Simmern – Gemünden railway line

Simmern (Hunsrück) –Gemünden (Hunsrück)
Route number (DB) :	3022
Course book section (DB) :	174f (course book 1938) 271m (course book 1944) 264b (last 1963)
Route length:	14.7 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend by Boppard by Hermeskeil 0.0 Simmern (Hunsrück) to Langenlonsheim 0.3 Road underpass to Argenthal 5.4 Holzbach 5.7 L 162 to Riesweiler 7.4 Brook passage before Tiefenbach 8.4 Tiefenbach Viaduct 8.6 Tiefenbach (Hunsrück) 8.7 L 108 11.9 Crowd difference 12, x Street underpass in Mengigart 14.7 Gemünden (Hunsrück) Swell:

The Simmern – Gemünden (Hunsrück) railway was a railway line that branched off from the Hunsrück Railway and the Hunsrück Cross Railway in Simmern and led to Gemünden (Hunsrück) .

history

While the railway from Langenlonsheim to Simmern was still under construction, on March 25, 1888, the citizens of Gemünden submitted a request to build a railway line. By 1904, two further petitions were made to the Prussian Minister of Transport. It was not until March 30, 1912 that a commission traveled to the Hunsrück to investigate the feasibility and necessity of the route. On February 3, 1913, the route was approved in Berlin .

The main arguments for the construction of the route were the ore mine in Tiefenbach, the wood extraction in the Soonwald , slate quarries and clay deposits around Gemünden.

Despite the beginning of the First World War , construction work began on the route. At the executing companies B. Liebold & Co. from Holzminden and Genius from Boppard , foreign workers from Italy, Russian and French prisoners of war and German prisoners of war were used in the construction, but work was stopped in 1917.

After the war, work was resumed and the Simmern – Holzbach section opened on August 16, 1921. Almost a year later, on July 3, 1922, the entire Simmern – Gemünden branch line was put into operation. A planned extension of the branch line via the Kellenbachtal to Simmertal to connect to the Nahe valley railway was considered, but was never tackled.

Until 1928, only 4th class was offered here in passenger transport , and from mid-1928 also 3rd class.

The line remained undamaged during the war, in 1944 four pairs of trains ran daily with a journey time of 29 minutes. However, with the emergence of bus traffic between the villages and the discontinuation of freight traffic in 1959, the route became increasingly unprofitable. The side tracks at the loading ramps were dismantled in 1961.

In the summer of 1963, three pairs of rail buses ran in 35 minutes, in addition to five bus routes, some of which ran at the same time. The last passenger train between Simmern and Gemünden ran on November 24, 1963. From March 1964 to 1965 the rails were dismantled.

The remnants of the route are the partly very high embankment with underpasses and the station buildings in Tiefenbach and Gemünden.

The former railway embankment is still present in fragments along the entire route, but it is almost completely overgrown. The Schinderhannes cycle path crosses the former railway line once in Simmern (formerly the bridge to Rheinbacher Höfen), between Holzbach and Tiefenbach (former path underpass in the valley), at the Layenkaul von Mengitteil district (former K57 level crossing) and further along the K57 in Mengigart (formerly the Wildburger Strasse bridge). The bike path never runs on the previous railway line.

Web links

• Detailed information about the route on a private website about the railways in the Hunsrück, accessed March 1, 2012

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Uli Maschek, route numbers, area 3 ( Memento from February 11, 2006 in the Internet Archive ), Ulis Eisenbahnseiten, November 26, 2001, accessed January 8, 2009
2. ↑ Klaus Erbeck, " Route numbers of the DB AG - Excel file ", Reichsbahndirektion Erfurt, accessed January 8, 2009
3. ↑ ^{a b} “ The Simmern-Gemünden line: Part 3 - Track plans and vehicle operations ( Memento of the original from December 1, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. “, Hunsrückquerbahn.de, accessed January 8, 2009 
4. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
5. ^ The Simmern-Gemünden route: Part 1 - Development and construction ( Memento from June 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), Hunsrückquerbahn.de, accessed January 8, 2009
6. ↑ Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (Ed.): Official Gazette of the Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz of July 28, 1928, No. 34. Announcement No. 428, p. 227.
7. ↑ ^{a b} The Simmern-Gemünden line: Part 2 - Operation, decline and dismantling ( Memento from June 15, 2017 in the Internet Archive ), Hunsrückquerbahn.de, accessed January 8, 2009