Bayreuth – Warmensteinach railway line

Bayreuth – Warmensteinach
Bayreuth-Friedrichsthal level crossing (Warmensteinacher Strasse) 1987
Route number :	5000
Course book section (DB) :	862 (Bayreuth – Weidenberg) 421f (1944) 421e (1963)
Route length:	22.9 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Maximum slope :	20  ‰
Top speed:	60 km / h
Legend of Schnabelwaid from Hollfeld or Thurnau - Kulmbach of willows 0.0 Bayreuth Central Station 344 m to Neuenmarkt-Wirsberg Green Tree Riedingerstrasse Anst industrial area Instead of BayWa In the coal shop 1.9 Bayreuth- St Georgen In the industrial area of ​​Sankt Georgen 2.5 Bundesstrasse 2 2.5 First Texaco 2.8 Federal motorway 9 Bernecker Strasse (formerly Bundesstrasse 2 ) 2.9 At first EVO 3.3 As of BHG 3.6 Laineck 4.5 Friedrichsthal (b Bayreuth) Anst Gipsgrube (until 1964) 6.9 Döhlau Main street (Untersteinach) 10.0 Untersteinach (b Bayreuth) Road to the commercial area 11.7 Gorschnitz Weißenbächlein 12.4 At the garage factory Zapf 13.9 Willow Hill 440 m State Road 2181 15.6 Mengersreuth State Road 2181 (Warm) Steinach 17.6 Sophienthal 19.8 Zainhammer (Warm) Steinach State Road 2181 22.9 Warmensteinach 554 m

The Bayreuth – Warmensteinach railway is a branch line in Bavaria . Of the seven branch lines that used to open up the Fichtel Mountains , it is the last line that is at least partially in operation.

route

Bayreuth main station with rail bus to Warmensteinach on platform 5, 1986

Weidenberg: Güterschuppen and VT 98, 1987

Rail bus in Warmensteinach terminus, 1987

The line begins at Bayreuth Central Station , which it leaves in a north-easterly direction. Since the construction of Hofer Strasse , the track of the “ leased line ” ( Bayreuth – Neuenmarkt-Wirsberg line ) has been used up to the new bridge there. After crossing under the street Grüner Baum , the line leaves the previously shared route and, after a curve, reaches Bayreuth St. Georgen train station in a west-east direction (today only a stop ). At times there were several connecting and loading tracks in this area. Initially running roughly to the east, the route crosses the federal highway 9 and enters the valley of the (warm) Steinach behind Laineck . First it runs in the narrow valley on a slope above the river, swings to the northeast just before Döhlau and then to the southeast before Untersteinach. Here the valley widens and the track moves into its center. At the Döhlau stop, a siding was built for the nearby gypsum mine in 1948 and operated until 1964.

Behind Weidenberg, the character of the valley changes again. After Mengersreuth the Steinach is crossed, which, from here from the north, comes from the southern slope of the Ochsenkopf . The route follows the sharp curves of the narrow valley on the left-hand slope with partly steep mountain walls. The Steinach had to be relocated in several places during construction, and the route crossed it several times. At Neuwerk , shortly before Warmensteinach, a mountain head was broken and further north the state road 2181 was crossed at the same level. The terminus is in the middle of the long town.

The smallest curve radii of 200 m can be found in 38 places, mainly in the upper Steinach Valley. The distance increases monotonically by up to 20 ‰. The difference in height between Bayreuth main station and the terminus at Warmensteinach is 209 m, between Bayreuth main station and Weidenberg 97 m. The linear distance between the centers of the main operating buildings of the Bayreuth and Warmensteinach stations is 14.8 km, the length of the railway line 22.9 km. Apart from a 200 m long and 4 m high dam between Mengersreuth and Mittlernhammer, which is interrupted by bridge openings, there are no significant engineering structures.

history

Bridge over the federal motorway 9 near Laineck , 1986

The branch line Bayreuth Hbf – Weidenberg – Warmensteinach was opened on August 15, 1896. It was the first of the branch lines from Bayreuth and is still the only one in its section to Weidenberg.

As is customary on Bavarian local railways, the locomotives and staff were located at the end of the line, Warmensteinach station. Railway stations were also Bayreuth Sankt Georgen and Weidenberg. The towns of Friedrichsthal, Untersteinach, Sophienthal and Zainhammer received largely uniform wooden buildings as railway agencies , while Untersteinach had an apartment for those who walked the route . The remaining stations were pure stopping points, some of which were upgraded to stopping places by later added loading tracks (e.g. Friedrichsthal) and industrial connections.

The traffic was rather low at first, three pairs of trains ran daily. In 1944 there were four pairs of passenger trains on weekdays and one less on Sundays. In 1963 there were six pairs of trains a day, plus a bus course on weekdays in the evening. In the busy winter sports traffic there were also through trains from Nuremberg and Bamberg , some of which were hauled by two tank locomotives and - atypical for a branch line - carried several four-axle express train wagons . Up to four special trains could stand in Warmensteinach on winter Sundays. The first winter sports train ran from Nuremberg to Warmensteinach in January 1908.

On October 17, 1969, a serious accident occurred at the Bindlacher Allee level crossing on Bundesstrasse 2 (today: Bernecker Strasse) in Bayreuth- Laineck . The driver of a truck had overlooked the warning light and rammed his vehicle into the railcar coming from Warmensteinach, which then derailed. He and the driver suffered serious injuries, 23 passengers were also injured.

Bridge over the Weißenbächlein in Görschnitz, 1986

At the beginning of the 1980s, three trains to Bayreuth and two trains to Warmensteinach were in the timetable (supplemented by a few bus trips) from Monday to Friday. The early train to Warmensteinach officially only ran as an empty train. On the weekends, train traffic has been completely idle since May 1982, as was usual on subordinate lines of the DB at the time. In 2001 there were again five pairs of trains Monday to Friday, plus four bus routes; the trains had connections to and from Warmensteinach in Weidenberg. Regular train services have only been offered again on weekends since mid-2011.

Reopening train in Weidenberg on January 10, 2007 (two class 628 double railcars)

Since January 1, 1993, the Weidenberg – Warmensteinach section has no longer been used for passenger and freight traffic “for technical reasons”. On June 9 and 10, 2001, freight and passenger traffic was also suspended between Bayreuth and Weidenberg due to bridge damage .

The dismantling of the line had already been decided by the DB, but was prevented by the sale to the Deutsche Regionalisenbahn (DRE). Operations resumed on May 5, 2002, but stopped again on June 1, 2004. The reason for this was the necessary demolition of the old motorway bridge as part of the six-lane expansion (with “housing”) of the A 9 .

Since the former Bavarian Transport Minister Otto Wiesheu (CSU) refused to finance non-federal railways with public funds , the Bayreuth – Weidenberg section was transferred to municipal responsibility on August 1, 2005 (Bayreuth district, Markt Weidenberg) by means of a heritable building lease. This enabled the investment grants of the Municipal Transport Financing Act to be issued. The new leaseholder transferred the management of this section to DRE.

The Bayreuth – Weidenberg section was then completely renovated in 2006 and reopened to traffic on January 10, 2007. In the 2010/2011 timetable, seven pairs of trains were driven in the direction of Weidenberg and eight in the direction of Bayreuth from Monday to Friday .

In October 2015, the DRE put the Mengersreuth - Warmensteinach section of the route up for sale. A cycle path was laid on the railway line between Sophienthal and Warmensteinach and has been accessible since November 15, 2018. According to the budget draft of the Bayreuth district for 2019, the route between Weidenberg and Bayreuth was operated cost-neutral for the district in the previous year.

• Route served by class 798 rail buses in 1987
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  Weidenberg train station: Exit to Warmensteinach

• 

  Weidenberg station

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  Untersteinach near Bayreuth

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  Friedrichsthal stop (near Bayreuth)

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  Train from Warmensteinach between Bayreuth-St. Georgen and Bayreuth Hbf

present

Regio-Shuttle RS1 at the Döhlau level crossing, 2012

passenger traffic

Since June 12, 2011, the agilis transport company has been serving the newly created Upper Franconian diesel network on behalf of the Bavarian Railway Company and thus also this DRE route. The agilis trains run every hour from 5:30 a.m. on weekdays, and generally every hour from 6:30 a.m. on weekends. The last train from Weidenberg leaves at 8:46 p.m. and from Bayreuth at 11:37 p.m.

Freight transport

Since the temporary suspension of all traffic in 2001, there was initially no longer any freight traffic on the Fichtelgebirgsbahn. As part of the route expansion, most of the sidings in the Bayreuth urban area were no longer connected. There remained two inactive sidings in Bayreuth and Görschnitz. The latter was reactivated by the garage manufacturer Zapf at the beginning of September 2009 in order to send prefabricated garages by rail to Austria and Italy. Due to the truck toll in Austria and the limitation of the total truck weight to 44 tons, rail transport is cheaper from a distance of 400 kilometers. In 2010 a total of 132 prefabricated garages weighing 1,720 tons were transported to five train stations in Austria and, for the first time, to Saarbrücken and France.

vehicles

First of all, Bavarian local railroad locomotives of the D VII series were used on the route . From Warmensteinach they could carry 540 tons of tensile load, in the opposite direction to Weidenberg but only 150, to Warmensteinach only 120 tons. Until more powerful locomotives were available, therefore, a leader often had to be provided. The maximum speed was then set at 30 km / h, in Sophienthal at only 15 km / h. Class 98.11 and 64 steam locomotives , which could also transport long winter sports trains, later dominated the scene . Locomotives of the 86 to Warmensteinach also ran here regularly .

As on other routes in the Bayreuth area, dieselization began with VT 95 rail buses . In the last few years before they were taken out of service, the more powerful VT 98 series came to Warmensteinach. In between there were school trains consisting of class 211 locomotives , initially with three-axle, and since the late 1970s with four-axle conversion cars. Since its commissioning in the mid-1970s, multiple units of the 614 series have also been running on this route as planned.

In terms of locomotives, the V 100 series was striking, deliveries were also made by V 60 and small locomotives ( Köf II and Köf III ). From 1994 locomotives of the 218 series were also used in the garage . The services of the class 211 before the passenger trains were taken over by locomotives of the class 218 and 217 after their disappearance .

After the reactivation of the route to the new management, in mid-2011 reversed diesel railcars of the 628 series from DB Regio . Since then, agilis railcars of the type Stadler Regio-Shuttle RS1 have been used by the new operator . The operation of the siding of the company Zapf in Görschnitz is demand, in the night from Friday to Saturday with a diesel locomotive of the 294 series and usually five flat cars of special design that can carry a total of 20 extra-wide garages.

Unusual vehicles were occasionally on the move on special trips, such as 86 457 with a long passenger train in the summer of 1989. As part of the route renovation, “exotic” traction vehicles also came onto the route, for example. B. 2006 the former Danish diesel locomotive My 1143 (type NOHAB ).

• Used vehicle types
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  Rail bus BR 798 (VT 98) with control car in Weidenberg 1987

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  211 035 is waiting with train N 7608 in Warmensteinach for departure to Bayreuth, 1991

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  VT 614 in Bayreuth, 1986

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  VT 628 at the Weidenberg level crossing, 2011

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  Regio-Shuttle RS1 at the Bayreuth Egerländer Straße level crossing

future

Reactivation section to Warmensteinach

The owner of the disused Weidenberg – Warmensteinach section is the DRE. It has an operating license that is valid until 2050. The tracks between Weidenberg and Warmensteinach have largely been dismantled.

After initial concerns, the Warmensteinach community has meanwhile spoken out in favor of rebuilding and reactivating the remnant. The market town of Weidenberg advocates a short-term reactivation of the route to the villages of Mengersreuth (the route is passable up to there) or Sophienthal. In autumn 2007 the section was cut open and then dismantled; in 2008 a renovation concept was to be drawn up. Allegedly, the bridge at Mengersreuth (reason for closure 1993) should be able to be used again by raising it.

Individual political parties have called for the route to Warmensteinach to be reactivated for reasons of promoting the economy and tourism as well as increasing traffic safety. In summer 2009, following a motion for a resolution by the Free Voters parliamentary group, the Bavarian state government commissioned the Bavarian state government to review the reactivation and, if necessary, to take over the costs of the renovation.

On August 16, 2010, Bayreuth District Administrator Huebner announced the end of the Weidenberg – Warmensteinach route. Due to the high investment costs, which are not subsidized by the Free State of Bavaria, and the low expected number of passengers, renovation is not worthwhile. Instead, the bus offer to the Hohe Fichtelgebirge should be expanded. The Bavarian Ministry of Transport emphasized again in October 2011 that the insufficient number of passengers forecast was the main reason why no funds were made available for reactivating the route to Warmensteinach. However, new passenger counts took place in 2012, which enabled a reassessment.

After the last passenger potential analysis was available (with a negative result), the municipality of Warmensteinach sought to build a cycle path on the route in the upper Steinach valley. However, at the request of a political party, the decommissioning process was suspended until November 2016. The cycle path between Sophienthal and Warmensteinach was opened in November 2018.

Web links

Commons : Bayreuth – Warmensteinach railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Route and operating points on the OpenRailwayMap
• Reopening report on May 5, 2002

literature

• Robert Zintl: Bayreuth and the railroad . Gondrom, Bindlach 1992, ISBN 3-8112-0780-6 .
• Bernd Schmitt, Gerald Hoch: Branch lines in Upper Franconia . Michael Resch, Coburg 1999, ISBN 3-9805967-4-5 .
• Kerstin Schäfer: The high-rise buildings of the Upper Franconian branch lines. History, inventory and conversion . Michael Resch, Coburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-944237-05-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ signalarchiv.de
2. ↑ Michael Ernstberger: North Bavarian field and mine railways and the history of their operations . 1st edition. 2005, p. 208 ff .
3. ^ Robert Zintl: Bayreuth and the railway. 1992, p. 65; from the SRTM altitude data, however, there is a maximum (mean) gradient of 15 ‰
4. ^ Siegfried Bufe: Railway in Upper Franconia. Munich 1982, ISBN 3-922138-13-6 , p. 224.
5. ↑ Bernd Mayer: Bayreuth in the twentieth century , p. 10.
6. ↑ 50 years ago in: Nordbayerischer Kurier of October 18, 2019, p. 10.
7. ↑ ^{a b} Bernd Schmitt, Gerald Hoch: Branch lines in Upper Franconia. 1999, p. 161.
8. ↑ Report in the Eisenbahnforum Nordostbayern of August 31, 2005. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved March 25, 2008 .  ( 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.    
9. ↑ Surrender of railway infrastructure. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 29, 2015 ; Retrieved November 3, 2015 . 
10. ↑ Cycle path approved in: Nordbayerischer Kurier from November 29, 2018, p. 24.
11. ↑ Udo Bartsch: District has to pay less for local transport. January 23, 2019, accessed January 24, 2019 . 
12. ↑ [1] (PDF file)
13. ↑ Oliver Junk: Zapf on the move on new tracks. September 10, 2009. Retrieved September 10, 2009 . 
14. ↑ curfew for the road. Prefabricated garages from Weidenberg in Bavaria for Austria. (PDF; 3.4 MB) In: The train does it! 10 clever examples of shifting from truck to rail. Allianz pro Schiene, November 2011, accessed on January 20, 2018 . 
15. ↑ Bernd Schmitt, Gerald Hoch: Branch lines in Upper Franconia. 1999, p. 170.
16. ^ Siegfried Bufe: Railway in Upper Franconia. 1982, p. 226.
17. ↑ New time window for cargo traffic. DBV Fichtelgebirgsbahn eV, 2011, accessed on December 21, 2011 . 
18. ↑ Bernd Mayer: Bayreuth Chronicle. 1989, p. 84.
19. ↑ Railway infrastructure DRE group. (PDF) (No longer available online.) German Regional Railway, March 4, 2014, archived from the original on January 11, 2015 ; accessed on August 22, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
20. ↑ Working group SCHIENE-aktuell: SCHIENE-aktuell. Coburg, issue 1/2008, p. 11f.
21. ↑ Application by MPs Hubert Aiwanger, Tanja Schweiger, Peter Meyer and parliamentary group (FW). Renovation and restoration of the Weidenberg − Warmensteinach railway line (Bayreuth district). (PDF; 137 kB) In: Bayerischer Landtag, printed matter 16/892, March 9, 2009, archived from the original on July 19, 2011 ; Retrieved March 25, 2009 . 
22. ↑ Resolution of the plenum in printed matter no. 16/1732 of July 1, 2009: "Renovation and restoration of the Weidenberg - Warmensteinach railway line (Bayreuth district)". (PDF; 443 kB) Retrieved November 6, 2009 . 
23. ^ Stephan Herbert Fuchs: High costs and too few passengers. In: Frankenpost, Hof. August 17, 2010, accessed August 19, 2010 . 
24. ↑ Bad customer about the railway line ( Memento from April 5, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
25. ↑ Mayor is angry In: Nordbayerischer Kurier of March 11, 2016, p. 26.