Nassau small train

Nassauische Kleinbahn AG
legal form	Corporation
founding	July 9, 1898
resolution	1975
Reason for dissolution	Conversion into a GmbH
Seat	Nasta
Branch	traffic

Nassau Kleinbahn
share from 1953

St. Goarshausen customs house
Route length:	43.9 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Legend Right stretch of the Rhine from Wiesbaden St. Goarshausen harbor 0.0 St. Goarshausen Kleinbf / Staatsbf 69 m Right stretch of the Rhine to Oberlahnstein 0.7 Hasenbach 1.2 Wage Mill 3.3 Schmidtsmühle 4.1 Reichenberg (district Wiesbaden) 9.7 Bogel 12.0 Niederwallmenach 16.1 Nasta 248 m former route to Oberlahnstein (see below) 21.8 Martenroth 22.8 Holzhausen 24.9 Roman fort 27.8 Berndroth - Rescues 420 m 31.8 Mittelfischbach 34.4 Katzenelnbogen 36.2 Allendorf Taberg 37.2 Maiblumenlai 38.3 Badger chews 39.8 Hohlenfels 41.5 Mudershausen Mudershausen Landgrabental 43.9 Zollhaus Kleinbahnhof Transition to the Aartalbahn
Oberlahnstein – Nastätten
Route length:	16.9 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Legend Right section of the Rhine from Niederlahnstein 0.0 Oberlahnstein Kleinbf / Staatsbf 0.5 Victoria Fountain 1.7 Rhenser ferry 3.5 Braubach Kleinbf / Staatsbf Right Rhine route to St. Goarshausen Braubach Neutor 5.0 Silver hut 8.4 Customs reason 13.5 Becheln 15.3 Hinterwald 17.8 Dachsenhausen 18.3 Oberbachheim 19.9 Winter advertising 20.8 Eschbacher way 22.0 Gemmerich 24.7 Honor 27.1 Marienfels 2.8 Knabs Mill 29.5 Miehlen 222 m 31.2 Cutting mill 33.1 Nasta 248 m former routes to St. Goarshausen   or Zollhaus (see above) Swell:

The Nassauische Kleinbahn was a narrow-gauge railway in the Taunus between Lahn , Aar and Rhine in what is now the state of Rhineland-Palatinate .

In 1975 the Nassauische Kleinbahn-Gesellschaft GmbH was founded, in 1978 the Nassauische Verkehrs-GmbH .

history

Emergence

Nassauische Kleinbahn AG was founded on July 9, 1898 with the financial participation of the Kingdom of Prussia , the Wiesbaden district association , the Sankt Goarshausen and Unterlahn districts and the General German Small Railway Company (ADKA). This took over the management until 1926. Then it went to its daughter, the Allgemeine Deutsche Eisenbahn-Betriebs-GmbH (ADEG).

stretch

The railway was supposed to connect the traffic-distant Hintertaunusland with the traffic arteries in the Rhine and Aar valleys. The railway administration was based in the (formerly Nassau) small town of Nastätten in the Taunus. Three small railways with meter gauge started from here :

Naststätten – St. Goarshausen

Former station building of the Nassauische Kleinbahn in Sankt Goarshausen

The first 16-kilometer stretch led west to the district town of St. Goarshausen am Rhein. From September 18, 1900, the trains ran there to Lohmühle, from May 1, 1901 to Hasenbach and only from July 5, 1903 to the Rheinbahnhof. From October 16, 1903, another track was led to the port for freight traffic, where the goods could be reloaded to the Rhine shipping by the house crane .

Naststätten customs house

The next year, on May 1, 1901, the line to Holzhausen an der Haide followed in an easterly direction and on November 1, 1901, the Diez - Bad Schwalbach state railway in the Aartal was reached at the Zollhaus station (km 28) .

Naststätten – Oberlahnstein

Also on May 1, 1901, operations began in a north-westerly direction to Miehlen. The Silberhütte in Braubach was reached on July 10, 1902, the town of Braubach on March 5, 1903 and the small train station and the Rhine port of the town under the Marksburg on October 16, 1903 . Two days later, the line from Braubach parallel to the state railway to Oberlahnstein was opened .

With a length of 77 kilometers, the network had thus reached its greatest extent.

Decline and shutdown

Lettering of the Nassauische Kleinbahn Aktiengesellschaft on the monument locomotive in Nastätten

Monument locomotive at its former location in Nastätten: Henschellok with road number 16. Under road number 2, it was initially operated by the Selters – Hachenburg small railway .

In addition to the almost always weak passenger traffic with three to four pairs of trains a day, the transport of iron ore, limestone and wood played a role. However, the financial success lasted only a few years. In addition to the general economic development, this was due to the winding route in the hilly Hintertaunus, but also to the competition between motor vehicles that was soon to emerge.

Passenger traffic (1919/20 also freight traffic) from Braubach to Oberlahnstein ended on March 1, 1917, and on May 15, 1929 - after an interruption from 1920 to 1926 - from Braubach to Nastätten. The Kraftpost took over in 1929 passenger transport. As a result of the economic crisis, freight traffic between the Silberhütte and Miehlen was stopped and the line was dismantled in 1932/33.

But then the end became unstoppable. Since 1938, attempts have been made to gain a share of the traffic volume shifting to the streets with their own bus routes. These efforts were continued after 1948, including bus connections to Diez an der Lahn and Wiesbaden. During and after the Second World War , the demand for rail-bound transport - especially in passenger transport - temporarily increased again. Freight trains ran between Miehlen and Nastätten until 1955, and passenger trains again in the years after 1945.

The other two routes did not survive long either. Passenger traffic from Nastatten to St. Goarshausen ended in 1952 and goods traffic in 1956/57.

From 1953, there was no longer any passenger train going to Zollhaus, and from 1957 freight traffic was limited to transport from the limestone quarry in Hibernia near Hohlenfels to the Zollhaus railway station, which was also a thing of the past after June 1, 1962. At that time, the Dyckerhoff cement works in Wiesbaden owned 85% of the shares in the railway. Since 1959, management had been in the hands of Deutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft GmbH . In 1975 the Nassauische Kleinbahn-Gesellschaft was converted into a GmbH .

Railway operations lasted the longest on the route from the port to the Silberhütte in Braubach, where the track with its gauge of 750 millimeters was in the middle of the main road. Until 1958/59, the meter gauge was also represented by a three-rail track . The end of the railway operation came only on September 30, 1977, which also meant the end of the Nassauische Kleinbahn-Gesellschaft GmbH. In 1997, when Oberalleestrasse was being expanded, the last 200 meters of grooved rails were removed and re-used in the Frankfurt Feldbahnmuseum and the Ems Mining Museum.

A new company called Nassauische Verkehrs-GmbH was founded to continue bus operations . The AG for Transport , from which the shares were transferred to Veolia Verkehr GmbH, was also involved .

vehicles

At the opening, the railway received eight triple-coupled wet steam tank locomotives from Henschel. Largely structurally identical machines were delivered to the Kleinbahn Selters-Hachenburg and the Gernrode-Harzgeroder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . One of the latter came into the possession of the Deutsche Reichsbahn as DR 99 5811 . The last of these machines on the Nassauische Kleinbahn were in use until the end of the 1950s.

One of the machines of the Kleinbahn Selters – Hachenburg came into the possession of the Nassauische Kleinbahn in 1957 as number 16 in the second occupation, but was sold again to a recycling company Schuy in Limburg in 1963 and survived from 1981 as a memorial in Nastätten. In July 2017, the locomotive was sold to the Dutch company Kleinbaan Service and is to be used as a museum train in the future.

For the remaining traffic, a five-axle young steam locomotive ( NKAG 15 ^II ; Jung 11502 ) and a two-axle young diesel locomotive (Jung 11503) in meter gauge were received as number 15 in 1952 . After a few years, the diesel locomotive went to the Plettenberger Kleinbahn as No. 11 and in the 1970s via the construction company STRABAG to Togo for port construction in Lomé, where it was parked for a while at the CFT.

In 1957, two used HF 130 Cs with a gauge of 750 millimeters were acquired as V 17 (Gmeinder 2822) and V 18 (Gmeinder 3143), which were the last locomotives and were used until the railway was closed, for the factory railway operation from the Silberhütte to the harbor under the direction of NK 1978 both went to Austria. Today the former runs on a private field railway in Emmerich and the other on the Styrian state railway .

Models

In 2016, the company BEMO Modelleisenbahnen announced the model of the former V18 army field railway locomotive of the Nassauische Kleinbahn.

Conversion into cycling and hiking trails

Nassauische Kleinbahn: hiking trails

For several years now, sections of the former railway line have been converted into cycling and hiking trails, partly through private initiatives. Some routes are marked, with others the route is easy to see on topographic maps.

Naststätten – Bogel

Around 6 km long hiking trail starting at the locomotive monument in Nastätten (not marked).

Bogel – St. Goarshausen

Around 9 kilometers long, very well-developed cycle and hiking trail, marked as part of the Loreley-Aar cycle path .

Miehlen-Dachsenhausen

The embankment is around 12 kilometers long and can be walked almost continuously (not marked), except for short breaks.

Dachsenhausen – Braubach

Around 13 kilometers long cycle and hiking trail marked by a silver locomotive or a white locomotive on a blue background. In addition, information boards provide information about the Nassauische Kleinbahn.

literature

• Heinrich Reifenrath: Guide to the Nassau small railways with 24 views , Oberlahnstein 1903 [1]
• Willy Redhardt: Guide through the northwestern Taunus: (area of ​​the Nassau small railways) , Koblenz 1906 [2]
• Winfried Ott: Get on, please !: Memories of the Nassauische Kleinbahn. Verlag Heimatpflegeverein Blaues Ländchen, "Blaue Blätter" Volume 15, Nastatten 2004, ISBN 3-9812486-0-0
• Hans Renker: Do not mess - block - history of the Nassau small railways, part 1. In: EisenbahnGeschichte 66 (2014), pp. 34–43
• Hans Renker: You saved where you could - history of the Nassauische Kleinbahnen, part 2. In: EisenbahnGeschichte 67 (2014), pp. 30–35
• Rolf Löttgers: Private railways in Germany: The German Railway Company 1960-1969, Franckh, Stuttgart 1983, p. 137ff.
• Michael Walke: Locomotive monument of the Nassau small railway . In: Alfred B. Gottwaldt (ed.): Lok magazine . No. 119 . Franckh'sche Verlagshandlung, W. Keller & Co. , 1983, ISSN  0458-1822 , p. 89 .

Web links

Commons : Nassauische Kleinbahn  - Album with pictures, videos and audio files

• Route map on Openstreetmap
• Historical route map
• Pictures of the stations and route map from 1938 at "Drehscheibe Online"
• Historical footage of the Nassau small railway around 1935
• "Living and Working" museum Detailed documentation on the Nassau small railway in the "Living and Working" museum in Nastätten .
• http://www.ig-nassauische-kleinbahn.npage.de/
• Early documents and newspaper articles on the Nassau Kleinbahn in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .

• Measuring table sheets and other cards from the Deutsche Fotothek :
  • Map 1: 100,000 483: Coblenz, 1909 (Oberlahnstein <-> Dachsenhausen)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany 2007/2008 . 6th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89494-136-9 .
2. ^ Nassauische Kleinbahn for articles on locomotive and railway history, accessed on May 25, 2016
3. ^ Dennis Mellerowitz: New acquisitions for the Pater collection . In: The Museum Railway . No. 3 , 2017, ISSN  0936-4609 , p. 14-15 .
4. ↑ Nassauische Kleinbahn: Nastätter monument locomotive (locomotive 16II) has new owner of the Lahnstein model railway club - Koblenz with photos
5. ↑ Narrow gauge locomotive for Togo at www.drehscheibe-online.de/foren, accessed on May 25, 2016
6. ^ Werkbahnen Nassauische Kleinbahn (Braubach) by Joachim Schmitz, accessed on May 25, 2016
7. ↑ HF130C - Gmeinder 3143/1940 on heereseldbahn.de, accessed on May 26, 2016
8. ↑ New items brochure 2016 from Bemo model railways, accessed on May 26, 2016
9. ↑ Topographic leisure map of the Unesco World Heritage Upper Middle Rhine Valley 2 Loreley-Boppard , 1: 25,000 at the Land Surveying Office of Rhineland-Palatinate
10. ↑ Compass map No. 839 Westlicher Taunus 1: 50,000