The Bröl Valley Railway (german: Bröltalbahn) was the first public

narrow gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter curves, smaller structur ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

and had a

track gauge In rail transport, track gauge (in American English, alternatively track gage) is the distance between the two rails of a railway track. All vehicles on a rail network must have wheelsets that are compatible with the track gauge. Since many d ...

of . It was the heart of a railway company, which from 1925 also ran

bus service Public transport bus services are generally based on regular operation of transit buses along a route calling at agreed bus stops according to a published public transport timetable. History of buses Origins While there are indications ...

s and from 1956 its

passenger services In rail transport, a train (from Old French , from Latin , "to pull, to draw") is a series of connected vehicles that run along a railway track and transport people or freight. Trains are typically pulled or pushed by locomotives (often kno ...

only ran by road.

Goods train Rail freight transport is the use of railroads and trains to transport cargo as opposed to human passengers. A freight train, cargo train, or goods train is a group of freight cars (US) or goods wagons (International Union of Railways) hauled ...

s continued to run until 1967, when the remaining trackage was lifted. The firm was founded on 3 February 1869 as the Bröl Valley Railway Company (''Brölthaler Eisenbahn-Actien-Gesellschaft'') or BTE. On 10 June 1921 it was renamed as the Rhine-Sieg Railway (''Rhein-Sieg-Eisenbahn-AG'') or RSE. The company headquarters was moved in 1917 from

Hennef (Sieg) Hennef (Sieg) () is a town in the Rhein-Sieg district of North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. It is situated on the river Sieg, approx. south-east of Siegburg and east of Bonn. Hennef is the fourth-biggest town in the Rhein-Sieg-Kreis (i.e. distri ...

Beuel Beuel ( Ripuarian: ''Büel'') is a city borough ('' Stadtbezirk'') of Bonn, Germany. It has a population of 67,827 (2020). Subdivisions Beuel is composed of the sub-districts Beuel-Mitte, Beuel-Ost, Geislar, Hoholz, Holtorf, Holzlar, Küdinghove ...

. In 1983 the RSE went into the Rhein-Sieg-Verkehrsgesellschaft. It should not be confused with the

Rhein-Sieg-Eisenbahn The Rhein-Sieg-Eisenbahn or RSE is a German company founded by the ''Verkehrsclub Deutschland'' (Transport Club of Germany) and interested private individuals with the primary purpose of saving a threatened industrial line, the Beuel–Großenbusc ...

GmbH founded in 1994 by the Verkehrsclub Deutschland. The 785 mm gauge railway network of the Bröl Valley Railway was, at its peak, a total of 87.3 kilometres long and, towards the end, was mainly worked by goods services. With the take over of the

Heisterbach Valley Railway Heisterbach Abbey (Kloster Heisterbach; also Petersthal, formerly Petersberg) was a Cistercian monastery in the ''Siebengebirge'' near Oberdollendorf in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany. Petersberg The tradition of its origin is that a knight name ...

in 1901 an isolated section of 750 mm gauge line also belonged to the BTE. In the old Bröl Valley Railway engine shed in Asbach is a

railway museum A railway museum is a museum that explores the history of all aspects of rail related transportation, including: locomotives ( steam, diesel, and electric), railway cars, trams, and railway signalling equipment. They may also operate historic e ...

about the old railway that was founded in 2000.

Literature

Sources * * Sascha Koch: ''Eisenbahnen im Oberbergischen und die Geschichte des Bahnbetriebswerkes Dieringhausen.'' Galunder Verlag, Nümbrecht, 2005. . Others * Manfred Frickhöfer: ''Die Rhein-Sieg-Eisenbahn (Bröltalbahn)''. Druck: quickprint grube & speck, Karlsruhe 1979. * Carsten Gussmann, Wolfgang Clössner: ''Die Heisterbacher Talbahn und Industriebahnen im Siebengebirgsraum.'' Freiburg im Breisgau 2006. .

External links

Museum for the Bröl Valley Railway

* ttp://home.arcor.de/e.lauterbach/bonn/plan/rheinsieg.kmz Google Earth with information on the Bröl Valley Railway
Bilderbuch Ruppichteroth – historic post cards and photographs around Ruppichteroth including some of the railway
{{DEFAULTSORT:Brol Valley Railway Defunct railway companies of Germany 785 mm gauge railways in Germany 750 mm gauge railways in Germany Rhein-Sieg-Kreis Westerwald Rhineland Horse-drawn railways Railway lines in North Rhine-Westphalia Railway companies established in 1869 German companies established in 1869