Wüstewaltersdorfer Kleinbahn

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Hausdorf-Wüstewaltersdorf
Course book range : 130g (1939)
Route length: 4.72 km
Gauge : 1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Maximum slope : 33.33  ‰
Legend
   
 from Schweidnitz
   
 0.000 Hausdorf (Kr Waldenburg) 390 m
   
 to [Bad] Charlottenbrunn
   
 2.118 New court 457 m
   
 3.385 Nieder Wüstewaltersdorf 478 m
   
 4,690 Wüstewaltersdorf 498 m

The Wüstewaltersdorfer Kleinbahn was a standard gauge small railway in Silesia .

It connected the 2,800-inhabitant community of Wüstewaltersdorf in the Owl Mountains with the Hausdorf train station on the state railway line Breslau - Schweidnitz - Bad Charlottenbrunn in the Weistritz valley . The 4.7 km long route in the south-east of the Silesian district of Waldenburg was electrified with direct current of 1000 volts.

history

Wüstewaltersdorfer Kleinbahn AG was founded on September 11, 1912. Its shareholders were the Prussian state, the Waldenburg district and the Wüstewaltersdorf community, as well as some private traders, mainly from the local textile industry. The construction and operation was transferred to the Continentalen Eisenbahn-Bau- und Betriebs-Gesellschaft .

The company opened on June 22, 1914. An electric locomotive, an electric railcar, two passenger cars and one freight car were available for this. AEG supplied the locomotives .

The first few years brought financial losses as a result of the First World War and the resulting restricted travel. However, profits began to be made from the mid-1920s. In 1928 106,868 passengers were carried, in 1933 only 73,467 passengers, in 1938 again 101,483 passengers, in 1942 finally 177,003 passengers. In 1928, 21,800 t were transported in freight traffic, and around 15,000 t annually in the 1930s.

In 1924 the management of the AG for Railway Construction and Operation , the legal successor of the Continentalen, passed into their own hands. The management lay with employees of the weaving mill Websky, Hartmann & Wiesen.

From the beginning, nine to ten pairs of passenger trains ran daily; this scope was maintained until the Second World War. In addition, the Deutsche Reichsbahn ran special trains for day trippers from Breslau and other Silesian cities to Wüstewaltersdorf, which was the starting point for hikes to the Hohen Eule . These trains were hauled by steam locomotives. The summer timetable from 1944 still lists eight connections on weekdays and seven on Sundays. An omnibus traveled the parallel bus line established on September 25, 1933.

From May 7, 1945 traffic was idle, the commissioning by the Polish State Railways took some time, in summer 1946 the traffic was still idle. Two German employees had to remain on site until 1947, while the other German employees were expelled. Since the railway was operated privately, it was spared the dismantling of the electrical equipment in contrast to the electric railway operation of the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1945. After the electrical systems failed more frequently after 1955, electrical operations ceased on October 4, 1959. Freight traffic was then handled with type Ty2 steam locomotives . Passenger traffic was also resumed on a trial basis in 1961, but ceased again after a short time. In the winter of 1973/74 the line between Sedzimierz (Neugericht) and Walim (Wüstewaltersdorf) was closed. The sawmill in Sedzimierz was operated until the beginning of 1990, after which the line was dismantled.

The AEG electric locomotive is still preserved; it was in the Warsaw Railway Museum until 2016 .

literature

  • Siegfried Bufe: Railways in Silesia. Bufe-Fachbuch-Verlag, Egglham et al. 1989, ISBN 3-922138-37-3 ( East German Railway History 4).
  • Jörg Petzold, Axel Reuther: Small Railway Anniversaries 2014 - Part 2 . In: The Museum Railway . No. 2 , 2014, ISSN  0936-4609 , p. 9-14 .

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