Suhl – Schleusingen railway line

Suhl-Schleusingen

Route number :

6696

Course book section (DB) :

568

Route length:

15.8 km

Gauge :

1435 mm ( standard gauge )

Maximum slope :

70.6 ‰

Minimum radius :

250 m

Legend

	from Neudietendorf
0.00	Suhl	426.1 m
	to Ritschenhausen
1.52	Suhl-Neundorf	460.0 m
2.43	Start of the rack section until 1928
3.90	End of the rack section by 1928
5.04	Suhl-Friedberg	569.9 m
8.60	Hirschbach	466.0 m
	Viaduct in Hirschbach (47 m)
11.65	Erlau	415.0 m
13.36	St. Kilian	391.0 m
	from Ilmenau
15.84	Schleusingen	373.0 m
	after Themar

The Suhl – Schleusingen ( Friedbergbahn ) line is a branch line in Thuringia . It leads in the Thuringian Forest from Suhl over the Friedberg to Schleusingen . The steep section has 66.6 ‰, the largest authoritative tendency in Germany.

history

In 1904 the two cities of the Prussian district Schleusingen , Schleusingen and Suhl, submitted a petition to the Prussian authorities in Berlin for the construction of a railway line between the two places. Three years later, the approval and provision of the necessary funds in the amount of 3.1 million marks took place. In 1908, the Prussian State Railway began the preparatory work, two years later the railway construction and on November 14, 1911 the line was inaugurated.

Steep section with telephone cabinet

There were particular difficulties with the route from the Suhl valley basin to the Friedberg station 144 m higher. On this five-kilometer-long section, an Abt rack system was therefore laid over a length of 1470 meters in order to be able to negotiate an incline of up to 70.6 ‰ (65 meters long). Steam locomotives of the T 26 series were used in train traffic .

The switch to adhesion operation with steep stretch grade steam locomotives of the series 94 probably occurred in 1928, one year after the Rennsteigbahn . In addition, the heavy trains were pushed on the Suhl ramp. From 1974 the six-axle diesel locomotives of the DR class 118 were used, which could still approach a load of 155 tons on a maximum gradient, compared to 120 tons for the class 94. If the travel time was 70 minutes with cogwheel operation , this was reduced with the use of the Class 94 to 45 minutes and later with the class 118 to 28 minutes. From 1995 onwards, the 213 series operated with a control car and travel times of 25 minutes. Freight traffic was stopped on December 31, 1994. The last day of operation in scheduled passenger traffic was May 31, 1997, and operations were finally ceased on October 31, 1999.

In the course book the route in was Deutsche Reichsbahn under 190e, after the Second World War, initially 191a and from 1968 under 626, concluded with the Deutsche Bahn at the 568th

In 2004, for the construction of the St. Kilian viaduct of the federal motorway 73, an approximately 200 m long section of the track was dismantled, which was reinserted in January 2007 after the motorway was completed. Before that, the Friedbergbahn was leased to Rennsteigbahn GmbH & Co. KG. This intends to supply the Thüringer container glass GmbH between St. Kilian and Schleusingen via the siding in freight traffic. According to an article in Freie Wort on June 6, 2013, the route is currently being cleared of vegetation by volunteers and should be used again in museum operations. In August 2013, twelve of the fifteen kilometers had already been cut. In December 2013, for the first time in 16 years, a construction train traveled from Hirschbach to Friedberg. For the year 2014, the cut to the Suhl train station was planned.

On December 28, 2015, for the first time since the cessation of traffic, a locomotive ran the railway line with construction track status from Schleusingen to Suhl.