Ticino narrow-gauge railway

Ticino narrow-gauge railway
Route length:	42.3 km
Gauge :	750 mm ( narrow gauge )
Legend from Sanitz ( standard gauge ) 0.0 Ticino Ticino sugar factory 3.5 Zarnewanz 6.3 Gnewitz Recknitz 1.3 Branch 1.9 Vilz 4.7 Kowalz 6.3 Thelkow 3.2 Reddershof 5.2 Selpin 6.8 Wilhelmshof-Wesselstorf 8.6 Friedrichshof 9.5 Branch 12.0 Walkendorf 10.3 Branch 12.4 New Polchow 15.8 Great Ridsenow 11.0 Stechow 11.6 Branch 13.7 Rensow Branch 15.5 Prebberede 16.7 Vietschow 13.5 Dalwitz 16.1 Stierow

The narrow-gauge railway Ticino (also Ticino beet railway or Werkbahn Ticino ) operated a railway network around Ticino in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, exclusively for goods traffic .

history

Bridge of the narrow-gauge railway over the Recknitz (2010)

In 1895, several landowners and land tenants from the area around Ticino founded Schmalspurbahn Tessin GmbH , the purpose of which was to “build and operate a small railway for agricultural and commercial purposes”. The company received a permit for the construction according to the Prussian Kleinbahngesetz , which the Duchy of Mecklenburg-Schwerin had adopted for its national territory.

The narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of 750 mm was opened in sections in 1896 and comprised 48 km of rail network with a number of branches. The official route inspection took place on December 12, 1896, but parts of the network were already in operation. In 1897 a branch to Walkendorf went into operation, in 1914 the branch from Rensow to Prebberede, which was the largest expansion stage of 50.5 km network length.

On May 18, 1921, Zuckerfabrik Tessin GmbH took over the railway and operated it as a narrow-gauge railway department. The first shutdown in the network took place on May 23, 1933 with the Rensow – Vietschow section. In the mid-1950s, only the sections to Zarnewanz, Thelkow and Walkendorf were in operation, the lines south of Walkendorf had already been closed. In 1958 the branch to Gnewitz was closed as a result of flooding, and the line to Thelkow followed around 1960. After the 1963 harvest, the Ticino – Walkendorf section was closed as the last stretch. The route was dismantled from around 1970.

In addition to sugar beet, the goods to be transported included fertilizers.

vehicles

In 1896 the company procured from Krauss & Comp. three four-axle, triple-coupled steam locomotives , of which only one was in use in the 1950s. The last of these locomotives was retired at the end of the 1950s. In 1930 a steam locomotive manufactured by Arnold Jung in 1919 (factory number 2835) was purchased, which was in operation until 1960 and was then given to the dairy in Gnoien as a stationary steam dispenser. From 1960 a diesel locomotive of the type LKM V 10 C was used.

The fleet consisted mainly of covered (1897 stock: 5) and open freight cars (70). In 1960, during a visit by Günter Meyer, 89 freight wagons are said to have been available. Passenger cars were not available. Any work on the vehicles was done in a workshop on the grounds of the Ticino sugar factory. The covered freight car 81 is the only vehicle that has survived and is now exhibited in the Mecklenburg Railway and Technology Museum in Schwerin.

literature

• Matthias Hengst, Heiko Bergmann: Railways between Rostock and Stralsund. A journey through time from the beginning to the present. Coastal Regional Publishing House, Ueckermünde 2016, ISBN 978-3-943761-14-6 , pp. 54–57
• Lothar Schultz: Railways in Mecklenburg . 3rd edition, Transpress, Berlin 1992, ISBN 978-3-344-70732-3 , pp. 59-62
• Lothar Schultz, Ulrich Hoeppner: The Ticino narrow-gauge railway 1896-1963 (sheets on the traffic history of Mecklenburg, issue 3). 2nd edition, Friends of the Railway, Rostock o. J. (1988)
• Reinhard Richter: Feldbahnen in the service of agriculture - the beet railway networks of the German sugar factories . Verlag Bernd Neddermeyer, Berlin 2005, ISBN 3-933254-65-5 , pp. 37-46

Web links

• Thomas Rohmann: The Tessiner Rübenbahn, Mecklenburger Agrarkultur eV, 2014 (accessed on March 5, 2018)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Information according to the German Railway Atlas. 9th edition, Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
2. ↑ Richter (2005), p. 39
3. ^ Richter (2005), p. 42
4. ↑ G-Wagen of the narrow-gauge railway Ticino, fredriks.de (accessed on March 5, 2018).