Railway line Velgast – Tribsees / Franzburg

Velgast – Tribsees / Franzburg
Route north of Tribsees in the last year of operation
Route number (DB) :	6780 (Velgast – Tribsees)
Course book section (DB) :	168
Route length:	Velgast – Tribsees: 30.3 km. Neu Seehagen – Franzburg: 9.1 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Top speed:	50 km / h
Legend from Stralsund Hbf 0.0 Velgast to Prerow and to Rostock Hbf 2.8 Heath (Meckl) Barthe 3.9 Hövet 4.8 0.0 New Seehagen 3.1 Wolf Hagen 7.0 Müggenhall from Stralsund 9.1 Franzburg to Tribsees 5.9 Weitenhagen 7.2 Behrenwalde 8.1 Bear Farm 9.4 Koitenhagen 11.5 Ravenhorst 14.9 Forkenbeck LPG connection 17.2 Semlow 20.6 Stormsdorf 22.2 Kavelsdorf 25.8 Country village 27.7 Tribsees country road Trebel 29.1 Tribsees stone gate from Stralsund and Greifswald 30.0 Tribsees to Rostock

The Velgast – Tribsees railway with a branch to Franzburg was a standard-gauge railway in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . The small railway in Western Pomerania was initially built and operated by the Franzburger Südbahn (FSB) , which was nationalized after the Second World War. The name Franzburger Südbahn goes back to what was then the Franzburg district in the former Prussian province of Pomerania .

Route

Entry signal of the Franzburger Südbahn in Velgast (2008)

The 39.5 km (nine of which are attributable to the junction for Franzenburg) long route began on the forecourt of the station Velgast the State Stralsund-Rostock railway . A separate station building was not built. From there it led further south through a hilly, partially wooded landscape. Characteristic features of the route were the simple and therefore very winding route and, especially in the northern part of the route, the very close distance between stations, despite the sparsely populated area. Neuseehagen station was the simplest form of a wedge station with a waiting hall between the two tracks that branched off towards Tribsees and Franzburg. The main route led through forests via Ravenhorst and Forkenbeck in an arc via Semlow , the most important place between the two endpoints, on into the Trebel valley to Tribsees . The city was circumnavigated. In addition to the state railway line ( Großherzoglich Mecklenburgische Friedrich-Franz-Eisenbahn Rostock – Tribsees), three private railways met in the Tribsees station south of the city . Tribsees and Franzburg were the only stations on the route that were equipped with reception buildings; all the others had simple waiting rooms, if at all.

history

prehistory

In the middle of the 19th century people in the Tribsees area were extremely dissatisfied with the transport possibilities. Except for simple country roads - mostly just better dirt roads - there were no transport options for wagons. An expansion of the Trebel as a waterway never got beyond the planning stage due to financial difficulties. Only horse busses have opened up Tribsees and the surrounding area since the 1850s; so there were connections to Rostock, Stralsund and Grimmen.

In the 1880s there were many efforts to build a railway. There were plans for a route from Güstrow via Laage, Ticino, Tribsees, Franzburg and Richtenberg to Stralsund. However, this project was not implemented, nor was the route from Rostock via Ticino and Dargun to Grimmen, from which Tribsees and Richtenberg were to be accessed via a branch line. An extension of the Teterow – Gnoien railway to Stralsund was not implemented. All variants always failed because of the financial viability; because the Prussian state had no interest in such unprofitable routes, and the construction alone was not affordable for the developed areas.

After the Prussian Small Railroad Act was passed in 1892 , inexpensive railroad lines could be built and operated. In the following years, the area around Tribsees was opened up by several railway lines.

organization

The AG Franzburger Südbahn was founded in April 1894. Shareholders were initially the state of Prussia with 318,000 marks, the province of Pomerania with 321,000 marks and the Franzburg-Barth district with 335,000 marks. The remaining 112,000 marks were held by private individuals and the company Lenz & Co. , which operated the route.

On April 1, 1910, management was transferred to the small railway department of the Provincial Association of the Province of Pomerania in Stettin . On September 22, 1919, the Association of Vorpommerscher Kleinbahnen GmbH in Stettin, temporarily in Stralsund, took its place, and on April 1, 1937, the Pomerania State Railway Directorate.

After Lenz & Co. left the company, the province and district each held over 40 percent of the capital. In addition to the 14 percent participation of the state, the shares of the neighboring district of Grimmen and the cities of Barth and Tribsees with a total of 2.6 percent were hardly worth mentioning.

From January 1, 1940, the Franzburger Südbahn was incorporated into the Pommersche Landesbahnen public corporation . Its new name was Franzburger Bahnen (South) with operations management in Tribsees.

However, the new organization dissolved at the beginning of 1945 with the end of the war. The regional railway administration had withdrawn from Stettin to Greifswald and Binz on Rügen before the Red Army , but was then relocated to Demmin . From January 1, 1947, as the main administration of the railways of Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, it took over the management of the other former private railways in the state until they became part of the Deutsche Reichsbahn on April 1, 1949 .

Route history

Early years

The main line of the Kleinbahn was opened from Velgast on November 23, 1894 to Ravenhorst and from May 19, 1895 to the end point in Tribsees. It was the first of the four railway lines that reached Tribsees. Since October 18, 1898, there was a branch from Neuseehagen to the district town of Franzburg . In 1900/01, the Stralsund-Tribsees railway company connected both ends of the route to Stralsund via Richtenberg .

The traffic volume was always low, especially on the Franzburger branch. In the first few years of operation, two pairs of trains went to Tribsees and three to Franzburg. After the direct route to Stralsund was opened, the offer was thinned out. In 1905 two pairs of trains drove to Franzburg, two to Tribsees on Wednesdays, Saturdays and public holidays, and one otherwise. In 1929 the offer was limited to one pair of trains to Tribsees on weekdays and two to Franzburg only on Wednesdays. In 1930 the passenger traffic to Franzburg was completely stopped, only a sparse freight traffic remained.

In 1935 the FSB carried 8,848 people and 30,157 tons of goods.

After the Second World War

After the end of the Second World War, the connection from Tribsees via Franzburg to Stralsund as well as the other Tribsees serving routes to Rostock and Grimmen was dismantled as a reparation to the Soviet Union. Ironically, the Franzburger Südbahn, the most insignificant route in the region, continued to exist.

After the dismantling of the other routes in the region, passenger traffic to Franzburg was resumed after the Second World War. The offer remained until the cessation of traffic on both sections with three pairs of trains to Franzburg and four to Tribsees, on Sundays a little less. The passenger trains were partly driven as mixed trains (with goods transport), partly as multiple units. From 1963 onwards, only railcars were used for passenger services on the branch to Tribsees; In addition, there were usually two freight trains a day. On the Franzburger branch it remained with the mixed trains until the end of the passenger traffic. Class 91 locomotives and class VT 135 railcars were used.

Passenger traffic on the branch to Franzburg ceased on December 1, 1968 or January 13, 1969. In freight traffic, the section continued to operate until April 1, 1977, but since January 1, 1972, freight trains have only been running during the harvest season.

Investments in the 1970s and 1980s

There were closure plans for the Velgast – Tribsees line in the mid-1960s because traffic was falling. In particular, a fundamental route renovation was necessary for traffic safety. But since the local agriculture was heavily involved in rail transport, the route was retained. At the end of the 1960s, a renovation of the superstructure began, which was completed in 1975. Even the section to Franzburg received a new superstructure, although the closure was already foreseeable here.

On a trial basis since 1969 and continuously since the mid-1970s, passenger traffic to Tribsees was carried out with rail buses of the VT 2.09 series (later DR series 171 or DB series 771), which last took about an hour for the 30-kilometer route due to the low line speed needed.

Traffic collapse after 1989/1990

With the economic changes caused by the fall of 1989/90, traffic almost completely disappeared. In 1990/1991 the timetable included two local goods trains per direction, in 1991/1992 there was only one pair of trains that only ran when needed. Freight traffic was officially discontinued on January 1, 1995, but in fact had hardly taken place in previous years. In 1993 only 33 t and in 1994 7 t of goods were transported in the entire year. Locomotives of the class V 60 (later listed as class 106 and with the DB 346) were used, which occasionally also took over passenger train services when the railcar failed.

Passenger traffic was carried out until May 27, 1995; however, the number of passengers was almost entirely limited to a small number of schoolchildren on the Landsdorf – Tribsees route.

The last trip on the route took place on April 27, 1996 as part of a special trip. During the renovation of the Velgast station, all connecting tracks to the main line were interrupted and partially removed. Later, the surrounding communities considered a handcar operation, but this could not be implemented. The costs incurred for the partial restoration of the infrastructure in the form of level crossings and missing tracks on the line caused particular problems.

Trebel bridge without track at Tribsees in May 2014

In August 2008, all tracks were completely removed from the Tribsees train station. By November 18, 2010, the line to Velgast was almost completely dismantled. There are only a few tracks left near the Velgast train station, at the now private officials' house.

literature

• Peter Wilhelm: The Franzburger Südbahn . EK Verlag, Freiburg 1997, ISBN 3-88255-424-X .
• Erich Preuss: Archive of German Small and Private Railways Brandenburg, Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania . Transpress, 1994, ISBN 3-344-70906-2 .

Web links

Commons : Franzburger Südbahn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• youtube.com : Driver's cab ride from Tribsees to Velgast

Footnotes

1. ^ The Franzburger Südbahn , p. 7
2. ↑ ^{a b} The Franzburger Südbahn , p. 8
3. ^ Date of nationalization of almost all private railways in the GDR
4. ↑ ^{a b} The Franzburger Südbahn , p. 36
5. ^ The Franzburger Südbahn , p. 38
6. ^ The Franzburger Südbahn , p. 38 ff.