Steinach near Rothenburg – Dombühl railway line

Steinach (near Rothenburg od Tauber) –Dombühl
Route number (DB) :	5251
Course book section (DB) :	921
Route length:	36.7 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Top speed:	80 km / h
Legend from Würzburg Hbf 0.000 Steinach (b Rothenburg od Tauber) 368 m to Treuchtlingen and Bad Windsheim 2.700 Awanst Gyproc 3.300 Endsee (until 1975) 5.178 Hartershofen 408 m 7.309 Schweinsdorf 10.700 Awanst Rothenburg Nord 11.092 Rothenburg ob der Tauber 422 m Rothenburg ob der Tauber Wildbad Instead of AEG 14.700 Gebsattel 17.500 Bockenfeld 20.200 Diebach - Insingen 22.700 Unteroestheim 24.600 Oestheim - Gailnau 29.700 Schillingsfürst 33.200 Wörnitz from Crailsheim 36.700 Dombühl 473 m to Nördlingen to Nürnberg Hbf Swell:

The Steinach bei Rothenburg – Dombühl railway is a branch line in Bavaria . The line branches off in Steinach near Rothenburg ob der Tauber from the Treuchtlingen – Würzburg railway line and leads to Rothenburg ob der Tauber , the rest of the line to Dombühl has been closed and dismantled.

history

Waiting for the opening train at Diebach-Insingen station in 1905

Rothenburg ob der Tauber station

On November 1, 1873, the section from Steinach to Rothenburg was opened and gave the formerly free imperial city a railway connection to the main Würzburg – Ansbach line, which was completed in 1864 . The continuation of the branch line south to Dombühl, where a connection to the Nuremberg – Crailsheim main line, which was inaugurated in 1875 , was initially postponed. The construction of the line from Rothenburg to Dombühl was not approved until 1900, and finally the entire line was open to traffic on August 1, 1905. This section of the route was discontinued in 1971 and was still used from Dombühl to park open freight cars that were no longer needed.

Special features of the line were the terminus station in Schillingsfürst, the crossing of the European watershed Rhine - Danube at Schillingsfürst as well as the breaking of all trains in Rothenburg until the 1950s. The economic viability of the southern section was always unsatisfactory; As early as the 1930s, railcars were used to save costs . In the 1950s, an express railcar operated daily as the “Reichsstädtezug” from Rothenburg ob der Tauber via Dombühl, Dinkelsbühl , Nördlingen , Donauwörth and Augsburg to Munich and back.

Since freight traffic had also declined in the meantime, all traffic between Rothenburg and Dombühl was stopped on September 25, 1971; goods traffic was only possible between Rothenburg and Gebsattel until December 31, 1990. The northern section also lost service on weekends in 1975. The railway line from Gebsattel has been almost completely dismantled since 1973, and the remaining tracks between Rothenburg and Dombühl were also removed in the early 1990s.

The route today

The northern section from Steinach to Rothenburg has been served mainly by regional trains every hour since 1996 , and in 1997 the route was also included as the R82 line in the greater Nuremberg area. Its continued existence is ensured by the tender for the “ Nuremberg Diesel Network ”, for which the then DB Regio Mittelfranken (now DB Regio Franken ) was awarded the contract by the Bavarian Railway Company in March 2006 . Since December 14, 2008, the new class 648 multiple units have been running every hour under the name “Mittelfrankenbahn”.

The disused southern section from Rothenburg to Dombühl has been expanded into a cycle path, with only 6 km of the 25 km running directly on the former railway line. The remainder of the section was largely built right next to the railway embankment. The railway line was built over in Gebsattel and in the Simonhölz industrial park, a railway bridge at Diebach and an incision at Unteröstheim were filled in and the embankment was removed in several places to create access to fields.

literature

• Oliver Paul: 100 years of the Rothenburg – Dombühl local railway . ProBahn Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-9809568-3-0 .

Web links

Commons : Steinach near Rothenburg – Dombühl railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Location, course as well as signals and permissible speeds of the route on the OpenRailwayMap
• Description of the cycle route Rothenburg-Dombühl on bahntrassenradeln.de
• Page to the festival program for the 100th anniversary of the Rothenburg – Dombühl route in 2005
• Description of the Steinach – Rothenburg route at www.nahverkehr-franken.de
• Track plan Rothenburg railway station of DB Netz AG (PDF file; 159 kB)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany 2009/2010 . 7th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89494-139-0 .
3. ↑ DB Group: First vehicles for Central Franconia have arrived . Press release from January 23, 2008