Juist island railway

Juister island railway

Route number :

9155

Course book section (DB) :

10001

Route length:

2.8 km

Gauge :

1000 mm ( meter gauge )

Legend

		Train station (old)
	0.0	Station (new)
		Depot and workshop ("Schwarze Bude")

		Dike passage
		Military railway , later siding
		Pfahljoch route (800 m)
	2.3	Juist investor
		FRISIA ferry to Norddeich

The Inselbahn Juist was a single-track, meter-gauge and non-electrified railway line on the East Frisian island of Juist . It was the first motorized island railway in Germany and was shut down in 1982 after a nearby port was built.

history

Horse-drawn tram operation in 1898, three Stilkenboom passenger cars

Horse tram operation on the Pfahljoch route

In 1894 a wooden pier was built, which was extended on the landside in 1896. On June 19, 1898, the Inselbahn began operating as a horse-drawn tram . The system fell victim to a storm that same year. It was decided to use a locomotive with a combustion engine after the railway system was rebuilt. On August 4, 1899, the railway was accepted for operation and thus became Germany's first motorized island railway .

In 1911, the new pier was extended by 115 meters in order to reach fairways suitable for deeper-going ships from Emden . At the same time, the Pfahljoch route has been increased. During the First World War , an artillery position with a siding was set up on Juist.

In 1916 a storm surge caused such severe damage that a dike was built and all tracks and buildings had to be replaced. The pier was also damaged by storms and ice in 1921 and 1942 and repaired again.

In 1936 the Wehrmacht rebuilt the tracks and strengthened the pier. In the same year, a brick building was built as a reception building with a restaurant and goods shed. During the Second World War , ammunition was approached on the track to the artillery position. In the spring of 1947, ice seriously damaged the pier and its tracks. Makeshift facilities allowed bathing to run in the summer of that year, and a new bridgehead was completed in 1949.

In 1956 the jetty was widened and renewed, and in 1958 a higher pile section was built next to the old one. The Pfahljoch route was so low that the tracks were only slightly above the surface of the sea during high tide. The length of the tracks of the Juister Inselbahn was finally 4778 meters.

After the construction of a nearby port, the railway was shut down in 1982.

Juist train station around 1900

Juist train station around 1902

buildings

Station building

In 1919 the old wooden station building had to give way to the newly built village dike. However, the railway did not get a new station building until 1921. A year later, the new station was inaugurated. It is located on Bahnhofstrasse / Carl-Stegmann-Strasse.

The last station building dates from 1936. Even after the rail traffic was shut down in 1982, it was largely preserved. Today a restaurant, a bank branch and the National Park House Wattenmeer use the building.

In August 2018, plans became known to tear down the historic building and replace it with a new building. A petition is opposed to this.

Vehicle hall

The vehicle hall is known on the island as the Schwarze Bude . It was the first coach house that was built for the Ricklef locomotive and the wagons used at the time. A new three-track vehicle hall with workshop was built in 1940/41 in place of the old shed. In 1967 she got a fourth track. The workshop has been preserved, it is located between Billstrasse and the dike.

Landing Bridge

From 1935 the landing bridge was lit electrically; Carbide lamps had previously illuminated the pier.

vehicles

In June 1899 the first Ricklef petrol locomotive went into service. With an output of twelve hp, it pulled the previous three horse-drawn tram and two baggage cars as well as two new passenger cars. The vehicles were kept in the black booth built for this purpose .

In 1902 the second locomotive, Adolf , was purchased. It had 24 hp. The Hermann locomotive and several cars were added in 1913, the Paul locomotive in 1925 and two new passenger cars a year later. Paul was converted from benzene to diesel operation in 1935 and received an engine from Deutz . In the same year the crude oil locomotive Carl was put into service, which was followed a year later by two new baggage cars. In 1938/39 eight passenger cars were taken over from the Karlsruhe local railway .

The Talbot T2 railcar purchased in 1959 in Bruchhausen-Vilsen

It was not until 1952 that a new locomotive followed with the Heinrich locomotive. Two years later, the fleet was expanded to include two passenger cars from the Ruhr-Lippe Railways , and in the 1950s a few flat cars followed, some of which were made in our own workshop from converted trucks .

The first railcar entered service in 1958, followed by three more in 1959 and 1961. All railcars had previously been in use on various railways that had recently been closed. All were built by the Talbot wagon factory and had the type designation Eifel or Schleswig . The T 4 was a modernized version of the Eifel II . At the same time, quite a few of the old cars were refurbished and modernized. In the years that followed, the wagon fleet was expanded to include numerous freight, tank and flat wagons.

In 1966 the penultimate locomotive of the Inselbahn, Carl ^II , was procured used. Two years later Carl ^{I was} retired, in 1971 Heinrich ^{I was transferred} to the Wangerooger Inselbahn and replaced by Heinrich ^II , which was identical to Carl ^II . In 1971, the number of railcars was expanded by four, but three of them were or were already converted into sidecars. Two of them (T 5 and a sidecar) were again of the Talbot type Schleswig .

Location of the vehicles

While many vehicles were passed on or scrapped after cessation of operation, locomotive Carl II was the only one of the old locomotives to remain as a memorial on the former station grounds on Juist. In 2004, however, it was given to the Märkische Museum-Eisenbahn in Plettenberg.

Motorcar No. 1 was already there, as was a passenger car. Railcar no. 2 is, like two passenger cars from the Stilkenboom company and another passenger car from the Juister Inselbahn, in the DEV collection in Bruchhausen-Vilsen ; all four vehicles are still operational. The T 3 and T 5 railcars were scrapped at Norderney , the T 4 initially became the property of the Langeoog Island Railway and then that of the Harz Narrow Gauge Railways . Except for the museum specimens mentioned, the cars were scrapped or rebuilt.

Locomotive Heinrich ^II went to the Montreux-Bernese Oberland Railway .

One of the flat wagons was converted into a jetty on Juist, others, like the two tank wagons and a workshop wagon, went to the Märkische Museum-Eisenbahn.

literature

Egbert Nolte: The Juister Inselbahn . Kenning Verlag, Nordhorn 1998 ISBN 3-927587-87-7
Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways. Volume 9: Lower Saxony 1 . Eisenbahn-Kurier, Freiburg 2005, ISBN 3-88255-668-4 , p. 34-46 .
Hans Wolfgang Rogl: The North Sea Island Railways . 6th edition, alba, Düsseldorf 1996, ISBN 3-87094-230-4

Web links

Commons : Inselbahn Juist - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Petition for the preservation of the historic Juister train station, petition platform openpetition.de, accessed on January 5, 2019.

[1] Petition for the preservation of the historic Juister train station, petition platform openpetition.de, accessed on January 5, 2019.