Waldkirchen – Haidmühle railway line
| Waldkirchen (Niederbay) -Haidmühle | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Waldkirchen train station
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| Route number : | 5842 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course book range : | last 417m | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 25.3 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maximum slope : | 25 ‰ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Waldkirchen – Haidmühle railway was a branch line in Bavaria . It ran from Waldkirchen to Haidmühle in the Bohemian Forest and had a connection there to the Haidmühle – Volary (Wallern in the Bohemian Forest) route of the former United Bohemian Forest Local Railways . It branched off in Waldkirchen from the Passau – Freyung branch line (Ilztalbahn). The last section Waldkirchen – Jandelsbrunn was finally closed on October 1st, 1995 and later completely dismantled.
history
After the Passau – Freyung line was completed in 1892, efforts were also made to establish a rail link in other communities. So in 1895 the Breitenberg Railway Committee was founded , which endeavored to build a railway line from Waldkirchen, Neureichenau, Breitenberg to Aigen-Schlägl with merging with the local Mühlkreisbahn . On the Bohemian side, the Wallern Railway Commission endeavored to connect the railway line from Prachatitz to Wallern, which opened in 1900, with the Bavarian routes. After tough negotiations, a decision was made in favor of the connection to Bohemia and the connection to Austria was dropped. On July 14, 1903, the first meeting of the communities along the route took place.
On August 10, 1904, the Bavarian State Government approved the construction of a 26.9 kilometer branch line from Waldkirchen to the Bohemian border behind Haidmühle and took over the financing. A return had not been calculated for the 3.6 million mark expensive route, it was built because of the connection to the Bohemian rail network. It was completed in early November 1910. After a test train on November 8, the line was officially opened on November 15, 1910. The closed with Austria on 22 November 1904 State Treaty this branch line was in Haidmühle Following in Bohemia from the United Šumava local railways AG to be built branch line Haidmuehle Black Cross (Czech: Černý Kříž) with connections to Winterberg (Bohemia) (tschech .: Vimperk ), Prachatitz (Czech: Prachatice ) and Krummau (Czech: Český Krumlov ). The reception building and goods shed in Haidmühle were used jointly by both railway administrations and the customs authorities.
The route led from Waldkirchen initially in an easterly direction to Neureichenau and then further north-east to the border station, with an altitude difference of 330 m to be overcome between Waldkirchen and the highest point in Frauenberg, including lost inclines even 346 m. In the first years of operation and after the forced annexation of the Sudetenland , the continuous trains ran from Passau to Haidmühle, while the Freyung line was connected in Waldkirchen.
Considerations from the Czech side to extend the route back to Haidmühle in order to be able to establish a better connection to the Bavarian bus connections have meanwhile been rejected. During the travel times of the Ilz Valley Railway , the gap between Waldkirchen and Nové Údolí is closed by a bus line.
Between the Nové Údolí (German: Neuthal) station and the end of the border bridge in Germany there is a railway museum, which is housed in three old freight cars and tells the story of the route. There is also the Pošumavská jižní dráha (PJD), which calls itself the shortest international railway in the world.
Train traffic
Because of the low axle pressure permitted on branch lines, the Bavarian local railway locomotives ran on the routes. The Bavarian BB II (DRG class 98.7) were used on both routes by the Passau depot, especially in freight traffic . From the beginning of the 1930s until the beginning of the Second World War, two-axle diesel multiple units of the 135 and 137 series and the matching sidecars also drove to Freyung and Haidmühle. There is also a report on the use of the class 70.0 steam locomotives (Pt 2/3).
The area around the Dreisessel is known as a “snow hole”, as particularly heavy snowfalls are recorded here. In earlier times, the population or the military were often used to shovel the route free. Later on, snow blowers were sometimes left lying around. B. in the so-called record winter 1969/70.
After the track renovation and reinforcement of the superstructure took locomotives of the BR 64 (for passenger) and class 86 (for freight), and later diesel locomotives, especially the 211 series / 212 series train operations. In passenger were railcars used.
Shutdown and decay
With the establishment of the border fortifications as part of the Iron Curtain , 60 m of rails were removed from the Waldkirchen - Haidmühle route on the Czech side. As a result, the importance of this section of the route quickly declined, so that there were only shuttle journeys here and all trains from Passau to Freyung drove. Several times, however, freight wagons with industrial timber were brought from the east to just before the border, where the load was taken over by trucks and transported to the federal territory via a makeshift border crossing next to the railway border bridge. On June 1, 1958, there were the first restrictions in passenger traffic, which was then completely stopped on May 26, 1963 - after only one pair of rail buses per working day was last. Freight traffic between Haidmühle and Jandelsbrunn was stopped on December 31, 1975 and between Jandelsbrunn and Waldkirchen on October 1, 1995. The caravan manufacturer Knaus Tabbert in Jandelsbrunn was responsible for the volume of goods right up to the end. In 1998 the Bavarian Railway Company examined whether operations should be restarted. It was determined that only 760 passengers can be expected on working days. The cost of rebuilding the Jandelsbrunn – Haidmühle section was put at 35 million DM (17.9 million euros). The Federal Railway Authority therefore approved the closure of the railway line on July 5, 1995. It was carried out on October 1, 1995. With a decision by the Federal Railway Authority on May 16, 2001, the route from Waldkirchen (km 0.150) to Jandelsbrunn (km 8.756) was de-dedicated on May 18, 2001.
After the tracks were dismantled, the cycle path to Haidmühle, named after Adalbert Stifter , was built here . The Haidmühle sewage treatment plant was built on part of the embankment between Haidmühle and Nové Údolí.
As part of the reactivation of the railway line from Passau to Freyung and the associated "Danube-Moldau network", a bus line running parallel to the former railway line was set up between Waldkirchen and Nové Údolí, so that the connection between trains of the Ilztalbahn GmbH and the Czech Railway is established .
literature
- Walther Zeitler: Railways in Lower Bavaria and Upper Palatinate. 2nd Edition. Amberg 1997.
- Walther Zeitler: Railways in the Bavarian Forest. 3. Edition. Grafenau 1980.
- Deutsche Reichsbahn: The German railways in their development 1835–1935. Berlin 1935.
- Hans Kundmann: Railway history under the Dreisesselberg. In: Eisenbahn-Journal. 11/1991, Merker-Verlag, Munich 1991.
Web links
- Ilz Valley Railway
- Friends of the Ilztalbahn
- Danube Cycle Path
- Railway Museum Pošumavská jižní dráha (PJD)
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e f When the first train drove from Waldkirchen to Haidmühle. In: Passauer Neue Presse. Local part of Waldkirchen
- ^ W. Zeitler: Railways in the Bavarian Forest. 3. Edition. Grafenau 1980, p. 174.
- ^ W. Zeitler: Railways in the Bavarian Forest. 3. Edition. Grafenau 1980, p. 174.
- ↑ U. Kramer, M. Brodkorb: Farewell to the rail. Stuttgart 2008, p. 119.
- ^ Railways in the Bavarian Forest. In: Railway Journal. 2/96.
- ↑ Federal Railway Authority : List of disused routes in Bavaria (since January 1, 1994) ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. ( MS Excel ; 26 kB)
