Nordfeldbahn

Jägersburg-Waldmohr-Nordfeld pit
Route length:	4.2 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Homburg 0.0 Jägersburg-Waldmohr to Bad Munster State border Saarland - Rhineland-Palatinate 0.3 path 1.4 Land debit station 1.7 Footpath 2.5 Footpath Rhineland-Palatinate-Saarland border 3.1 Forest path 4.2 path 4.2 Nordfeld mine

The Nordfeldbahn was a standard - gauge railway line from Jägersburg to the Nordfeld mine near Höchen in Saarland, opened in 1903 and exclusively used for freight traffic .

The purpose of the railway line was to transport coal from the said pit. It was put into operation one year before the official opening of the Glantalbahn , from which it branches off. In the absence of profitability, the mine had to close at the turn of the year 1904/1905, which is why the line was closed after two years of operation and dismantled a few years later.

history

In 1889, the Nordfeld mine on the northern edge of the Höcherberg was opened in order to develop the coal deposits that were on Bavarian territory. At the same time, the plans to build a primarily strategic railway line from Homburg to Bad Münster became more concrete . Since it was planned to build a train station in the area of ​​the municipalities of Jägersburg and Waldmohr , it made sense to build a freight line from this to the pit. The company of the Palatinate Northern Railways, which was responsible for the construction and operation of the strategic railway, gave the green light for the coal transport before the former was officially opened. The construction of the railway line lasted from 1900 to 1903; both excavations and embankments were necessary to a large extent.

On October 23, 1902, the Nordfeld 1 steam locomotive intended for the freight railway was accepted. The route was examined a few days later. The opening of the "Nordfeldbahn" took place in the spring of 1903, a year before the Glantalbahn was officially opened. The latter was already being used to transport coal in the Homburg – Jägersburg-Waldmohr section.

The profitability of the Nordfeld mine was problematic in that most of the neighboring coal deposits were already on Prussian territory. Since Prussia also refused to give up pit fields to Bavaria, the Nordfeld mine was closed on January 1, 1905. Accordingly, traffic on the Nordfeldbahn ended in the same year; it was subsequently dismantled.

business

Nordfeld 1 steam locomotive

The Nordfeld 1 steam locomotive, built by the Henschel & Sohn company , was responsible for traffic . It had a total output of 520 hp ; their top speed was 45 kilometers per hour . She could pull four wagons, each weighing a maximum of ten tons. After the line was closed, it was sold to the Eschweiler Mining Association ; In 1959 it was scrapped.

course

Nordfeld mining station (2013)

The Nordfeldbahn began at the northern end of the Jägersburg-Waldmohr station, which was later renamed several times, on the Glantalbahn, which has now also been closed and which still exists in this area. Then it passed a cut and led through the center of Waldmohr . There it crossed today's federal highway 423 , where the land debit station was located, where the land sales were processed. The route is on a moderate, continuous slope and first follows the Glan and then the Branschbach. After a total of 4.2 kilometers, the route ended at the loading station of the eponymous mine. This was followed by a 700 meter long narrow-gauge wagon train that led to the two shafts of the mine.

Only the first and the last hundred meters were in today's Saarland , most of the route was in Rhineland-Palatinate . With Homburg , Waldmohr and Bexbach , the districts of a total of three cities or municipalities are touched.

Relics

Jägersburger Bahnhof from the train tracks (2011)

The route of the Nordfeldbahn can still be seen today. In the meantime a path has been laid out on it. The buildings of the Jägersburger train station and the loading wall at the end of the line are also still in existence. A gatekeeper house in Waldmohr in the middle of the Glan was only demolished in the 1980s.

literature

• Hans-Joachim Emich, Rolf Becker: The railways on Glan and Lauter . Self-published, Waldmohr 1996, ISBN 3-9804919-0-0 .

Web links

Commons : Nordfeldbahn  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ gallery.dralzheimer.stylesyndication.de: SaarLorLux Urbex> Lost Places> Grube Nordfeld> Grubenbahnhof . (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; Retrieved February 13, 2012 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
2. ^ ^{A b} Hans-Joachim Emich, Rolf Becker: The railways to Glan and Lauter . 1996, p. 36 .
3. ^ ^{A b c} Hans-Joachim Emich, Rolf Becker: The railways to Glan and Lauter . 1996, p. 114 .
4. ↑ bahnhof-homburg.de: From the environment; Train stations and track systems around Homburg . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on June 30, 2013 ; accessed on December 25, 2018 . 
5. ↑ Hans-Joachim Emich, Rolf Becker: The railways to Glan and Lauter . 1996, p. 114 f .
6. ↑ Hans-Joachim Emich, Rolf Becker: The railways to Glan and Lauter . 1996, p. 115 .