industrial area. These hopes were dashed, however, and at the end of 1996 the freight traffic last operated by the Märkische Eisenbahngesellschaft on the remnant section to Plettenberg-Oberstadt was also discontinued.

Partial reconstruction as a museum railway

MME museum train on the newly built route

After the line was shut down and dismantled, the remaining systems and buildings were sold by the Federal Railroad to the neighboring communities or private individuals. In 1984 the Märkische Museums-Eisenbahn eV association, which was two years old at the time, acquired the station building in Hüinghausen, and the city of Plettenberg provided the association with an approximately 2.5 km long section of the route to just after the former Köbbinghausen stop . The association had previously been looking for a former small railway line in the Sauerland in order to build a narrow-gauge museum railway. Some vehicles had already been refurbished on a company site in Plettenberg. However, since none of the former small railroad lines were available anymore, the association concentrated on the former standard-gauge line between Hüinghausen and Köbbinghausen, on which a meter-gauge line was created in the following years.

In 1985, the first track construction work began on the station grounds in Hüinghausen, two years later the first trips could be carried out, in the following years a stretch of almost 2.5 km to the new terminus at Köbbinghauser Hammer was built. About halfway there, a new intermediate station was built, which was named Seissenschmidt after a neighboring company that was already influential in the operation of the Plettenberg tram. The station in Hüinghausen was expanded to become the operating center of the small railroad and, in addition to the received reception building with goods shed, also received a locomotive shed, which was later expanded to include a three-track vehicle and workshop hall with a water tower.

1991–1998 the local traffic plan of the Märkischer Kreis checked whether it was worthwhile to run a diesel-powered light rail on this route. First of all, it should be examined whether the operation between the Plettenberg train station (Deutsche Bahn train station on the Ruhr-Sieg route) and the former Oberstadt train station is economical. In addition, consideration was given to including the route to Herscheid via Hüinghausen in the urban railway planning. Diesel-powered light railcars should run at least every 30 minutes. However, the city of Plettenberg decided to only want to operate the line as far as Köbbinghauser Hammer station (up to its own city limits) in the event that operations start. Thus Herscheid and Hüinghausen would not have been reconnected to the route. After 1998, the project became quiet and the realization is very unlikely.

There are plans to expand the museum railway from Hüinghausen in the direction of Herscheid, the end point for the route is Birkenhof. However, for financial reasons and some legal issues, implementation of these plans is not expected in the short term.

On a segment of the Lenne Bridge Ohle , a fish belly bridge , a lookout point was built in 2015 near the Aquamagis leisure pool .

literature

• Wolf Dietrich Groote: The Lenne-Volme Railway Project. 70 years of Plettenberg – Herscheid. MME series Volume 1, Plettenberg 1985, self-published

swell

• Information about the route in the NRWbahnarchiv from André Joost

Web links

Commons : Märkische Museums-Eisenbahn  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• The "Sauerland Kleinbahn"
• Plettenberg Lexicon - historical report on the railway line
• Pictures of the walled up tunnel portals

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Local transport plan of the Märkisches Kreis 1998
2. ↑ https://www.outdooractive.com/de/aussichtsturm/sauerland/fischbauchbogenbruecke/15819601/