Steinbacher Bergwerksbahn

Route length:

1920: 6.1 km

Gauge :

600 mm ( narrow gauge )

Maximum slope :

83 ‰

Minimum radius :

10-12 m

Top speed:

10 km / h

Legend

0.0	Arminius Atterode mine	467 m
0.6	Fluor Steinbach union

0.0 1.7	turntable	400 m
	from 1927 switchback fluorine water station

	Water station (from 1927)
0.6	Steinbach station (from 1927)	375 m

	Haderkopf (quarry, until 1927)
	Grumbach (until 1927)
2.9	Jewish cemetery (until 1927)
	L 1027 "Ruhlaer Straße"
	(until 1927)
	L 1126 "Bahnhofstrasse"
3.9	Liebenstein-Schweina train station 342 m

The Steinbacher Bergwerksbahn was a narrow-gauge, approximately four-kilometer-long railway line between the Arminius mine in Atterode , the Fluor union in Steinbach and the Liebenstein - Schweina train station . With the construction of the railway from Bad Liebenstein-Schweina station to Steinbach (Meiningen district) , the route to the new station was shortened. Mainly tilting lorries were used.

history

When an old mine was reopened in 1911 by the Fluor union in Steinbach, a problem soon arose when it came to transporting the river and barite to the nearest Liebenstein-Schweina train station. In 1913 the railway line from Steinbach to the station was opened. A few years later, during the First World War , Krupp also began to reopen an old mine near Atterode, so that from 1917 there was also a need to transport the iron ore extracted from there .

Train from the turntable

For unknown reasons, they did not agree on a completely common route, so that the two routes only ran about 1.5 km together. When the extension of the Immelborn – Bad Liebenstein-Schweina railway line, which had been planned as early as 1920, could be carried out in 1926, a new loading station with a discharge ramp and transfer platform was built in Steinbach.

With the condition of the state railway track getting worse and worse, other ways of transporting ore were looked for. The ore from Atterode was now transported underground to Trusetal for ore processing, the Steinbacher Spat was transported by truck from 1969 until it was closed in 1990 . This enabled the mining railway to be shut down in 1969 and the state railway line in 1970. A diesel locomotive of the Babelsberg type Ns1 and a few meters of track were only available for internal shunting work in the Steinbacher Bergwerk .

annotation

The big uphill / downhill slope of 1:12 could only be mastered because the load was being driven downhill. If wood or coal was delivered to the mine, only two or three wagons could be taken. Furthermore, a train going downhill was manned by two or three brakes. The safety valves of the steam locomotives were tightened to the limit of what was permitted in order to be able to drive at maximum pressure. For this reason, there was almost no route use of the diesel locomotive, which theoretically had a higher performance, but could never prove this.

literature

Gunnar Möller, Gernot Malsch, Günter Paulik: Up the Hockelhans . Wachsenburgverlag, Arnstadt 2002, ISBN 3-935795-04-1 .