Bregtalbahn

Hüfingen – Furtwangen

Route number (DB) :

9430

Course book section (DB) :

306c (1944)

Route length:

29.78 km

Gauge :

1435 mm ( standard gauge )

Maximum slope :

14 ‰

Minimum radius :

230 m

Legend

		Höllentalbahn from Donaueschingen
	2.643	Hüfingen Mitte (formerly Hüfingen Bf)
		Höllentalbahn to Freiburg (Breisgau)
	4.373	Bräunlingen industrial area
	5.400	Bräunlingen
	7.400	Breg
	8.300	Bräunlingen Hp (formerly Bruggen )
	8.900	Trench
	9.900	Land moat
	10.200	Wolterdingen (Baden)
		Reichenbächle
	15.000	Zindelstein
	16.300	Wild billy
	16.800	Krumpeldobel
	18.800	Hammereisenbach
	18.800	Eisenbach
	21.100	Linach
	21.200	Linach
	24.700	Voehrenbach
	28.800	Schönenbach
	30.050	Schönenbach West
	32.420	Furtwangen

The Bregtalbahn is a standard gauge , privately operated branch line in the Schwarzwald-Baar district . The originally 32.4 kilometer long branch line led from Donaueschingen , where it branches off from the Black Forest Railway, to Furtwangen and follows the eponymous river Breg along its entire length . In 1901 the first section of the Donaueschingen – Hüfingen line was taken over by the State Railways and added to the Höllentalbahn .

history

Furtwangen station in 1900

The section of the Bregtalbahn that still exists today in the structure of the Ringzug system

The Bregtalbahn was opened on October 20, 1892 from Donaueschingen to Hammereisenbach ; the second part from Hammereisenbach to Furtwangen followed on August 1, 1893. It was built by the Baden railway consortium under the railway entrepreneur Herrmann Bachstein , which brought the railway into the Süddeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (SEG) in 1897 .

The construction of the first 2.643 kilometer section Donaueschingen – Hüfingen was carried out at state expense, as this section was already part of the planned rear Höllentalbahn Neustadt – Donaueschingen. However, the Bregtalbahn was responsible for the operation and maintenance of this section of the route from the outset, and was given the route free of charge until further notice. For this reason, the kilometering of the route has its zero point in Donaueschingen.

Since when the Bregtalbahn was built around 1892/93 the further route of the rear Höllentalbahn between Neustadt (Black Forest) and Donaueschingen was not yet fixed (among other things, a route variant of the Höllentalbahn via Hammereisenbach was under discussion, the one from Hammereisenbach via Hüfingen to Donaueschingen was the Bregtalbahn would have been used) the state had contractually reserved a right of repurchase for the Hüfingen-Hammereisenbach route at any time. A buyback period of 25 years has been agreed for the Hammereisenbach-Furtwangen section.

When the rear Höllentalbahn began operating Donaueschingen-Neustadt-Freiburg after its continuous completion on August 20, 1901, the Grand Ducal Baden State Railroad itself took over the management and maintenance of the Donaueschingen-Hüfingen section from the SEG. The state railway agreed on joint operation with the SEG so that the Bregtalbahn trains could start and end unchanged in Donaueschingen. This reduced the operating length of the Bregtalbahn to 29.78 kilometers.

On January 1, 1953, the state of Baden-Württemberg took over the route and had it operated by Mittelbadische Eisenbahnen AG until it was absorbed into Südwestdeutsche Eisenbahnen AG (SWEG) on October 1, 1971 . The long route in relation to the low settlement density, the high maintenance costs due to the altitude and the harsh winters were always problematic, especially after the shifting of goods transport to the road had started. Passenger traffic was also mainly concentrated on the lower section to Wolterdingen. So it was only possible to invest insufficiently in the route. Because of the condition of the Breg Bridge behind Bräunlingen , the supervisory authority finally ordered the closure of the section (Bräunlingen–) connection Straub – Furtwangen. The costs for the repair of the bridge were estimated at 1.5 million DM, so that the SWEG made the measure of a guaranteed additional tonnage by the freight customers dependent on 20,000 t. The promise was not granted, so the SWEG ceased operations on September 30, 1972 and dismantled the line between Bräunlingen and Furtwangen. This section of the Bregtalbahn is now mostly used as a railway cycle path . On the remaining section to Bräunlingen, only goods traffic took place until December 15, 2003 , which was operated at times by the German Federal Railroad .

Since 2003, the remnant section to Bräunlingen has been used again by local rail , as it is part of the ring train concept of the districts of Schwarzwald-Baar, Rottweil and Tuttlingen. Now regional shuttles of the Hohenzollerische Landesbahn run every hour .

The route is secured using the branch line block procedure , so freight traffic is currently not possible.

literature

Robert Hönl: Bregtalbahn . Sutton Verlag, Erfurt 2013, ISBN 978-3-95400-194-1 .
Gerd Wolff, Hans-Dieter Menges: German small and private railways. Volume 2: Bathing . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 1992, ISBN 3-88255-653-6 , p. 230-241 .
Rainer Humbach: Bregtalbahn, in: Branch and narrow-gauge railways in Germany then and now. 87th supplementary edition . GeraMond Verlag, 2010, ISSN 0949-2143 .
Peter-Michael Mihailescu, Matthias Michalke: Forgotten railways in Baden-Württemberg . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0413-6 , p. 135-140 .

Web links

Individual evidence

^ Hans Wolfgang Rogl: SWEG - Südwestdeutsche Eisenbahnen AG . Alba, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-87094-532-X , p. 65 .

[1] Hans Wolfgang Rogl: SWEG - Südwestdeutsche Eisenbahnen AG . Alba, Düsseldorf 1981, ISBN 3-87094-532-X , p. 65 .