Rosheim – Saint-Nabor railway line
| Rosheim – Saint-Nabor | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 General plan of the Eisenbahnbau- u. Vering & Waechter company from 1902
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| Route length: | 11.7 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The standard gauge railway line Rosheim – Saint-Nabor was the last private railway in Alsace . The disused line is owned by the Bas-Rhin department .
The 11 km long railroad opened in 1902 connected the quarries at Saint-Nabor and Ottrott with Rosheim , where there was a connection to the Sélestat – Saverne railway line . The center of operations was Ottrott, where u. a. a three-tier locomotive shed with a small workshop and an attached wagon hall and a turntable . At times this station was also the starting point for a narrow-gauge branch line Ottrott - Obernai - Erstein and an electric overland tram to Strasbourg .
After the regular passenger train service was discontinued in 1954, a tourist-oriented museum railway ran on the route between 1969 and 1988. With the bankruptcy of the quarry company, the remaining freight train traffic ended in 2002. The station buildings that were once built for the railway were demolished, while the former engine shed by Ottrott was converted for residential purposes. The tracks were dismantled in 2018 in order to create a cycle path on the disused railway line.
Construction and start of operations by Vering & Waechter
The Berlin railway construction company Vering & Waechter , which in 1901 had received the concession to build and operate the Rosheim - Ottrott - St. Nabor branch line in what was then the German state of Alsace-Lorraine , the mining rights to the quarry were also transferred. The porphyry was henceforth in the adjacent gravel plant processed and the removal of the new railway to ensure good economic viability.
With the start of freight traffic on July 20, 1902, the lime kilns in Ottrott and the sawmill and grain mill in Börsch were also connected to the railroad network.
On October 1, 1902, passenger train traffic and rail mail transport began, which was a prerequisite for the financial participation of the local authorities in the construction of the line. On Sundays and public holidays, excursion traffic to Mount Odile and the surrounding area, which is known for its numerous medieval castles, soon gained a certain importance.
As with other railways built by Vering & Waechter, three identical wet steam tank locomotives derived from the Prussian T 3 were procured for the branch line Rosheim - St. Nabor near Borsig . Vering & Waechter also used a standard design for the station buildings on the eaves. In contrast to the high-rise buildings at the Rosheim-Stadt and Ottrott stations that were being built at the same time for the Neukölln-Mittenwalder Railway , Vorwohle-Emmerthaler Railway , Teutoburg Forest Railway and Gera-Meuselwitz-Wuitzer Railway , a plastered facade based on regional architectural styles was used instead of exposed masonry .
Vering & Waechter is building a narrow-gauge railway from Ottrott station via Oberehnheim ( Obernai ) to Erstein to transport quarry material from St. Nabor for civil engineering work to regulate the Rhine in the south of Strasbourg . The meter-gauge line , inaugurated on November 21, 1907, ran parallel to the Rosheim – Saint-Nabor railway line to the St. Leonhard stop south of Börsch.
In the same year Vering & Waechter transfers the management to the Deutsche Eisenbahn-Betriebsgesellschaft (DEBG), which was founded as a subsidiary for this purpose . At the beginning of the First World War , the tracks of the narrow-gauge railway to Erstein had to be dismantled by military orders in 1914.
Operated by the Strasbourg Transport Company
After Alsace-Lorraine was returned to France, the quarry and railway were placed under French administration in 1919 and sold to the Bas-Rhin department in 1922 , which commissioned the Strasbourg transport company Compagnie des transports strasbourgeois (CTS) to operate on November 1, 1923 .
On January 16, 1930, the CTS opened an electric overland tram , which runs from Ottrott via Obernai to Meistratzheim on the former narrow-gauge railway line and then in direct line via Lingolsheim to Strasbourg . In the northern entrance to the station in Ottrott, the meter-gauge tram tracks crossed the Rosheim – Saint-Nabor branch line at the same level and led to the terminus on the station forecourt. In the summer months there was a connection to a tourist bus route to Mont Sainte-Odile .
A planned branch of the railway line from Ottrott to Klingenthal to the blade factory Manufacture Royale d'Alsace failed in 1930 due to the global economic crisis. In 1938, the CTS procured a diesel multiple unit to replace the steam-driven passenger trains .
During the German occupation in World War II , the ownership rights to Vering & Waechter fall back. While the Berlin company took over the use of the quarry itself again until 1944, it left the operations of the railway to the CTS.
Passenger train traffic between Saint-Nabor and Ottrott ends on October 3, 1947. On April 1, 1954, the CTS switched the rest of the passenger traffic from Ottrott to Rosheim to bus operation and gave the concession for rail operations to the operator of the quarry. The route remains the property of the department.
Despite demonstrations against the closure, on March 31, 1955, the CTS also ended tram operations to Ottrott and immediately dismantled the meter gauge tracks and electrical overhead lines.
Museum train le petit train folklorique Rosheim-Ottrott
Together with the rail mail car (built in 1902) parked by CTS as early as 1938, the quarry company in 1956 can manage the last from Vering & Waechter's early days for the Rosheim-St. Nabor procured T3 steam locomotive No. 3 (Borsig No. 5964, built in 1906) from a scrap dealer in Rosheim and had the machine repaired.
The region's tourist associations set up a museum railway association with the quarry company and the municipalities, and in 1969 they started operating the museum railway. The petit train folklorique Rosheim-Ottrott , which was acquired by three 2-axle conversion wagons (type Sud-Ouest or Ouest ) from SNCF , will now operate 10 days a year and will carry between 3,500 and 4,000 passengers per season. When the quarry company got into economic difficulties, it got out of the museum railway association, and the operation was stopped at the end of the 1988 season.
When the quarry company went bankrupt in 2002, the T3 and the mail van fell back to the Bas-Rhin department, which was still involved in the quarry company. The two vehicles will be transferred to CTS as the previous owner and transferred to the Kibitzenau tram depot in Strasbourg at the beginning of March 2007. The T3 has been a listed building since 1985, the post van will follow in 2010. The vehicles have been on loan from the Saujon – La Tremblade museum train since February 2017 and are to be restored for use in the Train des mouettes .
Web links
- illustrated route documentation Rosheim – St. Nabor on the private homepage of Frieder's Eisenbahnfotos from October 21, 2005
- illustrated route documentation Rosheim – St. Nabor on the private French-language website Autour du Mont-Sainte-Odile from January 14, 2014
- Le TRAIN et le TRAM de BOERSCH French-language article in: NOTRE VILLE Boersch-Klingenthal-St-Léonard No. 16 from March 2010
literature
- Meinhard Döpner: The Deutsche Eisenbahn-Betriebs-Gesellschaft AG. Lokrundschau-Verlag, 2002
- Klaus-Peter Quill: Vering & Waechter. In: Branch and narrow-gauge railways in Germany. GeraNova-Verlag, loose leaf, 1994–2011
- Celine Dupeux: Voie ferrée Rosheim – Saint-Nabor: Chronologie détaillée French-language article in: Dernières Nouvelles d'Alsace (DNA) of January 27, 2010
Individual evidence
- ↑ CHEMIN DE FER - Réseau industriel private French-language website Saint Nabor , accessed on February 1, 2014
- ↑ HISTOIRE - XX ème siècle private French-language homepage Saint Nabor , accessed on February 1, 2014