The Wieslauterbahn, also called Wasgaubahn, Wieslautertalbahn or Lauterbahn, is a branch line in Rhineland-Palatinate. It branches off from the Landau-Rohrbach line at Hinterweidenthal Ost station and runs via Dahn to Bundenthal-Rumbach. It gained its greatest significance in excursion traffic.
The line was opened in 1911 as one of the last within the Palatinate. In 1966, in response to competing private transport, passenger services were discontinued, with the exception of the "Bundenthaler" excursion train starting in Ludwigshafen. This train was terminated in 1976. Freight services continued until 1995. In 1997, passenger services were reintroduced on Sundays and public holidays, the continuation of which was temporarily at risk after the turn of the millennium, but has since been secured for the medium term. In the following years, the service was extended to Wednesdays and Saturdays. Residents of the region repeatedly resisted plans to close the line for decades, thus helping to preserve it.
History
First initiatives (1862–1870)
The first plans for the construction of a railway through the Wasgau region and its Dahner Felsenland section existed as early as 1862. The line was to run from Zweibrücken via Pirmasens, , Dahn and Bergzabern and join the Palatinate Maximilian Railway, which opened in 1855, at Winden. The main argument was initially the very productive timber transportation in the area.
Together with the full length of the Winden-Karlsruhe railway, which opened in 1865, it was intended to act as part of a further route for transporting coal from the Saar region. An additional reason for building a line through the Wasgau was the tourism potential seen at the time. However, the planned railway line was in competition with the planned Südpfalzbahn Landau-Zweibrücken, which was to run further north along the Queich and Rodalb rivers via Annweiler. As the construction of a Wasgau line in an east-west direction would have proved difficult due to the complicated topography, only the Southern Palatinate line was initially considered, which was opened in 1874 and 1875. Only the Winden-Bad Bergzabern line, which opened in 1870, emerged from the project to build a railway across the Wasgau.
Further plans (1870–1900)
After the Franco-Prussian War, neighboring Alsace-Lorraine fell to the newly founded German Empire. As a direct result, the Alsatian town of Weißenburg (formerly Wissembourg) made efforts to build a route along the Wieslauter via Dahn and Selz to Rastatt to serve international traffic. A corresponding committee was formed in 1873. In the same year, another committee was formed in Dahn to plan a line along the Wieslauter. At the same time, the management of the Palatinate Railways presented plans for a line from Hinterweidenthal to Bergzabern, which was to run mainly along the Wieslauter. A connection to Weißenburg in the form of a branch line was included from the outset. Although the Bavarian government provided an interest guarantee, the economic situation in the 1870s prevented these plans from being implemented.
It was not until the 1890s that efforts to provide the region with a rail connection were revived. Ludwig Foohs, the Dahner Rentamtmann, in particular, campaigned vehemently for a rail connection to his home town. However, there were again different ideas about the actual route. Bergzabern wanted the branch line starting in Winden to be extended to Dahn, while the latter pushed for a line to Weißenburg. There were also plans for a connection from Bergzabern via Schönau to Saarburg, which would serve supra-regional traffic. In 1899, the Bavarian side began concrete planning for a connection between Pirmasens-Lemberg-Dahn-Weißenburg. After it turned out that the financial outlay of 7.5 million marks for such a line would be too expensive, the decision was made in favor of a much cheaper branch line via Hinterweidenthal to Bundenthal, which was to branch off from the Südpfalzbahn Landau-Zweibrücken.
Approval, construction and opening
The project was approved by law in 1904. The state subsidy amounted to a total of 1,699,700 marks in accordance with the "Treatment of existing vicinal railways and the construction of secondary railways". The detailed project planning was completed towards the end of 1907. Negotiations then took place to acquire the necessary land. The line was originally scheduled to open at the beginning of 1909. Construction of the line did not actually begin until that year. The nationalization of the Palatinate railway network, which had already been planned in 1905 but did not take place until 1 January 1909, also delayed the construction of the railway. The new branch station Kaltenbach Ost was built on the Südpfalzbahn between the Hauenstein and Hinterweidenthal-Kaltenbach stops especially for the new railway line. Hinterweidenthal-Kaltenbach station was given the new name Kaltenbach. As neither the Kaltenbach station nor the new station was conveniently close to the settlement area of Hinterweidenthal, the municipality was given a station on the branch line in the immediate vicinity of the town. Further stations were built in Dahn, Reichenbach, Bruchweiler and Bundenthal.
The line was opened on 1 December 1911. The first train headed for Bundenthal with a class T 4.I steam locomotive and was decorated with blue and white flags. The opening day was very popular with the public at all stations. The line was initially operated by the Royal Bavarian State Railways, which had owned the entire Palatinate rail network for almost three years.
First years (1911–1920)
The opening of the Wieslauterbahn gave a boost to tourism in the region. Just a few years after the opening of the line, an excursion train from Landau to Bundenthal-Rumbach ran every Sunday on the initiative of the Palatinate Forest Association. Such a train had already existed from 1906, but in the early years the destination was Pirmasens.
The towns of Bergzabern and Weißenburg continued to hope that the railway line would be extended eastwards from Bundenthal. The government in Bavaria had already declared its willingness to build the extension to Weißenburg on Palatinate territory in 1910, provided that in return the Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine went along with the planned construction of a Kaiserslautern-Pirmasens-Trulben-Eppenbrunn-Bitsch main line. In April 1914, everything initially pointed to the line being linked through to Weissenburg in Alsace. However, the outbreak of the First World War four months later prevented the construction of this connection. As Weißenburg (French: Wissembourg), together with the rest of Alsace, became part of France again after the end of the war, the corresponding plans finally came to a standstill.
In the period that followed, initiatives were formed to continue the line southwards along the Sûre, in particular to connect the villages of Schönau, Fischbach and Ludwigswinkel, which had previously remained isolated, to the rail network.
After the First World War, the military occupation of the areas on the left bank of the Rhine by Allied troops began in 1919. From then on, the catchment area of the Wieslauterbahn was in the French-occupied zone. Rail operations initially remained in the hands of the Bavarian State Railways.
Development under the German Reichsbahn (1920–1945)
On 1 April 1920 the line became the property of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. In 1922, the line was incorporated into the newly founded Reichsbahndirektion Ludwigshafen. After the start of the Ruhr War, the French military took over the operation of the railways in the occupied territories at the beginning of 1923. This government operation also affected the branch line in the Wieslautertal and lasted until 15 November 1924.
At the instigation of the French military, which operated a camp in Ludwigswinkel as part of the Allied occupation of the Rhineland, the short-lived Wasgauwaldbahn, which began in Bundenthal, was built from 1920. The original plan was to build it in standard gauge as a continuation of the Wieslauterbahn via Niederschlettenbach-Nothweiler-Schönau-Fischbach; the Reichsschatzministerium only allowed a narrow-gauge version for cost reasons.
In 1935, the Reichsbahn modernized the line. Among other things, the en route stations received new signaling technology with mechanical Bruchsal-type signal boxes. As part of the dissolution of the Ludwigshafen Reichsbahn Directorate, the line came under the jurisdiction of the Saarbrücken Directorate on 1 May 1936. The railway was used to transport materials and workers for the construction of the Westwall, and a railway gun was also placed at Hinterweidenthal Ort station. With the outbreak of the Second World War, the Reich government designated a 20-kilometre-wide strip near the border with France as the Red Zone, which included the Wieslauterbahn. This resulted in the evacuation of the inhabitants of this area, bringing passenger traffic to a standstill for a year. Although the Wieslauterbahn was the target of several air raids during the Second World War, there was hardly any major damage. Nevertheless, traffic had to be restricted or suspended several times as the war progressed.
The decline after the Second World War
After the Second World War, the railway was under the control of the Betriebsvereinigung der Südwestdeutschen Eisenbahnen (SWDE), which was transferred to the newly founded Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB) in 1949. The latter incorporated the Wieslauterbahn into the Mainz Federal Railway Directorate, to which it assigned all railway lines within the newly created federal state of Rhineland-Palatinate. In 1956, Dahn was given the additional stop Dahn Süd. The reception building at Dahn station had to be rebuilt due to war damage, which went into operation in 1959. In the 1950s, an approximately one-kilometre-long siding to a NATO fuel depot was also built between Hinterweidenthal and Dahn.
The significant increase in car traffic in the post-war period meant that use of the line declined. For this reason, Deutsche Bundesbahn applied to the Federal Ministry of Transport to discontinue passenger traffic. In addition, Deutsche Bundesbahn had introduced parallel rail bus services, which diverted more passengers away from rail transport. This was one of the reasons why Deutsche Bundesbahn declared the operation of the Wieslauterbahn unprofitable. On 25 September 1966 it discontinued passenger services on the line.Bundesbahndirektion Mainz (Hg.): Amtsblatt der Bundesbahndirektion Mainz vom 30. September 1966, Nr. 40. Bekanntmachung Nr. 376, S. 171. The population protested so vehemently against this plan that they delayed the departure of the last scheduled train at Dahn station on 24 September 1966 by several hours. Only the "Bundenthaler" excursion train continued to run for the time being due to the great demand. This train also ran for the last time in May 1976. From then on, apart from freight trains, only special trains used the line, such as the "Deutsche Weinstraße" train.
As early as 1971, the line was transferred to the jurisdiction of its Saarbrücken counterpart as part of the dissolution of the Mainz directorate. The sporadic freight traffic officially came to a standstill on 30 May 1995, after the last freight train had already run on 2 May. At the same time, the Saarbrücken Federal Railway Directorate was endeavoring to close the line completely. To achieve this, it shifted all the costs required to maintain the line to the few special trains.
Reactivation (1997–2006)