Kleinbahn Rheinbrohl – Mahlberg
| Rheinbrohl – Mahlberg | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route length: | 6.03 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 750 mm ( narrow gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maximum slope : | 37 ‰ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minimum radius : | 30 m | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top speed: | 20 km / h | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Kleinbahn Rheinbrohl – Mahlberg was a five-kilometer-long, narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of 750 mm, which was used to transport basalt from a quarry on the western edge of the Westerwald to the Rhine. It led from the port in Rheinbrohl on the right bank of the Rhine north to the Arienheller Brunnen and there further east in the valley of the Bahlsbach up to the end point Dornbachthal in the Rheinbrohler Wald . A cable car brought the goods from the quarry at Mahlbergkopf there. Until the 1930s it was a public transport railway. Passenger traffic was never carried out.
history
The Basaltgesellschaft Mahlberg-Rheinbrohl mbH received on June 24, 1897 the concession to build a "narrow-gauge rail link" according to the Prussian Small Railroad Act . This was made by the local railway construction and operating company Hiedemann & Cie in Cologne on the Rhine.
The line was opened on September 15, 1898 and sold on January 1, 1899 to the Continentale Eisenbahn-Bau- und Betriebs-Gesellschaft in Berlin. 4.3 km of the route was on its own track, 1.7 km on public roads. In 1915 the fixed assets were outsourced to Kleinbahn Rheinbrohl-Mahlberg GmbH ; this company was taken over by a subsidiary of Kali Chemie AG in the 1920s . In 1923, the basalt mining at Mahlberg ended and the railway in the Bahlsbachtal was shut down.
In the meantime, however, a branch to the chemical factory Walter Feld & Co in Bad Hönningen had been added in 1902 . There was a connection to a regular-gauge siding to Hönningen station. In 1907, the Rollbock operation was approved to transport standard-gauge railway cars from Hönningen station to Arienheller Sprudel, which was owned by the factory, to collect the mineral water packed in jugs. But the trestle traffic was probably not carried out, and no trolleys appear in the statistics. Goods were also transported between the factory and the port in Rheinbrohl. In 1904, a siding was built from the chemical factory to a storage area on the banks of the Rhine in Hönningen in order to store residues from production there. That happened until 1961. Stahlbau Hilgers in Rheinbrohl also had a siding.
In 1902 86 800 t were transported, in 1909 77 800 t.
Basalt mining was stopped in 1932, and in 1937 the line from the Hönningen junction to the loading station was dismantled. On the remnant piece, there were still large transports in 1935 it was 110 649 t, in 1960 61 381 t.
In the 1961 VDNE manual , the track is still 2.3 km long.
The Hönninger plant later became part of Kali Chemie . After seventy years, on October 31, 1968, the railway had to cease operations because it was obstructing road traffic.
vehicles
In 1914 there were two two-axle steam locomotives from Krauss and Orenstein & Koppel and one three-axle steam locomotive from Orenstein & Koppel. There were also about 100 lorries. In 1960 there were two Deutz diesel locomotives and two steam locomotives and 80 freight wagons, apart from tipping trucks, there were also O wagons. Steam locomotives were still in daily use in 1964.
annotation
The railway is also known as the Mahlbergbahn; this can lead to confusion with the Malbergbahn near Bad Ems!
literature
- Willy Merzhäuser: The Mahlbergbahn. In: Railway courier. 1980, No. 3, pp. 24-27.
- Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways . tape 1 . Eisenbahn-Kurier, Freiburg 1989, ISBN 3-88255-651-X , p. 155-157 .
- Rolf Löttgers: The Kleinbahn Rheinbrohl-Mahlberg . In: railway magazine . No. 6 , 1973, ISSN 0342-1902 , pp. 13 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rolf Löttgers: The Kleinbahn Rheinbrohl-Mahlberg . In: railway magazine . No. 6 , 1973, ISSN 0342-1902 , pp. 13 .
- ^ Jörg Petzold: Kleinbahn Rheinbrohl – Mahlberg . In: The Museum Railway . No. 1 , 2015, ISSN 0936-4609 , p. 18 .