Small train Selters – Hachenburg

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Selters – Hachenburg
Course book range : 194v (1944)
Route length: 23.4 km
Gauge : 1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Maximum slope : 25  ‰
Minimum radius : 100 m
Legend
   
 0.0 Selters 264  m above sea level NN
   
 3.0 Rückeroth
   
 5.2 Herschbach
   
 Herschbach North
   
 9.0 Mündersbach
   
 12.0 Marceau monument
   
 14.0 Höchstenbach
   
 15.0 Winkelbach
   
 16.0 Voting rod
   
 18.0 Down
   
 19.0 Oberhattert
   
 22.0 Marienstatt Abbey
   
 23.4 Hachenburg 343  m above sea level NN

The Selters – Hachenburg small railway was a narrow-gauge railway line in Rhineland-Palatinate . The approximately 23 km long route with a gauge of 1000 millimeters ( meter gauge ) lay in the Westerwald and ran from Hachenburg via Herschbach to Selters (Westerwald) . The line, opened in 1901, led from north to south in the west of the Westerwald lake district and was only used for local traffic, especially for the removal of mineral resources from this “rock-rich” area. The Hachenburg – Herschbach section was closed in 1950, the remainder of the Herschbach – Selters section in 1960.

history

Prehistory and opening

In the area between the Ober- and Unterwesterwaldbahn there were no good transport connections at the end of the 19th century. The large deposits of sand and rock there could only be exploited with high transport costs to railway stations further away. The project for a narrow-gauge small railway quickly found support, and a corresponding license was granted in 1899. As a result, the Kleinbahn Selters-Hachenburg AG was founded in 1900 , in which the Prussia , the province of Hesse-Nassau , the Upper and Lower Westerwaldkreis and the Berlin construction company Philipp Balke were involved.

The actual construction work for the narrow-gauge railway began in 1900. On August 1, 1901, the connection between the Oberwesterwaldbahn and the part of the Unterwesterwaldbahn that is no longer used by passenger trains was opened. The small railway was built by the AG for railways and civil engineering co-founded by Balke, which also ran the company until 1918. About 50 years later, the entrepreneur Norbert von Rützen-Kositzkau owned over 90 percent of the capital. In 1955 he converted the company into a GmbH. The center of operations with a workshop was the Herschbach train station . A 3.6 kilometer long field railway also went from him into the neighboring quartzite pits, which had a track width of 600 millimeters.

Constant decline

In the first years of operation, traffic developed well and dividends were paid out several times. Around 60,000 people and around 20,000 tons of goods were transported annually. Traffic fell sharply after the First World War . With the occupation of the Rhineland on March 15, 1923, passenger traffic was completely stopped and only resumed later. There were also large declines in freight transport, particularly in sand and quartzite removal. Before the global economic crisis, traffic experienced another boom, but then collapsed again. Only around 20,000 passengers were carried annually. It was not until the second half of the 1930s that there was another brief period of prosperity, so now, among other things, the superstructure, which was urgently in need of repair, could be renewed. In 1936, a diesel multiple unit was procured with the KSH T1 supplied by the Talbot wagon factory . After the Second World War, the narrow-gauge railway experienced another boom, so in 1947 almost half a million passengers - mainly hoarders - were transported.

Final efforts to modernize

The traffic on the northern section of Herschbach – Hachenburg has always been quite weak, among other things because the station in Hachenburg was above the standard-gauge railway and no goods could be reloaded. The majority of the goods dispatch was concentrated on Herschbach and was driven to Selters. The section from Herschbach to Hachenburg was closed on May 13, 1950 and then dismantled. In 1951 another investment was made in the remaining piece. Two trolley pits were built in Selters, from now on the expensive and time-consuming reloading of all goods was no longer necessary. The volume of traffic continued to decline, however, and the 1957 investment in a used diesel locomotive and three passenger cars for the Rendsburg circular railway, which was closed in that year, to give up the steam locomotive operation, could not stop the decline. Passenger traffic was discontinued on July 16, 1960, and goods traffic followed on November 22 of the same year. The route was then dismantled. Bus traffic was transferred to the Westerwaldbahn.

Monument locomotive at its former location in Nastätten: three-coupler Henschellok with road number 2. It later came into the possession of Nassauische Kleinbahn AG .

The wet steam tank locomotive No. 2 (built in 1900 with serial number 5575 by Henschel & Sohn in Cassel , 25 t, 30 km / h, 160 hp) has been preserved to this day. It was sold to Nassauische Kleinbahn AG in 1957 and was used there as No. 16 with a second line-up until 1962. Since June 13, 1981 it has been a memorial in Nastätten , in 2017 it was sold and is to be used as a museum railway in the future.

literature

  • Willi Merzhäuser: The small train Selters-Hachenburg , ISBN 3-921679-72-9
  • Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways - Part 1: Rhineland-Palatinate / Saarland , EK-Verlag, Freiburg 1989, ISBN 3-88255-651-X

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways - Part 1: Rhineland-Palatinate / Saarland , p. 181
  2. ^ Nassauische Kleinbahn: Nastätter monument locomotive (locomotive 16II) has new owner of the Lahnstein - Koblenz model railway club