Ranna – Auerbach railway line
| Ranna-Auerbach (Oberpf) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route number : | 5927 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course book range : | 421b | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 8.1 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maximum slope : | 12.5 ‰ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minimum radius : | 250 m | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Ranna – Auerbach railway was a branch line in Bavaria . It branched off the Nuremberg – Cheb railway in Ranna and led to Auerbach in the Upper Palatinate . It replaced the cable car built by Maxhütte from Sulzbach-Rosenberg in 1882 , which previously transported the iron ore that was mined in the Auerbach area to the railway.
history
Plans to connect Auerbach to the railroad existed as early as 1860, when the AG der Bayerische Ostbahnen was considering a route from Amberg to Bayreuth , which was to be run in a variant via Auerbach - but it was never realized. In 1867 a new attempt was made to connect Auerbach to the planned Pegnitz Valley Railway , but this was also rejected due to the greatly lengthened route. Various other considerations included a route from Michelfeld to Auerbach and on to Sulzbach-Rosenberg (Auerbach "Railway Committee" on November 29, 1892) or from Kirchenthumbach (end of the Pressath – Kirchenthumbach railway ) via Auerbach to Michelfeld or Ranna (1896) which, however, did not come to fruition either.
On September 9, 1899, the shareholders of Maxhütte and Queen Marienhütte met the two interested parties for the railway construction in Ranna and laid the financial foundation for the project with their commitment of 6,000 and 3,000 marks respectively. The building permit from Prince Regent Luitpold of Bavaria was granted on June 30, 1900, so that construction began immediately and the local railway could be officially opened on December 16, 1903.
The decline of the railway line began with the abandonment of passenger traffic on January 31, 1970. While an average of four pairs of trains ran here even during the Second World War in 1944 , only one pair of passenger trains ran at inconvenient times in the 1967 summer timetable (in the morning from Auerbach at 5:03 a.m. to Neuhaus, in the evening at 6:40 p.m. from Ranna to Auerbach).
After the Maxhütte meanwhile transported the mined iron ore away with its own trucks , the last freight train left on March 21, 1982. The track system was dismantled from spring 1984, the last remains of the line that are still visible today are the now abandoned Ranna station and the pillars of the subsequent Pegnitzbrücke .
Route description
After Ranna station, the line branched off to the right of the Pegnitz Valley Railway, crossed the Pegnitz by means of a bridge and after a distance of 2 km reached the Rauhenstein stop. The route then meandered through the Herzogswald and after 2.3 km reached the Hohe Tanne stop, which was closed on May 28, 1962. From there the route continued via the Welluck stop, which had not been served since October 7, 1922, under the federal highway 85 through to the Auerbach terminus .
The route overcame a height difference of 43.82 m over a length of 8.1 km with a maximum gradient of 12.5 ‰.
Vehicle use
Steam locomotives were used on the line until 1962 , initially the Bavarian series D VII , D VIII , D XI and the Bavarian GtL 4/4 and, after the Second World War, the series 64 and 98.10 . Diesel locomotives of the V 100 series also ran the route from 1962 until it was closed . For passenger transport, wagons of various Länderbahn types, for freight transport and v. a. Freight wagons were used to remove the iron ore .
The loaded ore trains from Auerbach to Maxhütte on the Nuremberg – Schwandorf railway line were driven by the tender from the 44 series on the Auerbach– Hersbruck section (on the right Pegnitz) , where the locomotive re-spanned and drove the train over the connecting line to Pommelsbrunn , and from there to Sulzbach-Rosenberg to the Maxhütte.
Web links
- The local railway Auerbach - Ranna (private)
- Description and pictures of the local railway (private)
literature
- Robert Fritzsch: Railways in the Pegnitztal . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2002, ISBN 3-88255-454-1 , p. 67 ff .
- Ulrich Rockelmann: Ranna - Auerbach: Bahn fürs Eisenerz, Lok-Magazin, issue 4/2019, p. 62 ff.