Schwebda – Wartha railway line

Schwebda – Wartha
Route number :	3931 Schwebda-Heldra
Course book range :	524 (1981)
Route length:	45.9 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Eschwege 0.00 Schwebda to Leinefelde 3.10 Frieda 7.40 Wanfried 8.10 Wanfried spinning hut 11.20 Altenburschla 12.40 The route runs 320 m on the 12.70 State border between Thuringia and Hesse 12.90 Big boy 14.10 Herora 15.30 former RBD Erfurt border State border Hesse-Thuringia from Mühlhausen 16.60 Hit 21.68 Hawks Werra 26.31 Frankenroda Werra Werra 30.60 Mihla 33.58 Buchenau (Werra) (from 1925) approx. 34.5 Ebenau (1915-1925) Werra 38.92 Creuzburg (Werra) 42.93 Horse village (Werra) from Halle (Saale) 45.90 Waiting according to Bebra

The railway Schwebda-Bardo , also Werra train or Werra Railway called, was a 45.90 km long stretch of Schwebda at the Kanonenbahn about Treffurt where the station Treffurt following the railway line Mulhouse Treffurt was (Vogteier tourist train) to Bahnhof Wartha (Werra) on the Halle – Bebra railway line .

history

The desire for a railway connection between Eschwege and Eisenach arose in the 1880s. In order to emphasize this idea, a railway committee was formed in Eisenach on December 28, 1882 , in which mainly industrialists from the region were involved, and in August 1883 published a memorandum in favor of a rail link between the two cities. At that time the connection from Eschwege to Treffurt was already planned, for the further course to Eisenach different variants were determined how the route between Treffurt and Creuzburg and between Creuzburg and Eisenach should be led. The memorandum also contained a route from Creuzburg via Krauthausen and Stregda directly to Eisenach. Ultimately, the decision was made to take a longer route along the Werra from Treffurt via Frankenroda , Mihla , Creuzburg and a connection to the Thuringian Railway near Hörschel , which was complex because of numerous river crossings .

In 1894, the Prussian state parliament decided to build the Eschwege-Wanfried-Treffurt connection. As a result, the discussion about the connection between Eisenach and Treffurt gained new momentum in Saxony-Weimar-Eisenach and was decided in 1898. The Schwebda – Treffurt section was officially opened on May 1, 1902.

For the railway line from Hörschel to Treffurt, a state treaty was required between the Kingdom of Prussia, the Grand Duchy of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach and the Duchy of Saxe-Gotha , whose territories were touched by the line. The construction costs for this section were estimated at 3.175 million marks . The surveying work began in 1904, the construction work in the summer of 1906. For the connection to the Thuringian Railway near Hörschel, the Wartha (Werra) station was rebuilt north of Wartha . The Treffurt station, which opened in 1902, was expanded and received, among other things, a water tower and a seven-hour engine shed. The section Treffurt – Wartha was finally opened on October 13, 1907.

The municipality of Ebenau near Creuzburg had already tried to find a stopping point when the line was being built.In 1915, after long negotiations, the Ebenau stopping point was opened not far from the Werra bridge, approx. One kilometer away from both places. Ten years later, however, this was abandoned when a new stop was opened at Buchenau, which had grown into an industrial location.

The railway line brought an economic revival in the region, around the railway stations in Mihla and Treffurt commercial enterprises settled, among other things for the extraction of gravel from the Werra. The sections near Frankenroda and between Buchenau and Mihla had to struggle with landslides from the start. In the last few years of operation, the last-mentioned section could only be traveled at walking pace.

On April 1, 1945, a train ran for the last time on the section between Mihla and Falken . This still reached Falken, then four of the five Werra bridges on the railway line between Creuzburg and Falken were blown up. German troops wanted to hold up the advancing US Army in the last days of World War II . At Creuzburg and Spichra , the railway line was also badly damaged; the blasting of the Werra bridge near Ebenau was prevented by employees of the Solvay works.

On July 3, 1945, traffic between Heldra and Treffurt was also discontinued, as the zone boundary between the American and Soviet occupation zones had run here since the beginning of July 1945 . In front of the Großburschla train station , the remaining line ran about 320 meters along the zonal border or, from 1949, the inner German border . Negotiations were able to ensure that the route remained passable here and the border fence was erected next to the route, so that Heldra became the new end point of the route from the direction of Eschwege.

For Falken and the Treffurt train station, only rail traffic to and from Mühlhausen via the Mühlhausen – Treffurt railway line remained. The section between Treffurt and Falken was officially closed on May 2, 1949. At the end of May 1952, the Mühlhausen route to Wendehausen was shortened, as it ran across Hessian territory between Wendehausen and Treffurt. With that, Treffurt was cut off from rail traffic, the tracks in Falken and Treffurt were dismantled in 1952, so that the question of rebuilding the Werra bridges between Mihla and Falken was no longer an issue.

Scheduled traffic on the remaining route from Wartha station to Mihla was resumed in July 1945. Passenger traffic from Eisenach via Wartha station to Mihla and back was suspended on May 13, 1962. With the closure of the Buchenau soda plant in 1968, freight traffic on the dilapidated route also ended. Immediately afterwards, the dismantling of the tracks and ancillary facilities on this section of the route began, which culminated in August 1980 with the demolition and dismantling of the Werra Bridge near Ebenau.

On the Hessian side, passenger traffic between the Eschwege station and Heldra was resumed on August 12, 1946 after the railway bridge over the Werra was restored in Eschwege . The traffic volume, however, was nowhere near that of the pre-war period. The section between Großburschla train station (the village Großburschla was on the other side of the border) and Heldra was shut down on February 2, 1970 after passenger traffic between Wanfried and Heldra had already ceased on June 6, 1966. Passenger traffic on the Schwebda – Wanfried line was ended on May 31, 1981, freight traffic to Wanfried ended on October 1, 1994, and the barely used continuation to Großburschla had already ceased on May 23, 1993. The route was dismantled here in the 1990s, and today the Werra Valley Cycle Path runs along large parts of the route .

Vehicle use

In the first years of operation Prussian locomotives of the series T3 and P 4 (type Erfurt) were used, after the completion of the locomotive shed in Treffurt also machines of the types T 11 and T12 , which as DRG series 74 kept traffic on the Werra Valley Railway until the end of the Second World War should dominate. The line from Eisenach to Treffurt was served by the Eisenach depot . Occasionally, machines of the 56 ( Prussian G 8 ) and 57 ( Prussian G 10 ) series were also used.

After the Second World War, the Deutsche Reichsbahn used mainly freight locomotives of the class 58 (formerly Prussian G 12 ) on the remaining part of the Wartha-Mihla . Passenger traffic was last covered by rail buses . From 1958, battery-powered railcars of the DR 581/582 to 615/616 series from the Gotha depot were also used.

On the remaining section of the Schwedba-Wanfried line, the Deutsche Bundesbahn recently used class VT95-98 rail buses from Eschwege .

Picture gallery

Train stations

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  Former Schwebda train station

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  Former Frieda station

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  Former Wanfried train station

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  Former Großburschla train station

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  Former Treffurt train station

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  Former Creuzburg train station

Relics

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  Former passage at Schwebda

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  Railway monument in Frieda

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  Track relic in Frieda

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  Signal in Frieda

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  Remains of the Werra bridge near Falken

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  Bridge ruins near Pferdsdorf

literature

• Rainer Lämmerhirt : The Werrataleisenbahn 1907-1969 , Verlag Rockstuhl 2007, ISBN 978-3-938997-94-9

Web links

Commons : Schwebda – Wartha railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Forgotten paths
• Course book 1944

Individual evidence

1. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 16ff.
2. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 16ff.
3. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 16ff.
4. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 59ff.
5. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 78ff.
6. ↑ ^{a b} Ralf Roman Rossberg: limit on German rails 1945-1990 . 2nd Edition. EK-Verlag, Freiburg 1991, ISBN 3-88255-829-6 , p. 149 .
7. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 82ff.
8. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 80ff.
9. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 88
10. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 89ff.
11. ^ Rainer Lämmerhirt : Die Werratal-Eisenbahn 1907-1969, Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza, ISBN 9783938997949 , page 94f.
12. ↑ Werra-Rundschau : The history of the Eschweg train station , December 15, 2019, accessed on August 11, 2020