Zschornewitzer Kleinbahn

Burgkemnitz – Oranienbaum
Route number :	152 k
Course book range :	181a (1944)
Route length:	16.9 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Halle (Saale) 0.0 Burgkemnitz (formerly Bf) to Berlin Coal railway to Ferropolis – Oranienbaum from 1915 via Zschornewitz to the Zschornewitz power plant 3.5 Zschornewitz from 1940 new (longer) route 6.2 Golpa 7.4 Möhlau Coal railway from Burgkemnitz - Ferropolis 12.6 Jüdenberg to and from Dessau 16.9 Oranienbaum (Anh) to Wörlitz

The Zschornewitzer Kleinbahn GmbH was founded in 1918; Elektrowerke AG Zschornewitz , a subsidiary of the AEG Group, took over 53% of its shares, and the Province of Saxony another 27% . The seat of the railway administration was settled in Grube Golpa (Post Zschornewitz).

The 17-kilometer standard-gauge line branches off the Anhalter Bahn in Burgkemnitz and leads via Zschornewitz – Golpa – Großmöhlau to Oranienbaum .

Development until 1945

Old signal box near Jüdenberg

The line was created by connecting two mine railways: On January 8, 1895, Friedrich Albert-Baggerwerke Golpa-Jeßnitz put the line from Burgkemnitz to Golpa into operation from the south . Two years later, the connection from Oranienbaum to the Margarethe pit was established in the north. This line was acquired in 1908 by the Dessau-Wörlitzer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (DWE), which manufactured the missing link to Golpa. From October 1, 1917, there was also company passenger traffic. After the sale of this train to Elektrowerke AG Zschornewitz on June 21, 1918, the new company was founded. From April 1, 1919, it connected the state railway line Wittenberg – Bitterfeld and the Dessau – Wörlitz railway with passenger and freight transport as a public small railway. From October 15, 1920, the Anhaltische Landes-Eisenbahngemeinschaft ran the small railway for a few years , although only two kilometers of the line were in the state of Anhalt, but it ran the DWE. From 1928 the small railroad took over the management itself again. Later it was not connected to the small railroad department of the provincial administration in Merseburg, to which the majority of the small railways in the province of Saxony were connected. In 1939 the line between Zschornewitz and Golpa had to be relocated because of the opencast mine, the line was 2.19 km longer.

Timetable

The passenger traffic from Golpa to Oranienbaum was always very little; it was gradually reduced to just one pair of trains a day, which was also discontinued in 1932; on the other hand, the range from Burgkemnitz to Golpa remained considerably more extensive. In 1927 there were 36,857 passengers, in 1939 193,274 passengers were carried. The statistics for 1939 name five steam locomotives, a battery powered railcar with a sidecar , a pack wagon and eight freight cars, but no passenger car, as the number of vehicles .

In 1941 the passenger trains - nine on weekdays - ended in Zschornewitz, but some of them ran back to Golpa in 1944 and even to Großmöhlau in 1946/47. Since there was no regular freight service from here to Oranienbaum since 1938, this section was (temporarily) dismantled so that between 1942 and 1945 - despite the war-related shortage of fuel - a Golpa – Oranienbaum bus had to be operated.

Development since 1945

Play media file

Special trip from Oranienbaum (Anh) to Ferropolis , September 2016

After the end of the war, the railway was handed over to SAG für Brennstofindindustrie on March 22, 1946 , which it converted back into a mine connection railway in 1950, on which internal passenger traffic was served until July 1, 1955. In the meantime, in the summer of 1953, the BKW (brown coal works) Golpa had taken over the railway. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Lausitzer und Mitteldeutsche Bergbau-Verwaltungsgesellschaft (LMBV) became the new owner.

At the beginning of 1946 the section between Möhlau and Oranienbaum was broken off. At the end of 1946, the stretch between Burgkemnitz and Zschornewitz was given up for open-cast mining.

After the Burgkemnitz – Zschornewitz – Golpa – Jüdenberg line has now been dismantled, a line from Burgkemnitz (with a connection to the Anhalter Bahn ) to Graefenhainichen is used today. From the depot there, the line branches off on the one hand to Zschornewitz and Möhlau and on the other hand via Jüdenberg to Oranienbaum with a branch to Ferropolis.

On July 1, 1997 (?) The Anhaltische Bahn Gesellschaft mbH (ABG) took over the “Grubenbahn Gräfenhainichen”, which was initially operated by the Ferropolis Bergbau- und Erlebnisbahn eV (FBE) . ABG has also been the operator of the line since 2007. On June 1, 2008, the Oranienbaum – Ferropolis section was reopened after extensive repair work. On the first Sunday of every month from July to October, passenger services are offered from Wörlitz to Ferropolis (Ferropolisbahn). In Oranienbaum there is a connection to the Dessau-Wörlitzer Railway. The ABG wanted to hand over the mine railway to another railway infrastructure company by the end of 2010 . The Zörbiger Eisenbahn GmbH (ZEG) , so far the only interested party, upgraded the route network in the summer of 2010. However, for financial reasons, the previously agreed purchase did not take place. In September 2011 the Mitteldeutsche Eisenbahn Infrastrukturgesellschaft mbH (MEIG) took over the former southern coal railway between Burgkemnitz and Möhlau. However, this company had to file for bankruptcy after just five months.

In Ferropolis there was an FBE mine railway museum with vehicles that were used, among other things, in the former Golpa-Nord opencast mine . However, the vehicles were removed or scrapped in early 2010.

After ELS Eisenbahn Logistik und Service GmbH took over the infrastructure and made the route network ready for operation, two operations in Zschornewitz and Möhlau have again been served by rail freight traffic via the connection to the DB network in Burgkemnitz since the end of October 2013.

literature

• Wolfgang List, Hans Röper, Gerhard Zieglgänsberger: Archive of German Small and Private Railways - Saxony-Anhalt. Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-613-71087-0 .
• Volker Anton, Günther Fiebig: The Zschornewitzer Kleinbahn GmbH. German Model Railway Association of the GDR, Dessau 1987.
• Jörg Petzold: Zschornewitzer Kleinbahn . In: The Museum Railway . No. 1 , 2019, ISSN  0936-4609 , p. 19-23 .

Web links

• Website on the history of Zschornewitzer Kleinbahn GmbH ( Memento from September 28, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
• Website of the Dessau – Wörlitz Railway

Individual evidence

1. ^ DWE 2010 timetable. Retrieved March 9, 2011 . 
2. ↑ See submission of a railway infrastructure according to § 11 AEG. Anhaltische Bahn Gesellschaft mbH, November 9, 2009, accessed on January 2, 2011 (with network map). 
3. ↑ Cf. Dirk Skrzypczak: Zörbiger Railway has old route repaired. Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, July 1, 2010, accessed January 2, 2011 . 
4. ↑ Cf. Dirk Skrzypczak: Only the ghost train is still rolling. Mitteldeutsche Zeitung, November 22, 2010, accessed on January 2, 2011 . 
5. ↑ See news. (No longer available online.) Mitteldeutsche Eisenbahn Infrastrukturgesellschaft mbH, September 2011, formerly in the original ; Retrieved January 7, 2012 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
6. ↑ See route network. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Mitteldeutsche Eisenbahn Infrastrukturgesellschaft mbH, September 2011, formerly in the original ; Retrieved January 7, 2012 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
7. ↑ Insolvencies - Dessau District Court. February 8, 2012, accessed February 17, 2012 . 
8. ↑ Pictures of the former Ferropolis mine railway museum. Retrieved March 9, 2011 . 
9. ↑ Pictures of the removal of the vehicles. (No longer available online.) Freie Bergbau- und Erlebnisbahn eV, 2010, archived from the original on March 4, 2016 ; Retrieved September 18, 2010 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
10. ^ Infrastructure overview Eisenbahn Logistik und Service GmbH. (PDF; 174 kB) ELS Eisenbahn Logistik und Service GmbH, 2013, accessed on October 30, 2013 . 
11. ^ Ingo Schuetze Bergmann: The Zschornewitzer Kleinbahn GmbH, current news. October 23, 2013, archived from the original on October 30, 2013 ; Retrieved October 30, 2013 .