Königs Wusterhausen-Mittenwalde-Töpchiner Kleinbahn

Königs Wusterhausen-Töpchin

Route number (DB) :

6515 (KW – Mittenwalde Ost)
6516 (Mittenwalde Ost – Töpchin)

Course book section (DB) :

formerly 104f

Route length:

16.8 km

Gauge :

1435 mm ( standard gauge )

Maximum slope :

12.5 ‰

Minimum radius :

300 m

Top speed:

30 km / h

Legend

	from Berlin and from Beeskow
0.0	King Wusterhausen
	to Lübben
	End of the trolley train
3.5	Schenkendorf
4.7	Krummensee
	A 13

8.2	Mittenwalde (Mark) East	to Zossen and Berlin

10.5	Gallun village
	B 246
11.7	Gallun South
12.9	Fairytale meadow
13.9	Motzen seaside resort
15.4	Motzen in mid- 1995 as a Motzen golf course
16.7	Motzen mill
17.8	Töpchin Nord in 1943 as a pottery colony
19.1	Potter

The Königs Wusterhausen-Mittenwalde-Töpchiner Kleinbahn AG (KMTE) operated the railway line from Königs Wusterhausen via Mittenwalde to Töpchin, which was also called Motzenersee-Bahn , from 1894 . The line was then operated by the Deutsche Reichsbahn from 1949 . The Draisinenbahnen Berlin / Brandenburg GmbH & Co. KG has owned the Mittenwalde – Töpchin line since 2001, and the entire line since 2006.

course

Section of the Kleinbahn in Krummensee

Mittenwalde-Ost train station

The former train station in Gallun

The railway line begins in Königs Wusterhausen , where it leaves the Görlitzer Bahn in a southerly direction . First, the course turns west, the route finally reaches the small town of Mittenwalde via the two villages of Schenkendorf and Krummensee . The main route turns around here and then runs south past Motzener See to Töpchin . A continuous journey without turning in Mittenwalde is no longer possible. In Mittenwalde there was a connection to the Neukölln-Mittenwalder Railway to Berlin Hermannstrasse and in a south-westerly direction to Zossen .

With the exception of the exit station in Königs Wusterhausen, almost the entire route is in the area of the city of Mittenwalde.

history

History and construction of the route

The area around the then district town of Königs Wusterhausen was known for its numerous brick factories at the turn of the century . The steady and, above all, rapid growth in nearby Berlin ensured that the companies were busy. In the long run, it was no longer possible to transport the bricks away using horse-drawn vehicles, so a private railway was supposed to provide a remedy here. The construction company Becker & Co. created a corresponding project for this, which was approved on May 4, 1893 by the district president of the administrative district of Potsdam , Robert Hue de Grais .

The construction work proceeded without major incidents, so that the first section between Königs Wusterhausen and Mittenwalde could already be opened on November 1st, 1894. In Mittenwalde, east of the center in the Baruther suburb, was the Mittenwalde terminus (Mark) for the line. On December 31 of the same year, the second section from Mittenwalde via Motzen to Töpchin went into operation. Another nine months later, on September 21, 1895, an approximately three-kilometer extension to the Schöneicher Plan brickworks went into operation from the head end of Mittenwalde station . The original plan was to extend this section to Zossen on the Dresden Railway , but this was not implemented for the time being.

Competition with the Neukölln-Mittenwald Railway

Just six years after the line went into operation, Mittenwalde was connected to Rixdorf (now Neukölln ) on the Berlin Ringbahn via the Rixdorf-Mittenwalder Railway . Since this route saves the detour via Königs Wusterhausen, the total route was shorter and the freight volume shifted in favor of the new route. In 1903 the Rixdorf-Mittenwalder Railway extended its route from the terminus in Mittenwalde Nord to Schöneicher Plan, but there was no track connection between the two companies. Originally, the Rixdorf route was supposed to end in the Mittenwald station of the KTME, but this failed because of their resistance. However, this had to give up its connection to Schöneicher Plan in 1913 due to lack of demand.

After the end of the First World War , the goods traffic of the brickworks decreased drastically, the reason for this was the end of the building boom in the imperial capital, which secured the line's livelihood. In order to still be able to drive, the goods were now transported in the opposite direction: Berlin's garbage was buried in the now empty clay pits.

In 1920, after the operating contract with Becker & Co. had expired, management was handed over to Vering & Waechter , which at the time also operated the Neukölln-Mittenwalder Railway (NME) (in 1919 the Rixdorf-Mittenwalder Railway was renamed after it the place of the same name had done the same in 1912).

The Motzenersee Railway

In the 1920s, excursion traffic from Berlin to the Brandenburg area developed into a main source of income for the individual private and small railways. The Motzener See, which the railway touches about halfway from Mittenwalde to Töpchin, was developed at several excursion stops in the immediate vicinity of the bathing areas. This also earned it the nickname Motzenersee-Bahn at that time . The northernmost of these bathing spots with the sonorous name of Märchenwiese developed into the “wet cradle of German nudism”. In the first few years the stop was not official and the train only stopped at the request of naturists . The stop of the same name was only created in 1931, making the Märchenwiese the first nudist bathing area with a siding. After initial concerns from the National Socialists , the bathing area was continued under the umbrella of the Kampfbund for Völkisch nudism and is still accessible today as a nudist beach.

The company Vering & Waechter tried to connect the Neukölln-Mittenwald with the Königs Wusterhausen-Mittenwalde-Töpchiner railway due to the increasing number of excursions. In order to shorten the transfer distances between the two Mittenwalde train stations, the NME set up a stop in Mittenwalde Hospital in 1931 , which was much closer to the city center and thus also to the KMTE train station. Just two years later, this was given up in favor of a fixed track connection from the NME to Mittenwalde (Mark) station, which was then renamed to Mittenwalde Ost to better differentiate it. Passengers could now change trains directly at the station, but for excursion traffic on the weekends there were also through trains from Neukölln to Töpchin. For freight traffic, a direct track connection was also set up from the Schöneicher Plan to Mittenwalde Ost and from the Töpchiner Ast to the line to Königs Wusterhausen, so that they no longer had to return to Mittenwalde.

post war period

Together with the Neukölln-Mittenwald Railway, the railway had another special task around 1945. On the one hand, in the last months of the war, the NME was ultimately extended to Zossen by armed forces , as had been previously considered. On the other hand, after the end of the war, the first supply freight trains ran from Zossen via Mittenwalde and Königs Wusterhausen to Berlin. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, the Reichsbahn even moved some long-distance trains from Dresden to the Görlitzer Bahn over the KTME tracks, because on the one hand the Görlitzer Bahn was not affected by the reparations payments to the Soviet Union and on the other hand the traffic was permanently Brandenburg was moved to East Berlin , bypassing the western part. A permanent solution was only available when the Berlin outer ring was completed in the mid-1950s.

In the following years, however, the fate of the railway was no different from that of the other small railways in Brandenburg. As elsewhere, operations here were transferred to the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1949 , after the operating company had previously been dissolved. The increasing individual traffic also caused the number of passengers to shrink considerably in the following years.

The direct excursion trains via Mittenwalde to Neukölln were stopped as early as 1949 as a result of the Berlin blockade , two years later the NME between the West Berlin city limits and Mittenwalde was shut down. The trains now went from Königs Wusterhausen to Mittenwalde on to Zossen or on the main route to Töpchin.

Further development

The final end for the SPNV came for the railway in the early 1970s. First, on September 30, 1973, the south branch from Mittenwalde Ost to Töpchin was converted to bus operation. One year later, on September 29, 1974, the remaining section Königs Wusterhausen – Mittenwalde Ost followed along with the continuation to Zossen.

The line then lay idle for the next few years, and there were several speculations about the resumption of local rail transport. In the mid-1990s there was even brief occasional traffic between Berlin Ostbahnhof via Königs Wusterhausen and the Motzen Mitte stop (which was then renamed Motzen Golf Course ). The reason for this was the German Masters initiated by the German professional golfer Bernhard Langer , for which a shuttle shuttle with two class 202 diesel locomotives and seven cars was set up, which ran non-stop between the stations at the time of the tournament. After the games were moved to another location after three years in 1997, the shuttle service was discontinued. The reason for the relocation was the low number of guests.

Goods traffic was stopped on June 1, 1997 between Töpchin and Mittenwalde and on January 1, 2001 between Königs Wusterhausen and Mittenwalde.

A last special trip with the locomotive 52 8177-7 drove in 2005 from Berlin-Schöneweide via Königs Wusterhausen , Mittenwalde Ost , Töpchin, back to Mittenwalde Ost, on via Zossen to Jüterbog and from there the same route back to Berlin.

In 2001 a trolley line was set up on the Mittenwalde Ost – Töpchin section . The offer was extended in 2006 to the entire route to Königs Wusterhausen. In addition to trips with rail buses and various types of draisine, there is also the option of staying in former Reichsbahn carriages at Mittenwalde Ost station.

In the meantime, the offer with rail buses (status: 2014) has been discontinued due to several destruction and lack of demand.

Web links

Individual evidence

↑ Christoph Stollowsky: The Naked from the Märchenwiese , Der Tagesspiegel, May 16, 2003

[1] Christoph Stollowsky: The Naked from the Märchenwiese , Der Tagesspiegel, May 16, 2003