Langeoog island railway

Langeoog island railway
Passenger train of the Langeoog island railway in the local station
Route number (DB) :	9154
Route length:	2.6 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Legend Train station (Loccumer Hospiz) (until 1937) Through town (until 1937) 0.0 Train station (new), engine shed and workshop Investor (1939–1950) 2.6 Investor (since 1951) Ferry to Bensersiel

The Langeoog Island Railway is a non-electrified, meter - gauge, single-track narrow - gauge railway on the East Frisian island of Langeoog . It is operated by the shipping company owned by the island community of Langeoog . The island railway connects the ferry port with Langeoog over a length of 2.6 kilometers. The travel time for the route is around seven minutes. The Langeoog island railway is the shortest of the German island railways , alongside the Spiekeroog museum horse railway, and since April 2008 has only operated passenger services.

history

On June 22, 1901, the steamship shipping company Esens-Langeoog put a 3.5-kilometer-long, meter-gauge horse-drawn tram into operation, which led from the pier near today's harbor through the island village to the hospice. The switch to engine operation planned in 1925 initially failed due to the requirements of the municipality and could only be carried out when heavy storm surges destroyed the pier on October 18 and 27, 1936. The new railway line went into operation on July 2, 1937. Since then, the railway has ended in the new station on the outskirts, which was built according to plans by the Aurich architect Ludwig Deichgräber , as the curve radii in the village were too small for motorized trains.

The operating complex of the Inselbahn with the locomotive shed and the workshop is called a train shed on Langeoog . It was significantly expanded and modernized in the late 1980s.

In the winter months from 1993 to 1996, the local train station built in 1937 was replaced by a new building at the same location. The track systems were revised, the platform renewed and widened and the road layout in the area changed. Offices and staff apartments were integrated into the building.

On May 30, 1961, Inselbahn took over the twin- engine VT 1 railcar (Talbot type designation Eifel II ) with the serial number 97519 from the Altenaer Eisenbahn (KAE) district, built in 1955 by the Aachener Waggonfabrik Talbot, and added it to their number under the number VT 1 Vehicle fleet. This was followed in May 1964 by a single-engine Talbot railcar of the Eifel type , which was given the road number VT 2. This was built in 1950 and initially delivered to the Euskirchener Kreisbahnen , where it was in use until 1955 under the company number T 2. Then it came to the AG Ruhr-Lippe-Eisenbahnen (RLE) and was given the road number T 6 there. In 1962 the railcar was parked by the RLE. At Inselbahn Langeoog it took another two years until the vehicle was put into operation in August 1966. The third railcar of the Inselbahn Langeoog, known as the VT 3, was built in 1955 by Waggonfabrik Fuchs from Heidelberg for the Mittelbadische Eisenbahnen , where it had the road number until 1967 T 15 remained in use. In 1968 it came to the Württembergische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (company number T 35), was used there from the spring of 1969 and was transferred to the Langeoog Inselbahn in 1976. Initially, Bremer Waggonbau had the second engine installed in the meantime and a diesel-hydraulic Voith DIWA transmission retrofitted. As the fourth and last diesel multiple unit, the sister vehicle of VT 1, the former VT 2 of the Altenaer Eisenbahn from 1955 with the Talbot serial number 97520, came from the Inselbahn Juist to Langeoog after it had ceased operations. After serving at KAE, it was sold to the Norden-Frisia shipping company for use on Juist at the end of 1961 , and when it arrived in the spring of 1962, it was listed as T 4 on the Inselbahn. The railcar was given the number VT 4 at Inselbahn Langeoog. It remained parked in Langeoog until July 1985 and was processed. The top headlight integrated into the car body ex works in both vehicles was placed on the outside, as with VT 1, but in contrast to this above and not below the edge of the roof, making the two cars of the same type distinguishable at first glance. This distinguishing feature has remained with the successor owner of both railcars to this day.

Together with the VT 1 railcar, the Langeoog island railway also took over four trailer cars from KAE in 1961. The car bodies of the sidecars, known by the Inselbahn as VB 1 (built by Dortmunder Union, 1924) and VB 2 ( Waggonfabrik Uerdingen , 1912), had already been rebuilt by KAE in 1955 and adapted to the appearance of the Talbot railcars. The trailer cars VB 3 (Waggonfabrik Uerdingen, 1905) and VB 4 ( Westwaggon , 1930) had open end platforms when they were taken over and were only rebuilt in 1963 by Inselbahn Langeoog and adapted to the appearance of the Talbot railcars. In 1976 the trailer cars VB 5 and VB 6 followed, which were built in 1889 and 1892 by the Swiss SIG for the Chemins de fer du Jura Bernois and its successor Jura-Simplon-Bahn (JS). The SBB , in which the JS was absorbed, sold the sidecars in 1949 to the Württembergische Nebenbahnen (WNB), in whose possession the cars were rebuilt in 1963 by Gottlob Auwärter GmbH & Co. KG , firmly coupled together and provided with a car passage. The wagons were used by the WNB until 1973, after which they were parked in Laichingen . After they were taken over by Inselbahn, they were first rebuilt by Bremer Waggonbau, with Scharfenberg couplings installed at the uncoupled ends and the car bodies narrowed by 300 millimeters. From mid-1976, the extraordinary duo of sidecars could be used in Langeoog.

All railcars and sidecars only had doors on one side. The railcars VT 1 and VT 4 were generally used in the 1980s and 1990s on the Zugspitze in the direction of the port in front of the baggage cars and pulled the entire train in this direction. In the opposite direction, the train was mostly pulled by the more powerful VT 3. The single-engine and thus weakest railcar, the VT 2, drove mainly individually at this time or was coupled to the VT 3 at the end of the train at peak loads in the direction of the pier; it then completed the return journey to the local station alone before the rest of the train.

In 1995, Inselbahn Langeoog purchased ten new passenger cars from Bremer Waggonbau (two of them with entry aids for prams and wheelchairs) and one car for luggage containers and five diesel locomotives from Schöma (one as a reserve locomotive ). In 2005, the Hennigsdorf rail vehicle manufacturer FWM-Fahrzeugwerke Miraustrasse purchased two more passenger cars with entry aids for prams and wheelchairs.

The old diesel railcars and closed passenger cars were then sold. The former KAE railcars went to the Harzer Schmalspurbahnen (HSB) in 1995 and are still in use there as 187 011-2 (Langeoog VT 1) and 187 013-8 (VT 4). The VT 3 also went to HSB in the same year and is still used there as 187 012-0 despite being out of service for several years due to accident damage. All three cars were initially converted for HSB by 1996. The VT 2 railcar came from Langeoog to the Selfkantbahn in 1999 , where it was given the road number VT 102. The V 1 diesel locomotive with the nickname Langeoog has been in operation on the Selfkantbahn since 1993, and was used as Kö 1 on the Langeoog Island Railway from 1937–1956. Some of the old passenger cars are now parked at the Märkische Museum-Eisenbahn . Other wagons are located at the Härtsfeld Museum Railway in Neresheim .

In 2002 the track systems were systematically renewed; some of the used tracks were given to the Spiekeroog Museum Horse Railway to renew their tracks.

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  Route of the island railway from the air

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  Talbot railcar VT 1 at the pier in August 1984

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  VT 1 in August 1984 at the head of the train towards the pier

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  VT 3 at the top at the entrance to the station, directly behind VB 5 and 6

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  Former trailer VB 3 at MME

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  Former VT 2 as a guest railcar on the Harz narrow-gauge railways

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  Monument locomotive Kö 2

business

vehicles

In 2010, the Langeoog island railway had five passenger and two freight locomotives, 13 passenger cars (including four cars with boarding aids and one historic passenger car) and two luggage container cars. There are also some freight cars. Except for the two freight locomotives and the freight cars, all vehicles have Scharfenberg couplings . Because of the different couplings, the locomotives and wagons can only be used for their respective application.

passenger traffic

Two sandwich push-pull train sets have been in regular passenger traffic since 1995, both of which have had two carriages with boarding aids for wheelchairs and prams since 2005. These are usually located in the middle and at the northern end of the train; the order of the other wagons and thus the color of the trains sometimes varies.

Freight transport

Since April 2008 there has been no more freight traffic on the Langeoog island railway. It has been carried out on the street with electric carts ever since. The trailers purchased for this purpose are loaded on the mainland; they are then pulled directly to their destination by electric cart, which saves them having to reload at the local train station. The two freight locomotives and the 23 freight wagons that were available until the beginning of 2008 were thus superfluous. Most of the freight wagons were sold to museums and private individuals; the two freight locomotives are only used for the occasional transportation of baggage trains.

photos

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  Locomotive 3

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  Locomotive 4

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  Passenger car 94/01

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  Passenger car 05/13

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  Island train on the move

literature

• Oltmann Ammermann, Gert Uwe Detlefsen, Franz Horb, Ulrich Uplegger: Shipping of the island community of Langeoog - Chronicle of the shipping company and island railway. Gert Uwe Detlefsen, Langeoog 1996, ISBN 3-928473-29-8
• Hans Wolfgang Rogl: Archives of German small and private railways: Lower Saxony. transpress, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-344-71022-2
• Hans Wolfgang Rogl: The North Sea Island Railways. 6th edition, alba, Düsseldorf 1996, ISBN 3-87094-230-4

Web links

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

• Homepage of the shipping company and island railway Langeoog
• Website for the Langeoog island railway
• Vehicle list

Individual evidence

1. ↑ The last German horse-drawn tram. In:  Salzburger Volksblatt , December 18, 1937, p. 4 (online at ANNO ).
2. ↑ Vehicle data for the VT 102 diesel multiple unit on the website of the Small Railway Museum Selfkantbahn
3. ↑ Vehicle data for diesel locomotive V 1 Langeoog on the website of the Small Railway Museum Selfkantbahn