Wasgauwaldbahn
| Bundenthal – Ludwigswinkel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Course book range : | - | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 14.5 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 600 mm ( narrow gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Wasgauwaldbahn , also called Wasgenwaldbahn or Kleinbahn Bundenthal – Ludwigswinkel , was a 14.5 kilometer long narrow-gauge railway in Rhineland-Palatinate . It led from the Bundenthal - Rumbach (formerly Bundenthal) station to Ludwigswinkel and existed from 1921 to 1930. Originally, the line was built as an army field railway for the French military, which maintained a camp in Ludwigswinkel until 1930 in connection with the Allied occupation of the Rhineland . In Bundenthal-Rumbach there was a connection to the standard gauge Wieslauterbahn , which also ended there starting from Hinterweidenthal.
From 1924 there was also passenger traffic on the route . The sparsely populated area as well as the lack of a legal obligation to operate led to the closure and subsequent dismantling of the line as early as 1930, immediately after the French withdrew from Ludwigswinkel . When the biosphere house was built , rails were used as railings.
history
prehistory
Even before the First World War there had been efforts in the communities of Schönau , Fischbach and Ludwigswinkel along the Sauer , which is called Saarbach in its upper reaches, aimed at a rail connection. With sarcasm, the residents of these places pointed out that Kaltenbach , Bergzabern , Weißenburg and Bitsch were their train stations. The traffic conditions only improved when the so-called Wieslauterbahn from Hinterweidenthal to Bundenthal was opened in 1911 . Nevertheless, the nearest station at the end point in Bundenthal was still around ten kilometers from the places on the Sauer. One resident mockingly stated in this context:
“Plans have been made for a long time to bring the railway into the Sauer Valley as well. The government, the forum and mayor's offices held meetings from time to time. Everyone spoke of the future railway, praising them with many beautiful speeches, but it never came. It didn't go over the mountains, too little steam, neither through the mountains, too little money "
With the outbreak of the First World War, efforts to build a railway line came to a standstill.
Construction and opening
After the First World War, the Prussian military training area in the city of Bitche (formerly Bitsch ), now ceded to France, was used by the French military. Since this was not big enough for the planned maneuvers, plans arose for an extension to the north and east. Although the Palatinate, which then belonged to Bavaria , was occupied by the French, the Bavarian forest administration refused. As a reparation payment, the German Reich had to build a troop camp and several shooting ranges as an extension of the base in Bitche in the small village of Ludwigswinkel in 1921 to reactivate the military training area there. Two divisions were stationed there: an infantry regiment and an artillery division.
In order to supply the troops in the Ludwigswinkel camp, the French occupation demanded as early as 1920 that a railway line be built to transport building materials and supplies from Bundenthal to the camp. France demanded the track gauge of 600 millimeters, which had been tried and tested in the war. According to the planning of the Ludwigshafen Railway Directorate, however, the railway should be designed as a full-gauge railway. The immediate continuation of the Wieslauterbahn was considered, not least to improve the traffic infrastructure of the Sauertal communities. Corresponding efforts had already been made before the First World War. A draft by the Ludwigshafen Railway Directorate provided for the line to run via Niederschlettenbach , Nothweiler , Schönau and Fischbach. After those responsible had firmly assumed that the railway would be built in standard gauge, the Reich government in Berlin only allowed a narrow-gauge small railway, as the French side had striven for, for reasons of cost.
The final route led via Rumbach and the watershed between Wieslauter and Saarbach past the Rumbacher Höhe. If possible, it was created within valleys. The actual construction of the line began in the spring of 1921, after initial preparatory work a year earlier. Only material from the Heeresfeldbahn from the First World War was used . The superstructure consisted of a ballast bed.
When the shell of the railway line was almost finished, a dam slide occurred near Rumbach. Therefore, the slope there was fortified with fascines and stone work. The route was opened in 1921. The railway was owned by the Reichs Vermögensverwaltung Koblenz, and the operator was the Reichs Vermögensstelle Landau.
Operation and shutdown
After it was initially planned to supply the French troops, the French military administration opened the railway for public passenger and freight traffic from 1924. In 1925 it was planned as a job creation measure to extend the railway line to Pirmasens .
In 1927, three mixed trains and four pairs of trains ran from Monday to Friday , exclusively for passenger traffic. All passenger trains only carried the third and fourth carriage classes .
On June 30, 1930, the French military had to vacate the military training area , which deprived the railway line of its livelihood. A year earlier, the military stopped paying the operating costs for the route. Since the railway line did not cover its costs due to the low demand, the Reich Ministry of Transport considered it dispensable. At the end of August of the same year, the ministry ordered the cessation of operations. The local authorities refused to maintain operations at their own expense. Since there was no interested party to take over the line, it was closed on October 31, 1930.
Parts of the superstructure and the rolling stock were sold to Switzerland. The vehicles were scrapped there.
Route description
The route ran in the southern Palatinate Forest , the German part of the Wasgau , which gave the route its name. It began in the Bundenthal (-Rumbach) train station right next to the Wieslauterbahn railway system and headed west. South of Rumbach there was a bigger slope; then it ran with a greater gradient within the Rumbachtal. She left this temporarily in order to enter the neighboring Bramtal, on the eastern slope of which she passed. At Nothweiler there was a curve of 180 degrees, after which the railway line passed on the opposite bank of the brook there. Then another slope had to be mastered and the route reached the Saarbach and Wieslauter watershed . From there, the route ran again in the Rumbachtal. From the Schönau – Brettelhof stop, it roughly followed the course of the Saarbach and ran parallel to the road via Fischbach and Ludwigswinkel. The Nothweiler and Schönau – Brettelhof stops on the way were up to three kilometers away from the settlement areas of the communities concerned. The entire length of the railway line was in what is now the district of Southwest Palatinate .
In Bundenthal-Rumbach station, the track systems and the depot of the narrow-gauge railway were to the west of those of the Reichsbahn. There was a locomotive shed at the end of the line in Ludwigswinkel. The subway stops Rumbach, Wasserscheide, Schönau – Brettelhof, Fischbach Gbf, Saarbachhammer and Ludwigswinkel Ort had crossing and loading tracks.
Vehicle use
Initially, six four-axle tank locomotives drove on the route . Two more three-axle locomotives were later available.
Small dump trucks and at least 30 brigade cars were used for military transport; the latter were open freight cars. There was also a closed freight car and about a dozen turntable wagons for transporting wood.
Four-axle passenger cars were used to transport the troops. For the civil traffic, which opened in 1924, several passenger cars were purchased from the meter-gauge state forest railway Ruhpolding – Reit im Winkl , which had to be converted to a gauge of 600 millimeters beforehand. Many had stove heating and kerosene lighting. There were also two baggage vehicles on the railway line.
The route today
The railway line can still be clearly identified today, especially in the season with little vegetation. A railway cycle path was laid out in sections . A timetable from 1927 has been preserved, which was on view in August 2010 in a special exhibition of the instruments in Nothweiler . In Fischbach bei Dahn, the street Am Bahndamm reminds of the route within the community. The entrance building of Rumbach is kept in the half-timbered style; the locomotive shed in Ludwigswinkel is also still there. The latter serves as a garage for trucks .
literature
- Reiner Schedler: Secondary and narrow-gauge railways in Germany then and now . In: Wolf-Dietger Machel (Hrsg.): Branch and narrow-gauge railways in Germany (then & now) (from Rügen to Rosenheim, from Aachen to Zwickau) . GeraNova magazine publisher, 1998.
- Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways . Eisenbahn-Kurier Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1987, ISBN 3-88255-651-X .
- Karl Unold: The French military training area Ludwigswinkel and the Wasgenwaldbahn. When recruits from Morocco and Algeria drilled in the Wasgau 60 years ago. In: home calendar. The Pirmasenser u. Zweibrücker Land. 1982 ( online [accessed August 9, 2015]).
Web links
- Information about the route ( Memento from March 11, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
- Railway cycle path Fischbach - Bundenthal (former Wasgenwaldbahn)