Biebertalbahn

This article describes the Biebertalbahn going out from Giessen. The Spessart Railway and the Götzenhof – Wüstensachsen railway were also named .

Giessen-Bieber
Locomotive 60, now Bieberlies on the Sauerland Kleinbahn
Course book section (DB) :	193p
Route length:	9.5 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Maximum slope :	3.1  ‰
Legend -0.8 Gießen passenger station (passenger traffic until 1899) 0.0 Gießen Kleinbahnhof (formerly: Neustädter Tor ) (159 m) 0.9 Lahn Giessen Hardtallee 2.4 Heuchelheim (Kr Giessen) Heuchelheim (Kr Gießen) Mühlchen 3.1 Windhof 3.3 Sack & Junghardt cement pipe works 4.1 Lollar – Wetzlar railway line Reloading platform / ramp 4.1 Evening Star (Hesse) 4.4 Abendstern (Hessen) freight yard Burning lime and brick factory 4.6 Hessen-Darmstadt / Prussia 5.4 Krofdorf-Gleiberg (opened later) 6.7 Rodheim Beaver Mill moat 7.8 Rodheim North 8.4 8.7 Beaver (198 m) Beaver Mill moat Limestone quarries Kehlbachtal charging station Limestone quarries Buderus

The Biebertalbahn , known colloquially as the Bieberlies , was a narrow-gauge, small- scale railway that started in the central Hessian university town of Gießen . The river Bieber was named after it . The line was opened in 1898. Passenger traffic ended in 1952, freight traffic in 1963.

route

The 9.5-kilometer stretch from Giessen - Heuchelheim - Abendstern - Rodheim - Bieber was meter-gauge and was primarily used to transport limestone and iron ore . But she also drove in passenger traffic . There was a connection to the Gießen freight station , where a loading platform was available.

In 1899, the original Biebertalbahn, 800 meters south of the state train station, was replaced by a train station at Neustädter Tor near the old town of Giessen. The crossing of the Lahn followed shortly after the train station over a road bridge (old Lahn bridge), which the railway also used. Most of the route followed the Rodheimer Landstrasse ( K 42 ). In Abendstern, the runway crossed the cannon runway at the same level and signal-protected with an elaborate, signal-dependent switch construction . For the passage of the state railway trains, the crossover pieces of the small railway a few centimeters higher were turned away in the horizontal plane.

In Bieber there was a branch track about one kilometer long to a loading point in the Kehlbachtal , which was connected by cable cars to the Königsberg and Friedberg mine fields . There were also limestone quarries there .

history

Foundation phase

The Allgemeine Deutsche Kleinbahn-Gesellschaft (ADKG) built the railway on the basis of two concessions from 1897. This was necessary because the railway line crossed the state border between the Grand Duchy of Hesse and the Kingdom of Prussia . The Biebertalbahn was opened on August 19, 1898 for passenger traffic and on October 20, 1898 for goods traffic .

Even before the railway went into operation, it suffered a first setback: Buderus closed its Margarethenhütte in Gießen in 1898, so that the transport of ore planned there did not take place. As a result, the ore was mainly transported between the pits and the Abendstern station, where the ore was reloaded onto the state railway. The Abendstern – Gießen section was primarily used for passenger traffic.

The main customers of Deutsche Bahn were:

• Friedberg Pit ( Buderus ). The mine was in operation until 1903, 1920–1924 and 1938–1961.
• Königsberg mine ( Mannesmann ). The mine was in operation from 1918 to 1930, 1934–1949 and 1959–1963.
• Grube Eleonore ( Stumm Group ). The mine was in operation from 1897 to 1929.
• Kalkwerke Buderus, later Gabriel and from 1940 Drebes .

business

In the course of the restructuring of the Lenz Group , i.e. the AG for Transport (AGV), the United Kleinbahnen AG (VKA) became the owner of the Biebertalbahn in 1927.

The city of Giessen, committed to the incorporation of Heuchelheim , introduced in 1939, the request to take over the Biebertal web to their route the Giessen tram to extend to Heuchelheim. In view of the Second World War , the plans were initially postponed and then never realized.

The state of Hesse, newly founded after the war, socialized with its constitution through Article 41, among other things, all private railways. From August 25, 1947, the Biebertalbahn was under trustee administration for the State of Hesse.

The city of Giessen now sought again the incorporation of Heuchelheim and taught so from 7 July 1949 Omnibus - line to there, which December 23, 1949 at O bus was changed. The offer was supplemented by another bus line to Bieber from February 14, 1952. The Biebertal Railway, which was still operating with war-worn material, then stopped passenger traffic on April 14, 1952, and general freight traffic on October 2, 1954. Since then, the railway has only been used to remove ore and lime from the pits near Bieber. The trusteeship in favor of the State of Hesse ended on June 6, 1952. Since the railway was running into deficits at this point in time, the VKA was no longer interested in taking over the property again: The State of Hesse remained “seated” on the deficit railway and took over in 1953 Bahn into his property and brought it to the Hessische Landesbahn GmbH in 1956 . Since 1954, however, only the 4.6 km long route between the pits and Abendstern was used for the removal of mining products, the economic result of the railway improved considerably: the railway had been operating economically since 1956. When the Königsberg mine was reopened in 1959, the railway's economic situation improved again. In 1961 she achieved the highest transport volume in its history.

However, ore mining in Germany became increasingly uneconomical due to advancing globalization . The Königsberg mine was closed on April 30, 1963. This also ended the traffic on the Biebertalbahn.

Transport performance

First timetable for passenger traffic in 1898

year	Passengers	Goods (t)
1901	158.965	061,067
1917	423.155	067,789
1924	091,756	059,445
1935	130.497	019,715
1938	161,692	040,000 (approx.)
1949	610,300	no information
1960	set	66,000
1961	set	111,000

Relics

In the area of ​​the municipality of Biebertal, large parts of the railway embankment can still be seen today. In the area of ​​the two Bieber crossings, the railway embankment is overgrown with bushes and the bridgeheads are still there. Large parts of the Rodheim – Bieber line and the siding to the limestone quarries are now used as footpaths and cycle paths.

The steam locomotive number 60 ( Henschel & Sohn , Kassel , factory number 19979/1923, type Cn2t) of the Biebertalbahn is used today as a museum locomotive on the Sauerland Kleinbahn , after it was initially installed as a monument locomotive at the former Krofdorf-Gleiberg station.

In memory of the Bieberlies, a restored embankment of the Biebertalbahn with tracks and signs was opened near the former Rodheim station at the beginning of September 2016.

On May 15, 2020, after a long search by the Heimatverein Rodheim-Bieber eV, a passenger wagon was lifted onto the track. The wagon was procured from Switzerland and is similar to the wagons of the former Bieberlies.

literature

• Andreas Christopher and Dieter Eckert: Narrow gauge into the Biebertal . In: Oberhessische Vertriebsbetriebe AG (OVAG) (ed.): Connection to the wide world: On the changeful development of the railway in Oberhessen , Friedberg 2014 (2015), ISBN 978-3-9815015-5-1 , pp. 48–51
• Railway Atlas Germany . Edition 2005/2006. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2005, ISBN 3-89494-134-0
• Rainer Haus: The Biebertalbahn. A contribution to the mining history of the Lahn-Dill area and Upper Hesse . Verlag im Biebertal, Biebertal 1998, ISBN 3-9801447-9-8 , ( Mining and Railways 3)
• Reichsbahndirektion Frankfurt / Main : Guide over the lines of the district of the Reichsbahndirektion Frankfurt (Main) . Printing house of the Reichsbahndirektion, Frankfurt am Main 1926, p. 137 f.
• Gerd Wolff, Andreas Christopher: German small and private railways . Volume 8: Hesse . Eisenbahn-Kurier-Verlag, Freiburg 2004, ISBN 3-88255-667-6 , p. 254 ff.
• Dieter Eckert: When the Giessen students still rode the “Bieberlies” . Einst und Jetzt , Vol. 29 (1984), pp. 165-170

Web links

Commons : Biebertalbahn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Mining in the Biebertal at the foot of the Dünsberg , PDF document on homersheimat.de
• Installation of the wagon on the former Bieberlies tracks on YouTube.com

Individual evidence

1. ^ Official course book. Western Germany. Summer timetable 1950.
2. ↑ Illustration in: Wolff / Christopher, p. 257
3. ↑ Christopher / Eckert: Schmalspurig , p. 48
4. ↑ Christopher / Eckert: Schmalspurig , p. 50
5. ↑ Article 41 of the Hessian Constitution. .
6. ↑ Christopher / Eckert: Schmalspurig , p. 49 f.
7. ↑ Christopher / Eckert: Schmalspurig , p. 49
8. ↑ Information from Christopher / Eckert: Schmalspurig , p. 48 ff.
9. ↑ Rolf Löttgers: private railways in Germany: The German railway company 1960-1969. P. 133
10. ↑ ibid.