The Ravensburg–Weingarten–Baienfurt Tramway – less commonly also Ravensburg–Weingarten–Baienfurt Narrow-Gauge Railway – connected the three named towns until 1959 as a metre-gauge interurban tramway. It was opened in 1888 by the private Lokalbahn Aktien-Gesellschaft (LAG) and initially operated as a steam-powered branch line from Ravensburg to Weingarten. In 1910 it was electrified and in 1911 extended to Baienfurt.
In 1938 the line, popularly known as Zügle, Mühle, Bähnle or Lake Constance Lightning, was nationalized and thereafter, in accordance with the Verordnung über den Bau und Betrieb der Straßenbahnen (BOStrab) that came into force the same year, officially classified as a tramway. After 1938 the route was the only tramway operation owned by the German Reichsbahn, and after World War II the only tramway operation owned by the German Federal Railway.
History
Background
1849: Altdorf is bypassed As early as November 8, 1847, the Upper Swabian Oberamt town and current district capital Ravensburg was connected from Friedrichshafen to the Southern Railway. On May 26, 1849, this was finally extended to Biberach an der Riß, and on June 29, 1850, Ulm was reached. There the gap was closed with the already existing Fils Valley Railway from Stuttgart. Contrary to the original expectations of the population and business owners, Altdorf – the later Weingarten – did not receive a connection to this important main line of the Royal Württemberg State Railways during the extension northward. On the one hand, the kingdom, which had no coal deposits, wanted to lead its locomotives to Lake Constance in the shortest possible way, and in the short term even threatened to bypass Biberach. On the other hand, the then Altdorf Schultheiß Adolf Prielmayer proved to be a vehement opponent of a direct connection. Consequently, the Southern Railway passed two and a half kilometers west of the town, but the old market towns of Waldsee and Tettnang as well as Baindt and Baienfurt were also not connected at that time.
Compounding the issue was that no railway station was established at the point closest to Altdorf. The current town-center halt Weingarten/Berg was not opened until 1998 by the Bodensee-Oberschwaben-Bahn. This meant that the nearest stations on the Southern Railway from Altdorf were then about four kilometers (Ravensburg) or about three kilometers (Niederbiegen) away. Although Altdorf in 1849 with 3,267 inhabitants was only about half the size of neighboring Ravensburg, the town had long been known regionally as a pilgrimage site due to the Benedictine Abbey of Weingarten and the Basilica of St. Martin.
1865–1888: Weingarten in the transport shadow
In 1865 Altdorf adopted the name of the Benedictine abbey and was renamed Weingarten. At the same time, the town was granted city rights. At the same time, Weingarten developed during industrialization into an important industrial location. The Weingarten Machine Factory AG – today's Andritz Schuler Pressen GmbH – founded in 1865, as well as the spinning mill established the following year, played a significant role. Due to the rapid development, the population also increased strongly, so that on December 1, 1880, 5,232 people already lived in the city. The lack of a railway connection therefore had an increasingly unfavorable effect, and unlike Ravensburg, the city continued to remain in the transport shadow. In addition, there was already a corresponding local transport need between Altdorf and Ravensburg at that time. After all, Weingarten had a garrison of 800 men since 1868, but unlike Ravensburg, only a few industrial jobs.
To improve the deficient situation, Weingarten subsequently sought to obtain a connection to the Württemberg state railway through the construction of a stub line designed as a branch line. The driving force was the Weingarten trade association with its active secretary, the Protestant teacher Christoph Klein. In 1879 he was able to win over the Zurich railway engineer Theodor Lutz for the project. Remarkably, the route via Frauentorplatz in Ravensburg was already planned. However, a critical examination by the Weingarten city council found that Klein had calculated technically far too tight radii for his standard gauge line embedded in the road and economically far too high a throughput volume and thus return. Thus the plans remained just that.
After the Kingdom of Württemberg lost interest in the railway, the construction of a private railway was alternatively promoted. Privately operated lines were still a relatively new phenomenon at the time, with only three non-state railways in Württemberg at that time. These were the Kirchheim Railway Company since 1864, the Erms Valley Railway Company since 1873, and the Filder Railway Company since 1884. The railway to Weingarten was to become the fourth private railway in Württemberg.
Replanning to a narrow-gauge steam tramway In the spring of 1886, the Augsburg engineers Theodor Lechner and Viktor Krüzner, active in the railway sector from the Lokalbahnbau- und Betriebsunternehmung Lechner & Krüzner, also identified a corresponding transport need between the two rising cities of Ravensburg and Weingarten, which could be met by building a steam tramway. In October 1886 the company therefore submitted an application for a project concession to build the railway to the government of the Kingdom of Württemberg.
In 1887 the two engineers finally presented a concept for a metre-gauge narrow-gauge railway to the city administrations of Ravensburg and Weingarten. It was to run from the Ravensburg station forecourt via Schussenstraße to Frauentorplatz, then straight along the state road Ulm–Friedrichshafen to the Scherzach bridge in Weingarten. There Lechner and Krüzner did not want to follow the sharp bend around the then forestry and current youth house and planned the track from the Stadtösch stop (later Lamm) straight through the orchard of the Sonnenwirt to the terminus at the intersection of Waldseer Straße/Schloßstraße, today Abt-Hyller-Straße or Charlottenplatz. In contrast to the standard-gauge plans that failed a few years earlier, this railway could easily adapt to the given settlement axes. The routing in the public road space also allowed, compared to a usually independently aligned classic railway, lower construction and operating costs.
The concept of Lechner and Krüzner convinced the bourgeois committees of the two involved cities both in terms of technology and return, although more in Weingarten than in Ravensburg, where the railway was always viewed less favorably. The state government in Stuttgart also agreed after recognizing that the new railway posed no serious threat to the utilization of its line between Ravensburg and Aulendorf. This was not a given, because in the kingdom the state had the railway monopoly. If it allowed a private railway, then only on the condition that it could buy back the line after a certain number of operating years, namely at the accumulated investment value.
The conditions around Ravensburg and Weingarten were so acceptable that Lechner and Krüzner were able to win over the powerful Munich railway industrialist Georg Krauß for the project. He was the owner of the Lokomotivfabrik Krauss & Comp., which specialized in local railway locomotives, and saw in the projected line a chance to increase his sales. Thus Lechner, Krüzner and Krauß founded the private Lokalbahn Aktien-Gesellschaft (LAG) on February 9, 1887. This received the building permit for the new railway and was at the same time the client. Construction work began in August 1887, according to another source only on September 3 of the same year. The operating concession was granted by the Württemberg state on November 15, 1887, the concessioning of private railways was then still subject to the respective state law.
Early period
Opening The new railway to Weingarten was actually supposed to be solemnly inaugurated on December 22, 1887, but the track was not yet completed. When this was done by the next selected date of December 29, 1887, it could not be inspected by the responsible official from Stuttgart because a snowstorm had buried it centimeters deep. Thus passenger traffic could finally be started only on January 6, 1888, with no opening celebration scheduled. Operations ran from 6:50 a.m. to 10:10 p.m. A lunch break for the staff was taken into account, so that a total of eleven trips were offered. The journey over the entire route took 20 minutes and cost 20 pfennigs in third class on wooden seats for adults and ten pfennigs for children up to ten years. Children under three years were allowed to travel free if they did not claim their own seat. Tickets were valid for one day each,Lokalbahn Ravensburg–Weingarten – Bestimmungen und Tarife für die Beförderung von Personen, Reisegepäck, lebenden Thieren und Gütern. Gültig vom 1. Dezember 1887. a. Beförderung von Personen. Zu § 10. Translation:Lokalbahn Ravensburg–Weingarten - regulations and tariffs for the transport of people, luggage, live animals and goods. Effective December 1, 1887. a. Transportation of people. for the round trip the double price had to be paid. Use of the second class equipped with upholstered seats was in turn half more expensive and was mainly reserved for the officers of the Weingarten garrison and their relatives. Tickets were only available in Weingarten at the ticket counter, at the other stations they were sold by the train conductor. In addition, some merchants and inns in both Ravensburg and Weingarten served as additional sales points.
The start of public freight transport followed, over half a year after commissioning, on August 15, 1888. The LAG transported the freight mainly in the existing half-luggage cars, the few freight cars were rarely used. The permanent way consisted of vignole rails with a metre weight of 24.77 kilograms. Larger civil engineering structures were not required, which also explains the short construction time of the route. The operations management and the railway depot were located in Weingarten.
The 4.18-kilometer connection was the first route of the newly founded LAG, the field railway that had existed since 1879 did not join the LAG until 1891. The awarding of the concession to the Bavarian LAG was remarkable in that it concentrated almost all further activities on Bavaria. However, only a few years after the commissioning of the steam tramway, the LAG established a second foothold in the Upper Swabia region when it opened the Meckenbeuren–Tettnang railway only about ten kilometers south of Ravensburg in 1895.
Technically, the former steam tramway to Weingarten largely corresponded to the still steam-operated Chiemsee Railway, even though it runs throughout on its own alignment. The Chiemsee Railway was opened on July 9, 1887, only a few months before the Weingarten route. It still uses a locomotive identical in design to the machines used in Upper Swabia at the time.
The new route was soon so well frequented, especially in third class, that the horse omnibus introduced shortly before, although it granted a five-pfennig discount on the return journey, soon ceased again. The Weingarten city administration tried shortly after the start of operations to introduce another trip for schoolchildren returning from Ravensburg. However, this was rejected by the LAG with reference to the necessary rest time for the locomotive driver, the fireman and the conductor. The staff initially drove the whole day without shift change, also with the same locomotive, while the other was initially kept only for emergencies.
Route description