The Darmstadt-Kranichstein Railway Museum (''Eisenbahnmuseum Darmstadt-Kranichstein'') a railway museum in the German city of

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the fourth largest city in the state of Hesse ...

. It is also the largest railway museum in the state of

Hesse Hesse (, , ) or Hessia (, ; german: Hessen ), officially the State of Hessen (german: links=no, Land Hessen), is a state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt. Two other major historic cities are ...

. The former

railway depot The motive power depot (MPD) or locomotive depot, or traction maintenance depot (TMD), is the place where locomotives are usually housed, repaired and maintained when not being used. They were originally known as "running sheds", "engine shed ...

(''Bahnbetriebswerk'' or ''BW'') includes a locomotive shed,

turntable A phonograph, in its later forms also called a gramophone (as a trademark since 1887, as a generic name in the UK since 1910) or since the 1940s called a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogu ...

, coal bunkers and other locomotive facilities. There is also an adjoining repair shop (''Ausbesserungswerk''), where major repairs can be carried out. The depot is located on the Rhine-Main line from

Aschaffenburg Aschaffenburg (; South Franconian German, South Franconian: ''Aschebersch'') is a town in northwest Bavaria, Germany. The town of Aschaffenburg is not part of the Aschaffenburg (district), district of Aschaffenburg, but is its administrative sea ...

. It was established in 1898 by the United Prussian and Hessian State Railways and opened as a railway museum on 29 May 1976 when the site was leased from the

Deutsche Bundesbahn The Deutsche Bundesbahn or DB (German Federal Railway) was formed as the state railway of the newly established Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) on 7 September 1949 as a successor of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG). The DB remaine ...

to the board of trustees of the museum railway. A large collection of locomotives may be viewed in the museum, such as the still-operational DRG 23 042, 01 1056, 41 024 and 44 404 steam engines,

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the loco ...

4981 "Mainz", (a

Prussian G 8 Prussia, , Old Prussian: ''Prūsa'' or ''Prūsija'' was a Germans, German state on the southeast coast of the Baltic Sea. It formed the German Empire under Prussian rule when it united the German states in 1871. It was ''de facto'' dissolved ...

) that was transferred from

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with a small portion on the Balkan Peninsula ...

, the Austrian locomotive ÖBB 97 210, a rack railway steam engine from the

Erzberg , photo=HochtorOedsteinGroup FromS HoherZinken.jpg , photo_caption=Hochtor - Ödstein Group (Gesäuse) (from right to left) as seen from Hoher Zinken in the south , country= Austria , subdivision1_type=States , subdivision1= , parent= Northe ...

railway, the DB locomotive number 103 101-2 and the DRG E 16 08 electric engine, several DB Class V 36 diesel locomotives, a

Wismar Railbus The 'Hanover version' of the Wismar railbus (''Wismarer Schienenbus'') was developed in the early 1930s as a light railbus for economical passenger services on branch lines in Germany. History As early as the 1920s, light branch lines (the s ...

and a host of other railway vehicles, including several ''Culemeyer'' heavy trailers. The large vehicle fleet cannot be visited at present. In the meantime, however, there are exhibits to aid technical understanding, such as the sectioned boiler of

Deutsche Reichsbahn The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'', also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the German national railway system created after the end of World War I from the regiona ...

steam engine number 50 1397, and the driver's cab of 50 1745; as well as a signalling collection with historical signals and

signal box In signal processing, a signal is a function that conveys information about a phenomenon. Any quantity that can vary over space or time can be used as a signal to share messages between observers. The '' IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing' ...

equipment. In addition, the evolution of fare tickets over the years is portrayed, from manually produced examples from the early years to the present-day computer printouts, as well as their related equipment. The museum also has its own ticket-printing press. An H0-

model railway Railway modelling (UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland) or model railroading (US and Canada) is a hobby in which rail transport systems are modelled at a reduced scale. The scale models include locomotives, rolling stock, streetcars, t ...

layout depicts Darmstadt station on the Main-Neckar line at the time the route was opened. Special train services visit the museum several times a year, running between Darmstadt Ost and Bessunger Forst.160 Several vehicles, e. g. the 23 042 and the G8 4981 "Mainz" haul specials throughout the whole of Germany. The vehicles are run by the

German Museum The Deutsches Museum (''German Museum'', officially (English: ''German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology'')) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science and technology, with about 28,000 exhibited objects from ...

Railway GmbH (DME) as the operating company. (''Deutsche Museums-Eisenbahn'') GmbH (DME).

References

Literature

* Uwe Breitmeier, ''Rückkehr aus dem Morgenland: die abenteuerliche Reise einer preußischen Dampflok'', Transpress Verlag, Stuttgart 1997,

*Uwe Breitmeier, ''Das Eisenbahnmuseum Darmstadt-Kranichstein'', Eigenverlag

External links

Website of the museum
{{authority control Railway museums in Germany Transport in Hesse Deutsche Bahn Museums in Darmstadt