Kreuznacher Kleinbahnen

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Wood market with small train 1906

For forty years, the Kreuznacher Kleinbahnen opened up the foreland of the Hunsrück with two routes from the Nahe valley .

Planning and construction

Planning and construction of the Kreuznacher Kleinbahnen district was carried out by the Bad Kreuznach district . This should make the Soonwald better accessible. For cost reasons, a track width of 750 mm was chosen, i.e. a narrow-gauge railway was built. The maximum gradient was 14 ‰. The Koblenz government issued the building permit on May 1 or 10, 1895. Two routes were built starting from the spa town of Bad Kreuznach :

The concession ran until June 1953. The construction costs up to the opening amounted to one million marks . They were raised through a loan of 1.46 million marks from the Rhine Province . The borrowers were the district and the neighboring communities. Great savings were made in the construction of the railway infrastructure , so that considerable costs were incurred for the maintenance of the railway systems shortly after operations began. In Bad Kreuznach, the tracks were similar to those of the Bad Kreuznach tram , with which they crossed, in the road surface . The central workshop was at the Kleinbahnhof in Bad Kreuznach in Hermannstrasse.

The line to Winterburg was opened on August 3, 1896, the line to Wallhausen on August 15, 1896. Since the loading facilities for freight traffic were not initially built for cost reasons, it could only be started on September 7, 1896. The routes were equipped with telephones from the start . There were three telephone lines, each operated as a joint connection and all of them originated from the small train station in Bad Kreuznach: to Winterburg, Wallhausen and to the state train station (from 1908: freight station).

Further systems were only added later. In Bad Kreuznach, for example, an extension of the line to the Holzmarkt went into operation on May 1, 1897 and from there to the city station (after 1908: freight station), probably in early 1898. In 1902, a 2.5 km long connecting line from the Daubacher Bridge stop to the clay pits near Allenfeld was opened, operated only by freight traffic . It is no longer known when the junction at Lohrer-Mühle was converted into a track triangle, at least before the end of 1899. The signal box there was also only built later, at the insistence of the railway supervisory authority, the Mainz Railway Directorate .

business

On the routes that ran on public roads within Bad Kreuznach, the maximum speed was limited to 5 km / h. In addition, a man with a bell had to run ahead of the train. This requirement was not lifted until 1922. A maximum speed of 25 km / h was prescribed on the routes outside the city.

The railway did not have its own station building. At some stations there were goods sheds and toilets. Tickets were sold in taverns that were adjacent to the stations.

At the start of operations there were initially two locomotives, but a third was bought in the opening year. These were box locomotives , as they were used in steam trams , which were later converted into tank locomotives . In total - but never all together - nine locomotives ran on the Kreuznacher Kleinbahn during the entire operating time. The last one was procured in 1920.

In 1908 the railway had 29 employees, in 1928 there were 34.

passenger traffic

The passenger trains to the Hunsrück foreland started in Bad Kreuznach at the Neumorgen stop (small station), and since May 1, 1897 at the Holzmarkt. From May 9, 1898 to the 1920s, there was also passenger traffic from the Holzmarkt to the (old) state train station. The travel time from Bad Kreuznach to Winterburg was about an hour, to Wallhausen about 30 minutes. The trains initially offered 2nd and 3rd class , some trains also offered 4th class. The long-term mean, the use of the railway for passenger transport has steadily decreased: in 1898 356,747 passengers used the railway, in 1935: there were only 143,053.

With the commissioning of the tram and the relocation of the state train station in 1908, the small train increasingly lost its importance for inner-city traffic in Bad Kreuznach.

During the First World War , operations could be maintained with difficulties. The inflation period of 1922/1923 then hit him hard, so that only two pairs of trains were run on each of the two routes only on weekdays. The crisis lasted until 1925. In 1926 five pairs of trains ran and on the route to Winterburg there was also Sunday traffic again.

Rail mail

On October 1, 1900, the rail mail service began. The trains carried wagons with letter boxes attached and emptied immediately upon arrival. These mailings received their own rail postmark.

Freight transport

Freights had to be reloaded from and onto the standard-gauge state railway in the Bad Kreuznach freight yard. At least part of the lines were in the freight and standard gauge freight wagons on dollies loaded and transported. The stations Bad Kreuznach, Rüdesheim , Weinsheim , Sponheim , Bockenau , Winterburg , Hargesheim , Roxheim , Gutenberg and Wallhausen had goods handling . Contrary to expectations, the construction of the railway did not result in additional business being established. The scope of freight traffic has always remained limited.

Bahn der WEG and successor

On April 1, 1900, the district sold the railway to the West German Railway Company (WEG), which immediately took over the railway operations. The transfer of the company property to the new owner was delayed until 1905. The railway now traded under the name of Kreuznacher Kleinbahnen . At the time of purchase, WEG promised to expand the rail network. As a result, a route from the freight station via Bretzenheim to Langenlonsheim ( Kloningersmühle ) was measured, but the project was not continued. In 1909 and again in 1921 the electrification of the lines was considered, but not carried out.

1928 merged the WEG with the AG for traffic . The new company traded under the name of Vereinigte Kleinbahn AG Berlin . The branch in Cologne was responsible for the Kreuznacher Kleinbahn .

Shutdown

The small railway recovered only with difficulty from the economic crisis of the 1920s; At times there was a threat of closure, which had even been approved for the route to Wallhausen. Another growing threat to the existence of the railway was the boom in road traffic. The 31st July 1936 was the last day of operation of the Kreuznacher Kleinbahnen, which was shut down the following day . From then on, passenger traffic was ensured by four omnibuses and goods by a truck of the Deutsche Reichsbahn . The railway infrastructure was dismantled immediately after the shutdown, the rolling stock sold and shipped with the Reichsbahn.

Worth knowing

  • In popular parlance, the train was known as the "clickerbahn".
  • The Bockenau Kleinbahnmuseum preserves the memory of the railway.

literature

in alphabetical order by authors / editors

  • Rudolf Brumm: The Kreiznacher Kleenbahn 1896-1936. A detailed report on the planning, construction and operation of the Kreuznacher Kleinbahnen Bad Kreuznach - Winterburg Bad Kreuznach - Wallhausen district [!]. Bad Kreuznach 1977.
  • Railway Atlas Germany . 10th edition. Schweers + Wall, Cologne 2017, ISBN 3-921679-13-3 .
  • Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways - Volume 1: Rhineland-Palatinate / Saarland . EK Verlag, Freiburg 1989, ISBN 3-88255-651-X

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Wolff gives meter gauge, but Brumm explains explicitly why this was discarded.
  2. ↑ Only the siding to the Daubach clay pits had a gradient of 19 ‰ (Brumm: Die Kreiznacher , p. 34).
  3. ↑ At the point in time when the station was finally only served by freight traffic, different information circulated in the literature.
  4. ↑ Wolff, p. 57, writes “1889”, which, given the opening year of the railway, can only be a twister of numbers.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 34th
  2. ↑ Brumm: Die Kreiznacher , p. 27.
  3. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , p. 25
  4. ↑ Wolff, p. 54.
  5. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 145th
  6. ↑ Wolff, p. 54.
  7. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 27, 118th
  8. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 118th
  9. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 59th
  10. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 61st
  11. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 118, 167th
  12. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 111th
  13. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 113th
  14. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 117th
  15. ↑ Brumm: Die Kreiznacher , p. 29.
  16. ^ So: Brumm: Die Kreiznacher , p. 160; Wolff, p. 53, mentions 10 km / h.
  17. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 159th
  18. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 160th
  19. ↑ Wolff, p. 53.
  20. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 167th
  21. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , p. 67
  22. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 186f.
  23. ↑ Wolff, p. 57.
  24. ↑ So: Brumm: Die Kreiznacher , p. 60; according to the information on p. 81f. but there were only 2nd and 3rd class cars. The same discrepancy can also be found in Wolff: cf. p. 52 and p. 60.
  25. ↑ Wolff, p. 57.
  26. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 159th
  27. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 159f.
  28. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 152f.
  29. ↑ Eisenbahndirektion Mainz (ed.): Official Journal of the Royal Prussian and Grand Ducal Hessian Railway Directorate in Mainz of December 18, 1915, No. 62. Announcement No. 819, p. 399.
  30. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 61st
  31. ↑ Wolff, pp. 54, 57.
  32. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 152nd
  33. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 153rd
  34. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 147th
  35. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 89f.
  36. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 157th
  37. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 90th
  38. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 160th
  39. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 160th
  40. ↑ Wolff, p. 54.
  41. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 184th
  42. ↑ Brumm: The Kreiznacher , S. 179th
  43. ↑ Railway Atlas , p. 85.