Vacha – Hilders railway line

Vacha – Hilders
Route number (DB) :	3815 (Philippsthal – Tann) 3821 (Tann – Aura)
Course book section (DB) :	190s Vacha – Tann (1944) 190z Tann – Hilders (1944) 192h Hilders – Tann (1970)
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Bad Salzungen 16.30 Vacha 230  m after Gerstungen to Unterbreizbach (from 1952) 17.06 Ox 18.62 State border Thuringia / Hesse 19.04 Philippsthal South 235  m von Heimboldshausen (from 2000) 20.91 State border Hesse / Thuringia 22.03 Unterbreizbach 235  m by Vacha (from 1952) 22.30 Ulster 25.70 Horse village (Rhön) 26.43 State border Thuringia / Hesse 26.84 State border Hesse / Thuringia 27.20 State border Thuringia / Hesse ("Ulstersack") 28.20 State border Hesse / Thuringia 28.55 0.00 Wenigentaft-Mansbach 250  m to Oechsen Taffeta to Hünfeld 1.92 Buttlar 4.27 Borsch 4.70 Ulster 6.11 Geisa 280  m 8.63 Schleid (Rhön) 9.00 Kohlbach 10.27 Motzlar (Rhön) 308  m 12.30 State border Thuringia / Hesse 13.10 Günthers 15.84 former border RBD Erfurt / Frankfurt (M) 16.19 37.10 Tann (Rhön) 36.80 Ulster 33.70 Habel - Lahrbach 30.10 Neuschwambach from Fulda 28.50 Aura ( Abzw ) 27.20 Hilders to desert saxony

The Vacha – Hilders line , also known as the Ulstertal Railway , was a branch line in Thuringia and Hesse , which is now almost completely shut down and dismantled. It ran from Vacha station in the Ulster valley via Philippsthal , Unterbreizbach , Buttlar , Geisa and Tann (Rhön) to Hilders , where there was a connection to the Götzenhof – Wüstensachsen railway line at Hilders station .

course

The route began in Vacha on the Werra Valley Railway and led via Wenigentaft - Mansbach , Geisa and Tann (Rhön) to Hilders in the Rhön , changing several times between Thuringia and Hesse.

history

Reception building of the former Pferdsdorf / Rhön train station

Reception building of the former Wenigentaft-Mansbach train station

The Ulstertal Railway was opened in three sections: between Hilders and Tann on June 1, 1891, between Vacha and Geisa on August 1, 1906. The gap between the two branch lines connecting the Geisa and Tann stations was opened on October 1, 1909. The lines to Hünfeld and Oechsen branched off at Wenigentaft-Mansbach station . In 1916 the line was extended to Wüstensachsen (see Götzenhof – Wüstensachsen railway )

As a result of the division of Germany , the line at the zone border between Motzlar and Günthers was interrupted in July 1945 . On the section Vacha - Wenigentaft - Mansbach - Motzlar, operations were initially maintained to a limited extent; agreements were made with the American occupation forces for the crossing of the Hessian sections of the line at Philippsthal and between Pferdsdorf / Rhön and Wenigentaft. However, the section near Philippsthal quickly became a focus of escape from the Soviet occupation zone and the GDR , so that passenger traffic between Vacha and Unterbreizbach was severely restricted and between Unterbreizbach and Motzlar passenger traffic was practiced as island traffic.

The worsening east-west conflict also led to the interruption of the Vacha – Unterbreizbach line in the area of ​​Philippsthal Süd on July 1, 1952. This was a reaction to the closure of the border crossing of the Vacha-Gerstungen railway line between Widdershausen and Dankmarshausen, which was used by the potash works on the western side to transport their raw materials. This meant that the Unterbreizbach potash plant, which was important for the GDR, was cut off from rail traffic and therefore from sales of its production, and the GDR felt compelled to build a 5.2-kilometer bypass route exclusively on its territory from September 1, 1952 to November 30, 1952 ( see railway line Bad Salzungen – Unterbreizbach # border bypass route to Unterbreizbach ).

Passenger traffic between Unterbreizbach and Motzlar, which crossed the state and national borders several times between Pferdsdorf / Rhön and Wenigentaft-Mansbach station (so-called "Ulstersack"), ended on July 1, 1952 for the same reason and was switched to rail replacement traffic. Operations officially ceased on October 5, 1952. In the late summer of 1953, all of the tracks and signaling systems on the Unterbreizbach-Motzlar section and the line to Niederoechsen in Thuringia were dismantled and transported to the Soviet Union as part of the reparation payments . Only in Ulstersack remained track remnants on the Hessian side until the 2000s. The depot of Kraftverkehr Bad Salzungen on the southern outskirts of Vacha was built in 1957-61 to handle passenger traffic to and from Unterbreizbach and Geisa with omnibuses .

On the remaining part of the Ulstertal Railway on the Hessian side between Hilders and Günthers, there was less and less passenger traffic, which was finally stopped on May 28, 1961. The line, which was last used only for occasional freight transport tasks and the parking of damaged freight wagons, was completely closed on May 1, 1977, immediately followed by the dismantling of the tracks.

On January 31, 2000, Kali und Salz opened a connecting railway between Heimboldshausen and Unterbreizbach - partly on the old route of the Ulstertal Railway. This revived old plans for a connecting curve from Heimboldshausen, which began in the 1930s but was never completed.

Today the Ulster Cycle Path runs on and along large parts of the Ulster Valley Railway .

literature

• Michael Knauf, Markus Schmidt: 100 years of the Ulstertal Railway (= contributions to the history of the city of Vacha. Vol. 2). Books on Demand, Norderstedt 2006, ISBN 3-8334-6444-5
• Michael Knauf, Markus Schmidt: The history of the Ulstertalbahn 1981-1996; Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2018, ISBN 978-395-966-295-6

Web links

Commons : Ulstertalbahn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Forgotten paths
• Course book 1944: 190s Vacha – Tann
• Course book 1944: 190z Hilders – Tann

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
2. ↑ Michael Knauf, Markus Schmidt: The history of the Ulstertalbahn 1981-1996 Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2018, ISBN 978-395-966-295-6 , page 100ff.
3. ↑ Michael Knauf, Markus Schmidt: The history of the Ulstertalbahn 1981-1996 Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2018, ISBN 978-395-966-295-6 , page 100ff.
4. ↑ Michael Knauf, Markus Schmidt: The history of the Ulstertalbahn 1981-1996 Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2018, ISBN 978-395-966-295-6 , page 127
5. ↑ Michael Knauf / Eugen Rohm: The history of VEB Kraftverkehr Bad Salzungen - Headquarters Vacha - 1952–1990 , Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2009, ISBN 978-3-86777-113-9 , page 4ff.
6. ↑ Michael Knauf, Markus Schmidt: The history of the Ulstertal Railway 1981-1996; Verlag Rockstuhl, Bad Langensalza 2018, ISBN 978-395-966-295-6 , pages 135, 143