Kleinbahn AG in Genthin
The Genthiner Eisenbahn AG existed from October 1942 until the nationalization on January 1, 1947 and operated a standard-gauge route network with a total length of 210 km in the then province of Saxony , which was predominantly in the area of today's state of Saxony-Anhalt with the exception of most of the Ziesarer Kleinbahnnetzes as well as the area around Milow in today's state of Brandenburg .
The predecessor company Kleinbahn-AG Genthin-Ziesar was created on November 5, 1923 from a merger of Genthiner Kleinbahn AG and Ziesarer Kleinbahn AG . From November 12, 1930, the company operated as Kleinbahn-AG in Genthin and finally from October 1942 as Genthiner Eisenbahn AG .
Genthiner Kleinbahn AG
Genthiner Kleinbahn AG was founded on July 22nd, 1898. The main shareholders were the Kingdom of Prussia, the Province of Saxony and the district of Jerichow II . The company Lenz & Co. GmbH , the Duchy of Anhalt , the cities of Genthin and Jerichow as well as municipalities and private individuals also participated.
It brought three lines 73 kilometers in length into the merger: the first to be opened on October 25, 1899, was the Genthin – Schönhausen railway via Jerichow . One month later, on November 27, the connection from Genthin to Milow an der Havel followed . From Schönhausen, where the Berlin-Stendal state railway crossed, it was possible to travel further north from September 19, 1909 to Sandau , which is only six kilometers away from the then district town of Havelberg .
Ziesarer Kleinbahn AG
The Ziesarer Kleinbahn AG was founded on May 21, 1901 and operated until June 27, 1910 as Kleinbahn AG Ziesar-Groß Wusterwitz, then until 1914 as Kleinbahn AG Groß Wusterwitz-Ziesar-Görzke. Here, too, capital providers were primarily the state and the province, then the company Lenz & Co, the city of Ziesar as well as six municipalities and four private individuals.
The network of Ziesarer little train consisted of four routes totaling nearly 60 kilometers in length: For old station Ziesar, where the narrow-range of Kleinbahnen the circle Jerichow I of Burg ago ended, which was on 1 October 1901 the first section of the railway line from Great Wusterwitz manufactured on the Berlin – Magdeburg state railway via Rogäsen . It was only ten years later, on August 11, 1911, that it was extended south to Görzke . The short branch line from Rogäsen to Karow was opened on February 4, 1912.
A second connection from Ziesar via Tucheim to the state railway to Güsen was only opened during the First World War . Freight traffic between Ziesar and Tucheim began on September 15, 1916, and passenger traffic on October 21, 1916. The entire route was operated from April 2, 1917 and at the same time the junction of all railways in Ziesar was relocated to the new central station.
Kleinbahn AG Genthin-Ziesar
After the merger to form Kleinbahn AG Genthin-Ziesar, this opened a 21-kilometer route from Jerichow in a southerly direction to the state railway near Güsen, where a common small station with the route to Ziesar and thus a common rail network was created. Passenger traffic between Jerichow and Güsen was not served from 1935 until the beginning of the Second World War in 1939. After the war, all traffic between Güsen and Neu derben could not be resumed until 1952.
As early as 1932, the Kleinbahngesellschaft supplemented its rail network with bus routes, which in 1939 were around 90 kilometers long. The five buses ran from Genthin to Sandau and from Jerichow to Güsen parallel to the railway, but also connected Sandau with Havelberg and Jerichow with Tangermünde .
The two companies, which had merged to form Kleinbahn AG Genthin-Ziesar in 1923, were initially operated by the railway construction company Lenz & Co. GmbH. On April 1, 1908, this task was taken over by the small railroad department of the Provincial Association of Saxony in Merseburg and carried out until March 2, 1946, when it was placed under compulsory state administration of the Province of Saxony. The company's vehicle fleet comprised 13 steam locomotives, three multiple units and more than 100 passenger and freight cars.
The former Genthiner small railway lines on the Deutsche Reichsbahn and Deutsche Bahn
On January 1, 1947, the Genthiner Railway was transferred to the Sächsische Provinzbahnen GmbH and from there to the Deutsche Reichsbahn via the Association of Nationally Owned Enterprises (VVB) in 1949 . This operated the passenger and goods traffic in the former small railway network for decades. Only the six kilometer long Rogäsen – Karow branch line was completely shut down on October 3, 1951.
It was not until September 23, 1967 that passenger traffic between Genthin and Milow ceased. The line disappeared except for a four-kilometer-long siding when freight traffic was also ended on September 25, 1971. The end of the connection between Ziesar and Groß Wusterwitz (now: Wusterwitz) came on May 23, 1971.
The route from Ziesar to Görzke lost passenger traffic on September 29, 1973, but still retained goods traffic until the end of 1993.
On most of the rest of the network, 100 kilometers in length, railcars for passenger transport ran until May 29, 1999. Here, freight traffic had largely come to a standstill in 1993 and 1994. Only between Schönhausen and Sandau had passenger traffic already disappeared on August 1, 1993.
Connection over the Elbe
In 1944, for military reasons, a track connection was put into operation from the Genthiner Railway near Fischbeck via the Tangermünde Elbe Bridge, which was built in 1933 and intended for this purpose, to the Stendal – Tangermünde railway line . However, it has never achieved greater traffic importance. Some hospital trains are said to have run there shortly before the bridge was destroyed on April 12, 1945. However, the timetable 207v (Jerichow – Tangermünde) in the timetable of November 4, 1946 contains a daily railcar ride from Jerichow to Schönhausen, which made a branch trip from Fischbeck to Tangermünde and back on the way back, before going back to Jerichow. It must have been a breakpoint on the east bank of the Elbe across from Tangermünde. When the road bridge was rebuilt in 1950, a bridge planned for the Mittelland Canal and pioneer bridge devices of the Wehrmacht were installed in the destroyed area above the opening. This bridge and the pioneer bridge devices only had one carriageway and no track area. Due to the lack of track systems in the bridge section, rail operations across the Elbe to and from Tangermünde were no longer possible.
Lore
The tradition of the Genthiner Eisenbahn AG is in the Dessau department of the Saxony-Anhalt State Archives .
literature
- Wolfgang List, Hans Röper, Gerhard Zieglgänsberger: Archives of German small and private railways. Saxony-Anhalt. (Routes, vehicles, operations). Transpress, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-613-71087-0 .