Local railway Reutlingen – Eningen
| Reutlingen Staatsbahnhof – Eningen place | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 A local train in Eningen Ort station
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| Route length: | 4.79 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1000 mm ( meter gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Reutlingen – Eningen local railway was a meter- gauge narrow - gauge railway licensed as a local railway and operated as a steam tram in the urban area of Reutlingen . The 4.79 kilometer long private railway to Eningen unter Achalm was opened in 1899 and formed the cornerstone for the Reutlingen electric tram in 1912 . The line existed in this form until 1974.
The vernacular called the local railway Büschelesbahn or in the local Swabian dialect Büschelesbähnle , because the people of Eningen used it to transport brushwood tufts to the Reutlingen weekly market. The thinner branches tied together were sold to the Reutlingen housewives as heating material. Again and again it was claimed that the steam locomotives themselves were fired with this material.
history
Failed projects
In the 19th century, the municipality of Eningen could not be taken into account by the Royal Württemberg State Railways either in the construction of the Plochingen – Reutlingen railway line, which opened in 1859, or in the construction of the Echaz Valley Railway, which opened in 1892, from Reutlingen to Honau . The necessary detour was too far for the planners. The later Reutlinger Südbahnhof was located in Eningen and was initially called “Eningen u. A. “, but it was two and a half kilometers from the town center and therefore did not meet the traffic needs of the village. When this was opened, the population of Eningen stayed away to a large extent in protest, only the pastor and seven gentlemen welcomed the arrival of the special train .
A horse-drawn tram between the town and the train station, planned for compensation in 1871 , did not come about either, because this idea was not well received by the people of Eningen. They preferred a direct connection to downtown Reutlingen. As an alternative, they proposed in a memorandum of 1875/1876 to build a connection from Reutlingen via Eningen as a section of a strategic line between Strasbourg and Ulm , which also did not work.
Eningen took the initiative
To the course of the increasing industrialization of the economic connection to the old imperial city not to lose Reutlingen, but above all to facilitate their work around the Eninger entrepreneurs, so in 1892 two merchants, among them founded in the fall of nurserymen William Rall, and Schultes the Eninger " Railway Committee ". This wrote in March 1895 the "memorandum on the construction of a tram from Eningen u. A. nach Reutlingen ", published by the" Bürgerliche Collegien von Eningen u./A. " At that time, the Eningen shopkeepers and peddlers were traveling with their woolen goods and fabrics all over southern Germany and neighboring countries, they saw a connection in the train to Reutlingen to the big wide world. Apart from that, Eningen developed into a workers' community through industrialization, at that time 500 people walked to Reutlingen every day and were seen as potential passengers.
But it was not until October 3, 1898 that the local railway Eningen - Reutlingen GmbH Ritter von Schwind received a concession for the planned connection from the Württemberg state . The Innsbruck entrepreneur Hermann Ritter von Schwind, son of the painter Moritz von Schwind , was able to gain experience with the construction and operation of the local railway Innsbruck – Hall in Tyrol, which opened in 1891 . The community was to assume 380,000 Reichsmarks and Hermann Ritter von Schwind 200,000 of the construction costs . Due to difficult land negotiations, however, construction could not begin immediately, mainly because the Reutlingen wine-growers did not want to part with their clods on Eningen in the area of the later Spitzwiesen stop . In addition, road usage permits had to be wrested from the city of Reutlingen . The city of Reutlingen initially only tolerated the surveying work necessary for the railway , which was carried out in 1893. The start of construction, however, was delayed until the summer of 1898 and the first tracks were not laid until February 1899. In Eningen, the bowling alley of the Leuze & Bazlen brewery had to be demolished and the Leinsbach straightened.
Shortly before completion, however, the municipality of Eningen blocked Hermann Ritter von Schwind's credit because he did not manage to complete the siding for the mechanical cotton weaving mill under Achalm G. mb H. in time . Their factory site was off the route, across Reutlinger Strasse. As a result, the Innsbruck entrepreneur canceled the opening originally planned for September 15, 1899.
opening
It was not until November 1, 1899 that the new local line was opened between Reutlingen State Station and Eningen Ort and ran about once an hour, but not on the regular schedule . The operational center was Eningen, where there was a locomotive shed . The first train left there at 5:35 a.m., the last at 9:35 p.m. Goods traffic did not initially take place, but mail was carried from the start . The steam locomotives were allowed to pull up to five passenger cars, but two to three were usually sufficient. From 1908 onwards, nine wagons were allowed to be carried, but an additional leader locomotive was required for the slightly uphill journey towards Eningen, where about 80 meters of altitude had to be overcome . In the direction of Reutlingen, the machines always drove ahead with the tender , while in the direction of Eningen the smoke chamber door was in front.
Call for a discussion of the fare for workers' weekly tickets in the Eninger Wochenblatt of November 22, 1899
Various local train tickets, except for the top row
Winter timetable 1903/1904, at that time eleven pairs of trains ran on weekdays and thirteen pairs of trains on Sundays
Economic problems and communalization
But the new runway was little used from the start and made losses from the start. Even before the opening there were protests because of the high tariff . In particular, many workers continued to walk to their factories in Reutlingen because the fare of 20 pfennigs each way - especially as a weekly ticket - was too high for them in relation to their wages.
In the course of 1900 Hermann Ritter von Schwind finally succeeded in taking up goods traffic on trestles . For the handover of the freight wagons to the state railway, there was a trolley pit on the forecourt of the Eningen state railway station. A second such system, along with a short piece of standard gauge track , was located on the area of the Eningen Ort train station. With the help of this second pit, standard-gauge freight wagons could be loaded and unloaded at the public loading point located there , while the trolleys themselves were used for other purposes. Freight traffic was disappointingly low.
Due to the low frequency of his train, Hermann Ritter von Schwind had to file for bankruptcy as early as 1902 . He therefore ceded it to the municipality of Eningen on February 1, 1903. He felt deceived by this because it had lured him with completely outdated numbers. The losses also remained high under municipal management. Further plans to expand the short and unprofitable local railway into a steam-powered overland railway from Plochingen via Nürtingen , Metzingen , Eningen and Reutlingen to Tübingen also failed. Independently of this, the local railway issued railway stamps from 1904 onwards .
So from 1906 there were finally considerations for the introduction of an electric tram. In 1909, negotiations began between the local railway administration and the Württembergische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (WEG) from Stuttgart with the aim of selling the Eninger local railway as the cornerstone of a planned electric tram network. At that time, the WEG paid 210,000 marks on the condition that the city of Reutlingen agreed to the electrification and expansion. Quarrels with Pfullingen initially prevented the plans from being implemented. The new license was only granted on April 20, 1911 and the sale was completed on June 21, 1911.
Electrification and integration into the Reutlingen tram
The Württembergische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft began on March 15, 1912 with the extension of the Eninger Lokalbahn to the Reutlingen district of Betzingen , at the same time the line in Reutlingen was moved from Gartenstrasse to Wilhelmstrasse and provided with an overhead line . This 7.23 km long diameter tram line finally went into operation on July 24, 1912. The Reutlingen main station remained connected to the Eningen line by a short branch line. In 1944, the Eningen – Betzingen route became municipal property and was given route number 1. The last tram finally reached Eningen on October 19, 1974, on that day the route to Pfullingen and thus the entire network was shut down or switched to bus operation.
Route description
The local railway to Eningen had its starting point in Bahnhofstrasse, roughly at the junction with Kaiserstrasse. The departure point was parallel to the tracks of the main line from Plochingen to Tübingen, only on Listplatz, the forecourt of Reutlingen Central Station, did it turn towards the city center. In the further course it led, still on grooved rails , through Gartenstrasse to Burgplatz and then on through Albstrasse. Albstraße was also the name of the first stop . From the confluence of the Gartenweg, the railway had its own route with Vignole rails along the Arbach and away from the main road. At the Eningen State Railway Station, which was only renamed Reutlingen Südbahnhof on May 1, 1907, the local railway crossed the Echaz Valley Railway at the same level. As a special feature , the track crossing was secured by a wing signal from the state railway. There was another stop of the local railway, which - different from the name of the state station - was called Rank . Then the train ran, still away from the road, on a southern slope at the foot of the Reutlingen and Eningen local mountain Achalm to its terminus. Larger engineering structures were not required, only the connection of the weaving mill required a small stone bridge over the Leinsbach. A special design feature of the track leading to the weaving mill was the run-up curve installed there due to the narrow radius .
The departure point of the local railway was at the confluence of Kaiserstraße with Bahnhofstraße, parallel to the tracks of the state railway
A local train in the direction of Eningen passes the Listplatz, the main train station on the left
A local train in Reutlinger Gartenstrasse, the locked boarding platform leading to the locomotive is used to transport mail
A local train in the direction of Reutlingen Staatsbahnhof passes Burgplatz
The track of the local railway at the Rank stop, on the right edge of the picture the former Eningen state train station and later Reutlingen south train station
The siding to the Eninger weaving mill on Reutlinger Straße, in the center of the picture the bridge over the Leinsbach
vehicles
The local railway had three small two-axle steam locomotives from the Munich locomotive factory Krauss & Co. , which were partially disguised in the chassis area like classic tram locomotives for use in Reutlingen city traffic. There were ten two-axle passenger cars with open platforms for passenger transport. They had the company numbers 1 to 10 and were manufactured by the Rastatt wagon factory . Also from there came the baggage car with the number 51, which was described by the manufacturer as a “ covered goods wagon with steering axles ”. In addition, it had seats for passenger transport, so it was a so-called optional car . The local railway also had various roll stands for freight transport.
While the locomotives were sold on the occasion of electrification, the WEG converted the cars for electrical operation. They served, now with closed platforms, as sidecars for the new electric railcars. Two of the passenger cars from 1899 have been preserved, car 2 as part of a memorial train on the premises of Stadtwerke Reutlingen and car 7 in the Technoseum in Mannheim .
Relics
The most striking relic of the local railway is the Eningen reception building at Bahnhofstrasse 18 , which has been preserved to this day, including the attached goods shed with loading ramp ; the structure of the ensemble corresponds to a typical Württemberg train station. The track apron itself was built over with a residential and commercial building in the area of the station entrance. The area at the level of the reception building serves as a parking lot. In addition, the Eningen street names Bahnhofstraße and Auf dem Bahndamm are still reminiscent of the former rail connection of the place. The railway line between the former Reutlinger Südbahnhof and the former weaving mill stop is now used as a footpath and cycle path, and there is still a short remnant of track on the Eninger weaving mill site.
literature
- Wolf Rüdiger Gassmann, Claude Jeanmaire: Reutlinger Strassenbahn. Verlag Eisenbahn, Villigen 1977, ISBN 3-85649-034-5 .
- Bernhard Madel: The local railway Reutlingen - Eningen. In: Lok Magazin issue 161 pp. 124-131, Stuttgart 1990.
- Bernhard Madel: "Smoke, steam, hissing and blowing" - the local train drove through Gartenstrasse for twelve years. In: Reutlinger Geschichtsblätter NF No. 36, pp. 175-180, Reutlingen 1997.
- Bernhard Madel: Under the Achalm: The Post on the way by horse and local train. In: Post and Telecommunications History, Southwest Regional Area. Issue 1-1997, pp. 41-54, Bühl 1997.
- Peter-Michael Mihailescu, Matthias Michalke: Forgotten railways in Baden-Württemberg . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0413-6 , p. 208-210 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ The local railway Reutlingen - Eningen u. A. on www.vergessene-bahnen.de
- ↑ a b c d e Wolfgang Bauer: Schwind-Start in Eningen , online at neckar-chronik.de, accessed on November 1, 2018
- ↑ a b c d e f g h Memories of the Büschelesbahn ... , article from March 19, 2017 on Bildertanz Reutlingen , accessed on November 24, 2018
- ↑ a b c Busses defeated the tram - Reutlingen's last "Funken-Chaise" drove 20 years ago: memories of a piece of city history , article by Stephan Zenke in Reutlinger General-Anzeiger from October 17, 1994
- ↑ Article Büschelesbahn Eningen on gv-eningen.blogspot.com, accessed on November 26, 2018
- ↑ Die Echazbahn (ex KBS 763) on esslinger.de, accessed on November 25, 2018
- ↑ Frank Ausmeier: eningen, Sutton Verlag GmbH, Erfurt, 2012, p 15
- ↑ Reutlingen tram on pospichal.net, accessed on November 24, 2018