Railway line Wächtersbach – Bad Orb

Wächtersbach – Bad Orb
Emma locomotive of the Bad Orb steam train
Route number :	9362
Course book section (DB) :	618, 12618
Route length:	6.5 km
Gauge :	600 mm, previously 1435 mm
Maximum slope :	3.1  ‰
Minimum radius :	180 m
Legend Wächtersbach State Railway Station 0.0 Wächtersbach small train station Flood ditch Tiny B 276 Aufenauer Berg A 66 5.1 Bad Orb Aumühle 6.5 Bad Orb 8.2 Training area Wegscheide

The Wächtersbach – Bad Orb railway is a 7.5 km long, now narrow-gauge railway line (originally standard gauge ) that begins at Wächtersbach station and leads to Bad Orb . It was opened on May 23, 1901 by Bad Orber Kleinbahn AG , and operations ceased on March 4, 1995. On May 26, 2001, a first section went into operation again as a 600 mm narrow-gauge railway , and since October 29, 2006 the entire route has been used again. However, there is only limited operation on Sundays in summer.

history

business

The building owner and operator was initially Bad Orber Kleinbahn AG, which was founded on August 20, 1900. The Prussian state and the province of Hessen-Nassau each held a third, and the district of Gelnhausen and the city of Orb each held a sixth of the capital.

The line went into operation in 1901.

As early as 1902, the Bad Orber Kleinbahn AG and the Wächtersbach-Birsteiner Kleinbahn AG set up a joint administration to which the Spessartbahn AG and the Freigerichter Kleinbahn AG were also subordinated from 1915 . The Bad Orber Kleinbahn was built by Bad Orber Kleinbahn AG as a standard gauge railway and initially operated. The route connected the Kinzigtalbahn , Frankfurt am Main - Fulda (- Berlin ), and the spa town of Bad Orb in the northern Spessart .

On April 1, 1937, the district of Gelnhausen became the owner of the four jointly managed small railways and formed the " Gelnhauser Kreisbahnen " company, which later became part of the Gelnhausen district works.

Cessation of operations

The Main-Kinzig-Kreis , in which the Gelnhausen district was absorbed in 1974, no longer wanted to cope with the small railroad's deficit, which had been growing since the 1960s. The city of Bad Orb, as a customer of electricity supplies by the district works, was able to prevent them from closing the line. However, due to construction work in 1981/82 and 1991/93, rail operations had been inactive for months.

After a tragic accident at the level crossing of the B 276 , a court ruling - even though all safety precautions had been taken - assigned sole responsibility to the railway. The district works no longer wanted to take on responsibility for rail operations and stopped it on March 4, 1995. The proposal by the Pro Bahn passenger association to renovate the line and integrate it into the then Rhein-Main transport association was not pursued any further.

traffic

The main target group was initially the spa guests, for whom some pairs of express trains stopped in Wächtersbach. Schoolchildren, professional and tourist traffic were added.

Freight traffic took place mainly to the Lettgenbrunn military training area on the Wegscheide from 1911 and until 1921. For this purpose, the track was extended. It now drove through Haselstrasse to the connection of a funicular on Wintersberg, which transported goods to the higher road divide. An extensive military field railway network was connected to the mountain station of the funicular .

After the end of the military training area, a holiday camp was set up there for Frankfurt schoolchildren who came and left by train, as did their parents, for whom trains from Frankfurt to Bad Orb were used on weekends .

Despite repeated setbacks, passenger traffic continued to grow well into the 1950s. Around 1960 400,000 travelers were transported annually. Up to 15 pairs of trains ran daily. In 1974 an annual performance of over 500,000 passengers was achieved. Almost twenty pairs of trains a day commuted between Wächtersbach and Bad Orb in the best years .

Buildings

The reception building in Bad Orb from 1925/26 is a cultural monument according to the Hessian Monument Protection Act .

→ Main article : Bad Orb train station

vehicles

Since 1959, the line had been operated with a push-pull train set with two passenger cars and a diesel locomotive - a very modern approach at the time. However, this vehicle combination remained until the end of operation 36 years later. The three-axle MaK 240 C diesel locomotives came from Maschinenbau Kiel , the two four-axle wagons from the wagon factory, Gebrüder Credé . The control car had two open-plan 2nd class compartments and a control compartment, the other car had two 1st class compartments, a 2nd class compartment and a luggage compartment. The train set is preserved in the Darmstadt-Kranichstein Railway Museum, a MaK 240 C diesel locomotive of the Gelnhausen District Railways is located in Birstein as a monument locomotive on the Vogelsberger Südbahnradweg .

Reactivation as a narrow-gauge railway

The train of the small steam train in Bad Orb station (2015)

After a few unsuccessful attempts to run a standard-gauge railway again, an operator was found, but for a narrow-gauge railway: Dampfkleinbahn Bad Orb Rolf Jirowetz & Siegfried Theimer GbR .

In 2000, the group of small train enthusiasts behind this company began reactivating the line - a purely voluntary commitment. For this purpose, the route of was standard gauge (1435 mm) on narrow gauge (600 mm) umgespurt . On this basis, since May 26, 2001, vehicles that came from the König-Ludwig-Dampfbahn Bad Brückenau have been used from Bad Orb to the Aumühle stop, since August 2002 to the Aufenauer Berg stop and since October 29, 2006 back to Wächtersbach hazards.

The operation is seasonal and takes place on Sundays and public holidays from Easter to the end of October. It is carried out exclusively by volunteer railway enthusiasts. You drive with the steam locomotive "Emma". Since the steam locomotive "Emma" could not move at the temporary terminus Aufenauer Berg (due to the lack of bypass tracks), a diesel locomotive was parked there on the only siding (stump track) on operating days. So the steam locomotive could be shunted over the siding to the other end of the train.

Narrow-gauge railway locomotives

Operating nr.	Construction year	Manufacturer	Factory no.	drive	route	Location	Remarks	operationally capable
Emma	1923	Hohenzollern	4382	steam	Wächtersbach – Bad Orb	Bad Orb train station	Power: 55 HP; Top speed: 25 km / h	Yes
	1955	Locomotive construction Babelsberg	248638	Diesel type Ns 2 f	Wächtersbach – Bad Orb	Bad Orb train station	Power: 30 HP; Top speed: 14 km / h	Yes
	1958	Locomotive construction Babelsberg	262049	Diesel type Ns 2 f	Wächtersbach – Bad Orb	Bad Orb train station	Power: 30 HP; Top speed: 14 km / h	Yes

literature

• Reinhold Winter, Joachim Volz: Bad Orber Kleinbahn. 100 years of history of the Bad Orber Kleinbahn. Illustrated development history of the railway and its importance for the city of Bad Orb . History Association Birstein eV, 2001, ISBN 3-980-40781-0
• Railway Atlas Germany - Edition 2005/2006 . Schweers + Wall, o. O. 2005, ISBN 3-89494-134-0
• Heinz Schomann: Railway in Hessen. Cultural monuments in Hessen. Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany . ed. from the State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen, Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1917-6 , vol. 2.2, p. 845ff (route 080).
• Gerd Wolff, Andreas Christopher: German small and private railways. Volume 8: Hesse . Eisenbahn-Kurier, Freiburg 2004, ISBN 3-88255-667-6 , p. 111-114; 138-147 .
• Martin Weltner: Small train with a very special push-pull train . In: railway magazine . No. 3 , 2017, ISSN  0342-1902 , p. 48 f .

Web links

Commons : Dampfkleinbahn Bad Orb  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Bad Orb steam train
• Route photos on Forgotten Railways 2005

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dirk Thom: Small steam train "Emma" on a long journey again. Bad Orb Touristik, June 12, 2011, accessed on August 22, 2020 . 
2. ^ Christian Behrendt / PRO BAHN-Hessen: rails to Bad Orb. New ways in the network . Lauterbach. 2nd edition 1995.