Oberwaldbahn
The former Vogelsbergbahn between the railway stations Glauburg-Stockheim on the Gießen – Gelnhausen railway line and Lauterbach (Hess) Nord on the Gießen – Fulda railway line is now known as the Oberwald Railway . The 65-kilometer branch line ran along the Nidder and over the Vogelsberg . From the train station Hartmannshain from leading Vogelsberger Southern Railway to station Wächtersbach at the Kinzig Valley Railway .
The original route name Vogelsbergbahn is now in use for the railway line from Gießen via Grünberg , Alsfeld and Lauterbach to Fulda , although it only touches the Vogelsberg on the edge. The name Oberwaldbahn refers to the Oberwald train station near Bermuthshain , which after the gradual dismantling of the tracks between Stockheim and Oberwald in the 1970s and early 1980s became the end point of the remaining line from Lauterbach.
course
From what was then Stockheim (Oberhess) station, the Vogelsbergbahn initially followed the upper reaches of the Nidder , which it crossed several times. From Hirzenhain the route left the valley of the Nidder and ran through a narrow side valley.
To the east of Gedern , the route rose over several hairpin bends to the main chain of the Vogelsberg. South of the Herchenhainer Höhe shortly after the Hartmannshain station , at 575 m the formerly highest station in Hesse, the line reached its highest point when crossing the Rhine-Weser watershed .
The route to Grebenhain ran through the Schwarza valley . After bypassing the Heerhain in the west , the route turned north and ran along the Eisenbach and Lauter rivers to Lauterbach .
history
On the territory of the Grand Duchy of Hesse , the Upper Hessian Railway Company completed the Gießen – Fulda (today's Vogelsberg Railway) and Gießen – Gelnhausen (Lahn-Kinzig Railway) railway lines in 1870. In order to improve the connection between Wetterau and Vogelsberg , the government in Darmstadt passed a law in 1884 to build a state-owned branch line, which was supposed to create a diagonal cross connection between the two lines.
Due to the difficult route when crossing the Vogelsberg, the railway was planned and built in several sections, so that it took around twenty years to complete the entire route. Initially, only the 18.5 kilometer long, relatively flat section of the route from Stockheim to Gedern was built and inaugurated on October 1, 1888. In the first year of operation around 50,000 people and more than 10,000 tons of freight were transported, mainly wood.
More than twelve years later, the 21.7-kilometer northern section from Lauterbach to Grebenhain was opened on January 31, 1901 after a two-year construction period. The 24.8-kilometer-long, highest section of the route with the crossing of the Rhine-Weser watershed was finally opened to traffic on April 1, 1906. The railway was operated by the Prussian-Hessian Railway Association , which in 1920 became part of the newly founded Deutsche Reichsbahn .
With the expansion of the Vogelsberger Südbahn from Birstein , Hartmannshain station became a connecting station on December 23, 1934 . Near northeast of it located the three-kilometer Railway Station Oberwald existed from 1936 to 1945, the air munitions plant Hartmannshain ( Muna ), which has its own siding possessed. The section of the Vogelsberger Südbahn between Birstein and Hartmannshain was shut down and dismantled at the end of the 1950s.
The then Vogelsbergbahn also became increasingly unprofitable in the 1960s due to increasing individual traffic and parallel bus connections . From the mid-1970s, the Deutsche Bundesbahn therefore gradually shut down the line. First of all, passenger traffic was stopped on September 28, 1975 on the entire route. Only occasional special trips with passengers took place afterwards. All traffic between Ober-Seemen and Oberwald was also discontinued in 1975 and this section of the route was subsequently dismantled.
Freight traffic between Stockheim and Gedern was discontinued on June 1, 1984, after it had already been the case between Gedern and Ober-Seemen on May 23, 1982. Subsequently, the entire remaining southern section of the old Vogelsbergbahn was dismantled to Stockheim station. The northern part of the former entire route, between Lauterbach Nord and Oberwald, held out for a decade longer, as the Stabernack packaging company , which was located on the site of the former Muna in 1966, continued to use the Muna siding to Oberwald station. It was only after the company's transports were shifted to the road that the Oberwald station was closed on March 31, 1991 with the section to Grebenhain.
On May 29, 1994, the line from Grebenhain to Lauterbach Süd was shut down, the last section to Lauterbach (Hess) Nord station followed on May 31, 2001. By spring 1997, the track was between Oberwald station and the Stabernack junction in the southwest was dismantled by Lauterbach, at the beginning of 2005 this also happened to the former Lauterbach Süd train station, the rails and the road signals were only still available within two level crossings and have since been dismantled as part of a road renovation. Apart from the partly easily recognizable route, the two shape signals are still at the station entrance of Lauterbach Nord.
On most of the former railway line, the Vulkanradweg was built in the years 2000 to 2003 , which leaves the partly still recognizable route coming from the south in Lauterbach shortly before Dirlammer Straße .
literature
- Friedrich Müller: The Hohe Vogelsberg was only opened up through the railway , in: Heimat im Bild . No. 1–3, 1981. Supplement to: Gießener Anzeiger , Kreis-Anzeiger , Lauterbacher Anzeiger .
- State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Railway in Hessen. Railway buildings and routes 1839–1939 , 1st edition. Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1917-6 , vol. 2.2, p. 664ff (route 049).
Web links
- Photos of the route (2014)
- Route with opening and closing dates on www.vergessene-bahnen.de
- History of the Vogelsbergbahn (Oberwaldbahn)
- KBS 193d from 1944
Individual evidence
- ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
- ↑ Volcano Cycle Path in Vogelsberg: Historic railway line. Retrieved February 15, 2015 .