Kleinbahn Bad Zwischenahn – Edewechterdamm

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Bad Zwischenahn – Edewechterdamm
Course book section (DB) : 221c (1944) , 221f (1950)
Route length: 12.2 km
Gauge : 1435 mm ( standard gauge )
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from Leer (Ostfriesland) ( Leer – Oldenburg )
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0.0 Bad Zwischenahn
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to Oldenburg (Leer – Oldenburg)
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1.5 Bacon
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3.4 Ekern
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6.9 Edewecht
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8.6 Easter Sheeps
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11.8 Agl Hafen Edewechterdamm
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12.2 Edewechterdamm
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Coastal channel
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port
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Railway bridge over the coastal channel (2014)

The small railway Bad Zwischenahn – Edewechterdamm , which existed from 1912 to 1991, belonged to the municipality of Edewecht in today's Ammerland district .

history

Because the municipality of Edewecht in the then Grand Duchy of Oldenburg was not connected to the rail network when the railways were built until the beginning of the twentieth century, the local council tried to establish its own connection to the main line Oldenburg – Leer in Zwischenahn.

Construction and operation were transferred from the municipality to the Grand Ducal Oldenburg State Railroad . The construction costs were estimated at 429,000 marks. The Grand Duchy gave a grant of 130,000 marks, the remainder had to be financed by the community itself. On December 15, 1912, operations were opened on the standard-gauge, single-track line seven kilometers in length. It was primarily intended to transport peat, which was then also used as fuel for locomotives, and to transport cattle.

Because of the war, the extension by five kilometers to Edewechterdamm could only be made on October 1, 1920. A month later, a track for freight trains was led across the coastal canal to the port. Not far from what was then the Edewechterdamm train station, an approximately 3 km long field railway also led to the “Langenmoor” moorland (remaining route: today's “Zur Kleinbahn” route in Süddorf). After the establishment of the Deutsche Reichsbahn, it took over the management, which was transferred to the Deutsche Bundesbahn in 1949. In 1977 the municipality took over the management of its railway itself. The track network has meanwhile been expanded to include a plant connection in South Edewecht and a branch line to a Querensteder Zieglei, which, however, were soon dismantled due to insufficient utilization.

At the end of the Second World War there were violent fighting in the Edewecht area , in which the bridge over the coastal canal, parts of the track systems, the Osterscheps and Ekern stations were totally destroyed and the Edewecht station building was partially destroyed.

Passenger traffic, which was always weak, ended on May 13, 1950, although a timetable table for the summer of 1950 is still printed in the timetable. The last timetable included four pairs of trains on weekdays and two pairs of trains on Sundays. Kraftpost buses replaced the railroad. Despite the official shutdown of passenger traffic, special passenger trains regularly ran on the route until rail operations were stopped. In order to save costs, own operating personnel were used from the 1950s.

The decades of profitable freight traffic remained relatively stable until the end of the 1970s at 50,000 t to 65,000 t per year. Only in the following period did it decrease to 17,100 t in 1986 and was discontinued on September 30, 1991, in the last year of operation another 37,800 t were transported. The tracks were dismantled and the small railway hiking trail was created in their place . Part of the Reiherweg also follows this route.

vehicles

Steam locomotives of various designs were in use until 1958 . The first was a two-axle type B n2t locomotive (serial number 6798) manufactured by Hanomag , called EDEWECHT . In 1918 a two-axle type B n2t locomotive from the Hohenzollern locomotive factory (locomotive 84, built in 1890, serial number 580), called ZWISCHENAHN, was acquired . This was retired in 1925 and replaced by a peat-fired three-axle locomotive from the Jung locomotive factory (type C 1 'h2t). In 1938 this locomotive was initially converted to coal-fired, converted into a wet steam locomotive (C 1 'n2t) in 1948 and sold in 1959. The fourth steam-powered locomotive to be used from 1935 was a type 1 'C n2t locomotive built by Henschel in 1915 (built in 1915, factory number 13575) under the name Ammerland . It was also sold in 1959.

At this point in time the Kleinbahn had acquired a new 340 hp diesel locomotive of the R 30 C type from Jung (1958/12991) and discontinued it as Edewecht II . This diesel locomotive was used until the end of the small train operation and sold to the Ahaus-Alstätter Eisenbahn in 1991 . There they ran to about 2003 as Alstätte I . It then came to the Hochwaldbahn in Hermeskeil as VL II Norbert , where it was scrapped in 2013 after it had been parked defective for a long time.

Trivia

In 1934 the Kleinbahn and the then Edewechter Bahnhof with its cattle ramp were motifs of the popular cinema comedy Krach um Jolanthe (director: Carl Froelich , based on the play of the same name by August Hinrichs ).

literature

  • Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways, Volume 9 (Lower Saxony 1) . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2005, ISBN 3-88255-668-4 , p. 188-196 .
  • Gerd Wolff: Deutsche Klein- und Privatbahnen, Part 2: Niedersachsen Gifhorn 1973. The Kleinbahn Bad Zwischenahn-Edewechterdamm (p. 76–79)

Individual evidence

  1. Table 221c in the course book for 1944