Cuckoo Railway

About

The Cuckoo Railway (German: Kuckucksbähnel, literally "Little Cuckoo Railway"), in its early days the Elmstein Valley Railway (Elmsteiner Talbahn), is a 12.97 kilometre long branch line in the central Palatine Forest, which runs through the region of Neustadt/Kaiserslautern from Lambrecht to Elmstein. It was built primarily to support the local forestry industry. In 1902 the section to Sattelmühle was opened, initially just as an industrial siding. In 1909 it was extended to Elmstein and upgraded to a fully fledged branch line. Regular passenger services were withdrawn in 1960 - due to the sparse population of the region it had always played a secondary role. This was followed in 1977 by the cessation of goods traffic between Frankeneck and Elmstein. Since 1984 the line has been operated as a heritage railway. Goods trains still run as far as Frankeneck.

The Elmstein Valley, densely covered in woods and hence sparsely populated, suffered in earlier times from a poor road infrastructure, especially away from the direct route between Neustadt and Kaiserslautern. The valley follows the upper reaches of the Speyerbach river, the most important Palatine tributary of the Rhine. The key resource of the Speyerbach source region has always been its wood. For centuries, cut or split logs were transported by timber rafting down the river, i.e. propelled by the current, and were sold in the almost treeless Anterior Palatinate.

As early as March 1874 entrepreneurs from the villages of Frankeneck and Neidenfels complained that transporting goods to Lambrecht station by road would be very expensive. For this reason, they launched a petition to the Palatine Railways, which aimed at the establishment of a halt and loading point, exclusively for goods traffic, between the stations of Weidenthal and Lambrecht. This was to be built in Frankeneck immediately next to the confluence of the Hochspeyerbach and the Speyerbach. The hope was that, using this planned operating point on the Palatine Ludwig Railway, would save on transportation costs. These efforts were initially unsuccessful. However, at the end of 1881, the Palatine Ludwig Railway Company built a stackyard at Lambrecht railway station.

On 28 May 1888, 67 entrepreneurs sent a request to the Bavarian Ministry of the Interior - at that time the Palatinate belonged to the Kingdom of Bavaria - with the aim of building a tramline from Neustadt via Lambrecht and Frankeneck to Elmstein. However, this submission was not successful: the administration of the Palatine Railways came to the conclusion that the road network was satisfactory and the distance to the existing stops on the Ludwig Railway was too short to justify an additional connection. The forest authorities also criticized the proposal for a tram line because it would have made an additional transhipment of wood necessary. The Bavarian government considered it pointless to create a transport link parallel to the Ludwig Railway between Neustadt and Lambrecht.

Planning and opening of the Lambrecht–Sattelmühle section (1890–1902)

The Bavarian government had received a draft law on 5 April 1892 concerning the construction of branch lines in the Palatinate. This was intended to assign interest rate guarantees to certain routes based on the model given. During this time, the establishment of a branch line from Lambrecht to Elmstein was also discussed, for which the MP, Andreas Deinhard, used his influence in the Chamber of Representatives.

With the gradual demise of timber rafting at the end of the 19th century, the main source of livelihood in the Elmstein Valley was threatened and the population was forced to find other sources of income. Those affected saw the solution to the problem as a railway link that would act as a replacement for the transportation of wood using timber rafts. In addition the planned line was seen as a way of stimulating the economy of the valley.

In August 1895 a committee was formed under the chairmanship of Lambrecht's mayor that sent another petition to the Bavarian government. At the same time the committee engaged the relevant communities with a memorandum entitled "The Necessity of an Elmstein-Neustadt Valley Railway" ( Die Nothwendigkeit einer ElmsteinNeustadter:Thalbahn ). Finally, one year later, the company of Vering & Waechter was awarded the contract. Planning was completed by January 1897.

Initially an industrial siding was laid from Lambrecht station, which ran via Frankeneck to the hamlet of Sattelmühle. It was opened in 1902 and served both to transport wood from the Palatine Forest as well as to serve the timber yard in Frankeneck. At the same time it formed the first stage of the planned branch line.

The committee continued to campaign for a full branch line by the construction of an extension of the industrial siding to Elmstein. The government in Bavaria took the view that it should be a national responsibility to build the line, especially because of the imminent transfer of the Palatine Railways into the ownership of the Royal Bavarian State Railways.

This railway was intended predominantly to be used for the transportation of timber, which formed the bulk of the goods traffic, and not so much for passenger services. Nevertheless, it was recognized that, because 130 workers worked away from their homes in Elstein and its outlying villages of Appenthal and Iggelbach, there was some potential for passenger traffic as well.

At the beginning of 1904, a meeting of the Palatine Forest Railway Committee ( Pfälzer Waldbahn-Komitee ) took place. Because the line affected various parishes whose villages were some way from the direct route - for example, Hambach, Kirrweiler and Lachen – determining the course of the trackbed proved very difficult. The villages of Elmstein and Kirrweiler were prepared to offer the necessary land for the railway without being paid. In addition, Elmstein strove to increase the contributions from Esthal, Hambach and Lachen. During the course of the negotiations, it turned out that a sum of money in the five-figure range would be needed. Elmstein wanted a grant of 35,000 marks towards land acquisition costs, but because of the opposition of the royal treasury, they were only awarded 30,000 marks. In addition, individuals such as Albert Biirklin and Count D'Arlon gave both money and land for the railway. Furthermore, road construction engineers confirmed that the maintenance costs of the planned railway line would be significantly lower than that of the local roads.

After a lengthy campaign for a railway through the Elmstein Valley the Landtag of Bavaria finally gave permission on 10 Aug 1904 for the construction of a branch line.

Construction work finally began in March 1905. It entailed the removal of 800,000 cubic metres (28,000,000 cu ft) of earth and cost a total of 692,000 marks. Responsibility for the course of line and the earthworks fell to the Neustadt Railway Division.

The construction of the 9.55-kilometre-long (5.93 mi) section from Sattelmühle to Elmstein was carried out by German and Italian workers. In 1907, the required expansion of Lambrecht railway station followed. The local construction industry also benefited from the work of the track. The latter was done mainly by hand, but was also helped by the construction of a Feldbahn, a light field railway worked by a small steam locomotive. The track bed was built on a sandstone foundation. Eleven bridges across the Speyerbach stream were built.

On 18 January 1909, a test run on the line was undertaken in order to check it technically. The train being used for the test arrived at Elmstein station at 11 am. The official inauguration took place five days later. The first train was due to depart Elmstein at 6.20 am. However, as it was about to leave there was a fatal accident. The Jungfern service was just a few metres from the end of the line when, owing to a wrongly set turnout, the train accelerated at full steam into the locomotive shed and killed a spectator. The locomotive escaped with only a few scratches; the shed, however, suffered more serious damage that had to be repaired. As a replacement, a train from Lambrecht arrived at the end of the section at 8.15 am; around 10 am the first train finally left Elmstein for Lambrecht.

The operator was initially the Bavarian State Railways who, since 1 January, had taken over the whole Palatine railway network; so that the opening of the railway was its first official duty there.

On 1 April 1920 the line became the property of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. In 1922 it was incorporated into the newly founded Ludwigshafen Reichsbahn Division ( Reichsbahndirektion Ludwigshafen ). In the wake of its disbandment on 1 April 1937 the line was allocated to the Mainz Division ( Reichsbahndirektion Mainz ).

Although it was initially called the Elmstein Valley Railway ( Elmsteiner Talbahn ), over time the nickname "Little Cuckoo Line" ( Kuckucksbähnel ) was adopted. The call of cuckoos was once a common sound in the Elmstein Valley, which is why the local population in Elmstein were given the nickname "cuckoos" ( Kuckucke ). The term Kuckucksbähnel was probably coined by the owner of the s Lokschuppen restaurant at Elmstein station. The regional press gradually adopted the name until it eventually became the official name of the line.

After the Second World War the railway line was the responsibility of the Operating Association of Southwest German Railways ( Betriebsvereinigung der Südwestdeutschen Eisenbahnen ) or SWDE, which was transferred into the newly founded Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB) in 1949. The latter assigned the Cuckoo Line to the Mainz Federal Railway Division ( Bundesbahndirektion Mainz ) to which all railway lines in the newly created state of Rhineland-Palatinate were allocated. At the same time the profitability of the line was questioned. On top of the rapid increase in car traffic of that time, DB itself contributed to the competition by introducing a bus service running parallel to the railway.