Quoos – Crosta industrial railway

Quoos – Adolfshütte Crosta
Route length:	7.2 km
Gauge :	750 mm ( narrow gauge )
Top speed:	15 km / h
Legend 0.0 Quoos (Connection of the Bautzen – Hoyerswerda railway line ) 0.9 Brook bridge 3.4 Ldst sawmill Luppa 6.15 Ldst Lomske 6.8 Brook bridge 7.2 Adolfshütte

The Quoos – Crosta industrial railway was a private works railway with a gauge of 750 millimeters in Saxony . It connected the Quoos stop on the Bautzen – Hoyerswerda railway line with the Adolfshütte in Crosta . The railway was used exclusively for freight traffic.

history

The Oberlausitz north of Bautzen has very rich deposits of lignite , clay and kaolin , gave the middle of the 19th century prompted a lively mining. As early as 1844, lignite was being mined in farm pits near Merka , which was exposed on the surface of the earth. The first large company was established in 1854 at Großdubrau , which was named Margarethenhütte in 1857 in honor of the Saxon Princess Magarethe . The “Graeflich Einsiedelsche Kaolin-, Thon- und Kohlenwerke AG zu Crosta” - the later Adolfshütte - had already been founded in 1831. The latter initially primarily mined clay and lignite, and from 1893 onwards also to a large extent kaolin for paper production.

Railway embankment near Crosta (2009)

Both operations were far away from the railway lines built until the end of the 19th century, such as the Görlitz – Dresden line that had existed since 1847 . The secondary line Bautzen – Hoyerswerda, which went into operation in November 1890, also ran further west, so that the laborious transport of the products with horse-drawn vehicles to the next train station remained.

In order to remedy the transport problem, the Adolfshütte had a narrow-gauge connecting railway built by Seim & Riedel in 1891 and 1892. The seven-kilometer route began at the Quoos stop on the Bautzen – Hoyerswerda railway line and headed eastwards to the factory site near Crosta. There were public loading points in Luppa and Lomske, but the rival company Margarethenhütte was not connected. The line was put into operation on April 22, 1892 with the official inspection.

When the Löbau – Radibor railway was finally completed on May 1, 1906 , the Adolfshütte received a standard-gauge siding from Großdubrau station. The line between the Quoos train station and the Luppa loading point was then abandoned in the same year. The sawmill in Luppa was operated from Crosta until 1914. After that, only the tracks within the Adolfshütte were operated.

During the Great Depression the Adolfshütte went in 1930 in bankruptcy and closed its doors. The plant was demolished in the following years, including the works track. Today there is hardly anything left of the former industrial railway. Part of the route is now used as a forest or field path.

Locomotives and wagons

The Graeflich Einsiedelsche Kaolin-, Thon- und Kohlenwerke AG zu Crosta procured two narrow-gauge locomotives from Krauss in Munich for their industrial railway , which handled all traffic until they ceased operations in 1930. An unknown number of roller stands existed for the transport of standard-gauge wagons , which were similar to those of the "Esslingen design" of the Royal Saxon State Railways . There were also some covered and open freight wagons for goods to be reloaded.

Locomotives on the Quoos – Crosta industrial line
No.	Surname	design type	Construction year	Manufacturer	Factory no.	Type
1	KARIN	B n2t	1891	Krauss / Munich	2602	XVIII bb
2	-	B n2t	1895	Krauss / Munich	3253	XXVII vv

literature

• Hans von Polenz: Railways in the Bautzener Land. Ostsächsische Eisenbahnfreunde eV, Löbau 2006, ISBN 3-00-018243-8 .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Oberlausitzer Heide- und Teichlandschaft , Series Landscapes in Germany - Values ​​of the German Homeland Volume 67; Böhlau Verlag Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-412-08903-6 ; Pp. 211, 212, 230
2. ↑ Description on www.sachsenschiene.net (accessed on January 3, 2013)
3. ↑ List on www.merte.de (accessed on December 30, 2010)