Spiegelau Forest Railway

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Spiegelau Forest Railway
Geographical data
continent Europe
country Germany
state Bavaria
Route-related data
Diesel locomotive as a memorial in Spiegelau
Diesel locomotive as a memorial in Spiegelau
Route length: 100 km
Gauge : 600 mm ( narrow gauge )

The Spiegelau Forest Railway was a narrow-gauge forest railway around Spiegelau in the Bavarian Forest created for the transport of wood .

construction

After the opening of the railway line Zwiesel-Grafenau in 1890 resulted in the rail new opportunities for the transport of timber from the forests around the Great Rachel . At the suggestion of forester Leythäuser, who was transferred to the government of Lower Bavaria in 1890, the forest staff began to lay a narrow-gauge railway with 600 millimeters gauge from the Spiegelau state train station on their own from 1900 .

The official approval for the further expansion of a permanent forest railway was given on August 26, 1908. At that time, a 7-kilometer route had already been built . In November 1909, in the presence of officials from the Regensburg Railway Directorate, the official test drive took place on the route, which was now 17.5 kilometers. Also in 1909 were the first vehicles two steam locomotives delivered.

In 1911 the main line reached Mauth, 32 kilometers away . Now a branch followed in the direction of the Rachel service hut. The First World War and the post-war period interrupted further work. In the 1920s, the route network to Klingenbrunn station was extended. In 1926 there were already 41 kilometers of mainline and 5 kilometers of siding.

After the windfall catastrophe of 1927, it was further intensified and construction continued up to the vicinity of Finsterau . After 1930, the Spiegelau Forest Railway had reached its greatest extent with 95 kilometers of fixed route. From now on, further new buildings were also opposed to demolitions. The last expansion took place in 1951 with the construction of a seven-kilometer stretch to the Scheerhütte by 156 emergency workers. In 1953, the highest point in the route network was finally reached at an altitude of almost 1000 meters, opening up a 700-hectare forest area.

business

The Spiegelau Forest Railway transported the wood to the stations in Spiegelau or Klingenbrunn, where it was loaded onto standard-gauge freight wagons and transported in the direction of Zwiesel. The routes were very steep and winding. The tracks lay on stable embankments . They were often dismantled in one place, loaded onto the train and relocated elsewhere. At the railway depot in Spiegelau, the forest administration built a locomotive turntable in the early 1920s . At Sagwassersäge there was a track triangle , at Klingenbrunn there was a turning loop . In freight transport, the railway transported not only wood but also general cargo , especially food, to the remote villages of Guglöd, Waldhäuser and Graupsäge. In 1930 the record crowd of 118,119 was cubic meters Großnutzholz, 40491 Rochester plywood and 2,127 tons of cargo moved.

From the 20s the locomotive inventory constantly covered about 7 green-painted, fitted with yellow trim locomotives , from 1926 and diesel locomotives . The forest railway had a total of 12 locomotives, of which 5 were steam , 4 diesel and 3 gasoline-electric locomotives. At the height of its operations in 1932, it owned 355 timber transport wagons ("trucks") and 47 other wagons. In winter, the train traffic stopped due to the high snowfall.

The end

After the Second World War , the Regensburg Federal Railway Directorate, which was responsible for building supervision, requested an overhaul of the railway, which would have cost around 500,000 DM. Since the construction of forest roads and the transport of wood by motor vehicles had become more profitable in the meantime , the Regensburg Forestry Directorate ordered the dismantling of the Spiegelau Forest Railway by 1960 on September 21, 1957. In 1955, the Spiegelau Forest Railway still had eleven locomotives, 182 trucks and 23 special vehicles. In 1957, the dismantling of the tracks began in favor of forest roads. Farewell trips by passenger transport were offered to the population . The last train ran on May 11, 1960, and the last track was dismantled on September 8.

present

Forest railway monument in Spiegelau (2010)

The engine shed at Spiegelau station is still there. Several former railway embankments, like other former railway lines, also serve as a substructure for cycling and hiking trails. Some of them were exposed again by the Bavarian Forest National Park . The main route of the forest railway is now used as a national park bike path.

Early on, there were efforts by railway enthusiasts to reactivate the Spiegelau Forest Railway as a museum railway . There is also a permanent exhibition about the forest railway in the information center in Spiegelau.

In the center of Spiegelau, a forest railway diesel locomotive and three wooden transport wagons of different designs are set up as a forest railway monument.

Since August 10, 2003, a short field railway line has been built in Riedlhütte by the Feld- und Waldbahnverein Riedlhütte eV . This has been used regularly since then. However, this is a completely new building, which was built away from the former forest railway route in the center of the village.

literature

  • Ludwig Reiner, Hermann Beiler, Richard Sliwinski: The Spiegelauer Waldbahn . Ohetaler Verlag, Riedlhütte 2005, ISBN 3-937067-14-0 .
  • Walther Zeitler : Railways in the Bavarian Forest . 3. Edition. Morsak Verlag, Grafenau 1980, ISBN 3-8755-3 .

Web links

Commons : Monuments in Spiegelau  - Collection of images, videos and audio files