The Upper Rhine Railway Company (Oberrheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft Aktiengesellschaft Mannheim; OEG, originally also OEG AG, later MVV OEG AG), was a railway infrastructure company and transport company based in Mannheim, Germany.
Its principal business was the operation of a metre-gauge railway serving Mannheim, Heidelberg and Weinheim. The company was merged with MVV Verkehr AG (the Mannheim municipal transport company) on 16 March 2010, and its network is now served by Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr.
Until December 2009, the OEG also operated municipal buses in Weinheim, some bus routes in the southeast of Mannheim and several other bus routes in the vicinity of Schriesheim and Ladenburg.
History
After the death of Hermann Bachstein in 1908, the Rhenish industrialist Hugo Stinnes took over the majority of SEG in 1909 with the aim of taking control of the electric tramways of the Ruhr and other major cities as part of the RWE (Rheinisch-Westfälisches Elektrizitätswerk AG) power company so that they could be connected to the electric grid of western Germany. In order to focus on electric trams, a few railways were spun off the SEG and transferred to newly established companies.
In order to carry out the electrification of the line and to allow the expansion of its tram network, the city of Mannheim in cooperation with the SEG, which had acquired the Mannheim-Weinheim-Heidelberg-Mannheim railway, founded the Oberrheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft AG (OEG) in 1911. In order to prevent domination by the RWE, the city of Mannheim held a majority of the shares of the company. The Schwetzingen–Ketsch Tramway (Straßenbahn Schwetzingen–Ketsch) and two power plants in Ladenburg and Rheinau were acquired by the OEG. 51% of the share capital was held by the city of Mannheim and 26% by the SEG. The rest was accounted for by three other shareholders. The OEG took over the operation of the lines on 1 April 1911.
To mitigate financial problems after the First World War, the city of Mannheim took over the railways from the OEG, while the company (with retained power plants and electric distribution) remained in the hands of Stinnes and was renamed Kraftwerke Rheinau.
The now independent company of Oberrheinische Eisenbahngesellschaft was established by the cities of Mannheim, Heidelberg, Weinheim, Viernheim and the Rhein-Haardtbahn GmbH (Rhine-Haardt Railway, builder of the Bad Dürkheim–Ludwigshafen-Oggersheim railway). The city of Mannheim contributed the railway of the former OEG to the new company.
The OEG tram line from Neckarau to Rheinau (then called Rhenaniastraße) was opened in 1913. At the time of the line's construction, Rheinau was not yet incorporated in Mannheim and was therefore in the jurisdiction of the OEG according to the existing cooperation agreements. This changed with its incorporation in Mannheim in 1913, so the line was then used by the city's tramway and it passed into its possession in 1921.
In 1914, the first section of the Mannheim–Feudenheim–Ilvesheim–Ladenburg–Schriesheim line was opened to Feudenheim for temporary freight traffic. In addition, the line was operated for two months by the city's tram services, prior to the commencement of OEG operations. Land on the adjacent section had been purchased and works had commenced (including on bridges) on the remaining route, but work had to be abandoned because of the First World War. Since the construction could not be completed even after the war for economic reasons, the OEG began operating its first bus line on the route in 1925. It was intended to be temporary, awaiting the finishing of the line, but it has continued to this day. The freight traffic to Freudenheim was abandoned along with the line in the late 1920s.
Like most transport companies in Germany, the OEG had a huge increase in ridership after the war to cope with, especially in 1945 when only half of its fleet was available. In 1947 patronage reached a peak of 25.6 million passengers. One of the reasons for the increase was the phenomenon of so-called "foraging trips", when cheap fares encouraged people to barter for food with farmers. Ridership returned to normal after the currency reform of 1948.
After overcoming the post-war difficulties, the OEG had to deal with incipient mass motorisation. Its goal was to become faster and more convenient in order to hang on to patronage. A first step was the purchase of four open coaches, together with trailer carriages from Waggonfabrik Fuchs.
About 1960, it began improving the technical safety of level crossings with flashing lights, which were later augmented with half-barriers. In 1964, the OEG operated 142 km of tracks and carried more than 50,000 passengers daily.
Train radio was introduced in 1976.
The funding of the OEG's losses were revised in 1996. Mannheim now funds 58.2%, Rhein-Neckar-Kreis 30%, Heidelberg 7.2% and Viernheim 4.6% of the losses occurring every year. Until then, the city of Heidelberg had paid nothing at all.
In addition, in 1996, Weinheimer Busunternehmen GmbH (Weinheim Bus Company, WEBU) was established, owned by Stadtwerke Weinheim GmbH (the Weinheim municipal utility, 71.6%) and OEG (28.4%), that has since managed Weinheim city buses. OEG continued to operate bus services for WEBU until 31 December 2009.
In 2000, MVV GmbH acquired a 94.6% share of the OEG from the city of Mannheim and the company was renamed MVV OEG AG. 5.18% remains directly owned by the city of Mannheim, 0.2% by the City of Heidelberg and 0.02% by the City of Weinheim. Since 2002, the OEG network has been operated together with the Mannheim trams of MVV Verkehr AG.
Rhine-Neckar Transport (Rhein-Neckar-Verkehr GmbH, RNV), which is jointly owned by MVV OEG AG, MVV Verkehr AG, Straßenbahn Heidelberg, Verkehrsbetriebe Ludwigshafen and Rhein-Haardtbahn, was founded on 1 October 2004 and it has carried out joint operations since 1 March 2005. The infrastructure and the concessions remain with the OEG, but the rolling stock were transferred to RNV and are considered to form part of the capital contribution to RNV, which now provides transport services on behalf of the OEG. Since 2005, responsibility for funding losses incurred has been allocated to the respective districts of Mannheim, Heidelberg, Viernheim and the Rhein-Neckar-Kreis in proportion to net-kilometres operated. The council of the city of Mannheim decided to merge MVV OEG AG and MVV Verkehr AG in 2009. After acquiring the remaining 0.22% of shares from Heidelberg and Weinheim, Mannheim now holds 100% of the shares. The merger was finalised on 16 March 2010 with the deletion of MVV OEG AG from the share company register. As a next step, MVV Verkehr AG became a limited liability company on 31 March 2011. The company was renamed MV Mannheimer Verkehr GmbH on 2 January 2018.
Operated routes
The Upper Rhine Railway Company operated the following routes: Mannheim–Weinheim railway Weinheim–Heidelberg railway Mannheim Kurpfalzbrücke–Edingen–Heidelberg railway Mannheim-Käfertal–Heddesheim railway Mannheim-Seckenheim–Neckarhausen–Edingen (Baden) railway Heidelberg-Güterbahnhof OEG–Dossenheim–Schriesheim railway
Rolling stock Steam era
Trains were operated on the initially non-electrified lines using small two-axle steam locomotives (some disguised as tram engines) hauling rail carriages. Steam locomotives 56 and 102 are now part of the collection of the Technoseum Mannheim, although only locomotive 56 is publicly exhibited. Locomotive 101 ended up after several intermediate points at the Selfkantbahn, where it is operated as locomotive MEG 101.
Furthermore, some passenger cars and numerous freight wagons have been preserved at, for example, DEV Bruchhausen-Vilsen, the Selfkantbahn, the Märkische Museum Railway at Plettenberg, the Albbähnle (Amstetten–Oppingen) and the Härtsfeld-Museumsbahn in Neresheim.
The OEG operated two locomotives similar to the T 3, locomotives 341 and 342, on the standard gauge line to Schriesheim.
Diesel locomotives The OEG procured three diesel locomotives for metre gauge (designated as 01 to 03) and a diesel locomotive for standard gauge (no. 04) from the manufacturer Gmeinder to replace steam locomotives from 1953. The two-axle locomotives were technically similar to the Köf II of DB, but were constructed differently. Until the electrification of the Weinheim–Schriesheim section, the metre-gauge locomotives also hauled passenger trains. Later, like their standard-gauge sister locomotive, they were only used for freight and construction traffic. Another diesel locomotive was put into service to replace the last steam locomotive in 1967 as no. 05, which technically and visually had many similarities with a Köf III. With the closing of the standard-gauge freight line in 1973, the first diesel locomotives, 04 and 05, were sold. With the decline in freight traffic and the loss of general freight (small consignments) to trucks, it could later do without the two metre-gauge locomotives and it sold locomotive 01 to Essener Verkehrs-AG (the Essen municipal transport company—now part of Ruhrbahn—which renumbered it 601) and the locomotive 03 to the Rhein-Haardtbahn (renumbered V01). Locomotive 02 was renumbered 350 with the introduction of engineering vehicle numbers in the early 1990s. It is still in service today and is sometimes used as an engineering vehicle or an auxiliary locomotive.
Electric shunting locomotive The OEG acquired a small two-axle locomotive with a box body, no. 50, from the Nederlandsche Buurtspoorweg-Maatschappij in 1952. The previous owner had converted the locomotive from a steam tram engine, but it had become redundant as a result of the closure of the tramway between Utrecht and Zeist in 1949. The overall condition of the locomotive turned out to be so bad that the OED had to scrap and rebuild it. Unly the AEG engines, the scrapped locomotive's maximum current switch and wheelsets could be reused in the rebuild. The locomotive's remaining electrical equipment came from spare parts taken from "half trains" (Halbzüge). The locomotive was used for shunting in the main workshop and later in Käfertal depot and was never used in route service. It had the company number of 103 (following the numbers of the steam locomotives), later 05 (following the numbers of the diesel locomotives) and was redesignated as number 06 after the acquisition of diesel locomotive 05. With the introduction of the engineering vehicle numbers, it was given the company number 351. It has now been painted back to the original grey colour and is still operational.
First electric railcar For the start of electrical operations on the Mannheim–Weinheim line in 1914, the OEG procured electric motor coaches in Heidelberg (number 1 to 18) from Waggonfabrik Fuchs plus 27 tram-like two-axle trailer cars (no. 201 to 227). They were used in trains of up to eight passenger cars. Towards the end of the 1950s, the bodies of railcars 4 and 17 were rebuilt in the form of the then current vehicles by Waggonfabrik Rastatt, but leaving the electrical equipment largely unchanged. The conversions were not successful and were therefore discontinued. Operations of the first series of railcars ended with the introduction of articulated vehicles in the 1960s. Individual cars were converted into engineering vehicles. TW 2 and Tw 16 (which has been converted to an auxiliary car) are still available in a poor condition.
Half trains