To watch Part 1, please click on this link - • The Waldeisenbahn Musk...
To watch Part 2, please click on this link - • The Waldeisenbahn Musk...
The Waldeisenbahn Muskau (the Muskau Forest Railway) located in Saxony, Germany isn't just one railway, it's a railway system with a number of branches, in this video we take a return trip between Weißwasser and Kromlau. With the fresh snow glistening in the sunshine under a perfect blue sky, the scene was set to enjoy our handsome little steam engine and its rake of period carriages. Please join me for a memorable journey through a stunning winter landscape.
The opening of the standard gauge railway between Berlin and Görlitz in 1867 put Weißwasser on the emerging national railway map, bringing with it opportunities for the industrial development of the Muskau Arch such as lignite mining (low grade brown coal). Muskau Arch covers an area approximately 20 km long by 20 km wide, it was created during the oldest of the three European ice ages some 340,000 years ago when glaciers scoured sand, gravel, clay, and lignite which they carried and dumped as terminal moraine creating the region known as Musskau Arch.
In 1883 Hermann Graf von Arnim acquired the Muskau Estate which included Weißwasser and Bad Muskau along with its parks and palaces. Industrial activity saw the development of lignite mines, sawmills, brickworks and paper mills which in turn led to creation of a 600mm gauge rail network, originally known as the “Graeflich von Arnimsche Kleinbahn”, today known as the Waldeisenbahn (Forest Railway).
The first line opened in 1895 as a horse drawn tramway connected the “Caroline I” lignite mine near Krauschwitz to a loading platform at Muskau. A year later the Krauss Company supplied the first steam locomotives. The network quickly expanded in just a few years to over 85 kilometres starting at Muskau, it reached Pechern to the East, Köbeln to the North, Tzschelln and Ruhlmühle in the South West. By 1921 Krauschwitz became the operating centre.
As more companies used the railway it expanded its fleet of steam locomotives to cope, by 1940 up to 11 locomotives were required to operate services, the first small diesel locomotives also arrived at this time used mainly for shunting.
Trains ran through the streets of Weißwasser until 1933 when road improvement works led to the cessation of street running and the splitting of the railway system resulting in the creation of the Tzschellner network situated to the Southwest of the town.
The end of WW2 hit the railway hard with the loss of many of the industries it once served. In the post war period the need to rebuild industry saw the railway viewed as an important resource with Deutsche Reichsbahn operating the system from 1951 onwards.
During the 1960’s the Forest Railway became busy once again with the opening of several new mines requiring new locomotives and rolling stock to provide 6 or 7 engines in steam to cover the daily service requirements.
As the 70’s dawned the writing was on the wall, even the short lived new connection to the clay pit in Mühlrose to serve the Weißwasser brickworks failed to save the day, even the brickworks closed in 1991.
From the 1970’s onwards the railway lost customers resulting in lines closing and rolling stock being sold off. The railway ceased to operate in March 1978, with most of the locomotives finding new homes on museum railways around Germany, just one locomotive No.99 3317 remained being plinthed at Weißwasser in 1979.
New life was breathed into the railway in the mid 1980’s when a group of railway enthusiasts got together and established a base in Weißwasser, resulting in Weißwasser brickworks to Mühlrose line being used by heritage trains in 1984. Since then the railway has flourished into the wonderful system we see today.
Music - Track - Composer - Source
33:41 - ES_Dresden Swing - Trabant - epidemicsound.com
This visit was part of a rail tour arranged by the “Railway Touring Company” - if it’s something you’d like to know more about, please click on this link - www.railwaytou...
For information about the Waldeisenbahn (Forest Railway) - www.waldeisenb...
To learn more about the Berlin and Görlitz railway - en.wikipedia.o...
For information about the formation of the Muskau Ark -
en.unesco.org/...
14 окт 2024
