The Untersteinach–Stadtsteinach railway is a

branch line A branch line is a phrase used in railway terminology to denote a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Industrial spur An industr ...

in the

Bavaria Bavaria ( ; ), officially the Free State of Bavaria (german: Freistaat Bayern, link=no ), is a state in the south-east of Germany. With an area of , Bavaria is the largest German state by land area, comprising roughly a fifth of the total lan ...

n province of

Upper Franconia Upper Franconia (german: Oberfranken) is a ''Regierungsbezirk'' (administrative 'Regierungs''region 'bezirk'' of the state of Bavaria, southern Germany. It forms part of the historically significant region of Franconia, the others being Middle F ...

in southern Germany. It links the former district town of Stadtsteinach with the main line from Bamberg to Hof. Untersteinach KU Bahnhof

The standard gauge, single-tracked ''

Lokalbahn A ''Lokalbahn'' or ''Localbahn'' ("local line", plural: -en) is a secondary railway line worked by local trains serving rural areas, typically in Austria and the south German states of Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg. ''Lokalbahnen'' appeared at t ...

'' is 4.8 km long and was opened for goods traffic on 26 November 1913 by the Royal Bavarian State Railways. For almost 30 years it was used to transport goods, mainly ballast for the construction of railways. Not until the lack of fuel in the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposi ...

brought buses to a halt was a passenger service offered on 19 July 1943 using a coach attached to the goods train. This was provided at the instigation (and risk) of the town authorities until 13 April 1945 and thus never appeared in the German railway timetable. There were no intermediate stations on the line. After the war the Nuremberg railway division laid on three pairs of passenger trains daily on workdays from 16 January 1947. In summer 1949 Sunday passenger services were introduced (two pairs) which ran to and from Kulmbach. As economic conditions improved, passengers turned back to the buses and also to private vehicles, so that in the 1956 summer timetable only two pairs of trains ran on workdays. Even these disappeared on 30 September 1956. Since then the railway has become purely a goods line once more.

References

*Wolfgang Bleiweis, Ekkehard Martin, Stefan Winkler: ''Fränkische Nebenbahnen einst und jetzt – Oberfranken.'' Egglham und München 1986

External links

Goods train photos on 10 September 2005 on the line
{{DEFAULTSORT:Untersteinach-Stadtsteinach railway Branch lines in Bavaria Buildings and structures in Kulmbach (district)