The Mering–Weilheim railway (German: ''Ammerseebahn'') is a 54 km long single-tracked
main line in the provinces of
Swabia and
Upper Bavaria
Upper Bavaria (german: Oberbayern, ; ) is one of the seven administrative districts of Bavaria, Germany.
Geography
Upper Bavaria is located in the southern portion of Bavaria, and is centered on the city of Munich, both state capital and s ...
in southern Germany. It runs from
Mering near
Augsburg
Augsburg (; bar , Augschburg , links=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swabian_German , label=Swabian German, , ) is a city in Swabia, Bavaria, Germany, around west of Bavarian capital Munich. It is a university town and regional seat of the '' ...
via
Geltendorf
Geltendorf is a municipality in the district of Landsberg in Bavaria, Germany.
World heritage site
It is home to one or more prehistoric pile-dwelling (or stilt house) settlements that are part of the Prehistoric Pile dwellings around the Alps ...
to
Weilheim and is listed by the
Deutsche Bahn
The (; abbreviated as DB or DB AG) is the national railway company of Germany. Headquartered in the Bahntower in Berlin, it is a joint-stock company ( AG). The Federal Republic of Germany is its single shareholder.
describes itself as the ...
as
Kursbuchstrecke 985.
Construction
The Mering–Geltendorf–Schondorf (29.77 km) and Weilheim–Dießen (13.07 km) sections were the first to be constructed. They were built by the Augsburg railway division of the
Royal Bavarian State Railways
The Royal Bavarian State Railways (''Königliche Bayerische Staats-Eisenbahnen'' or ''K.Bay.Sts.B.'') was the state railway company for the Kingdom of Bavaria. It was founded in 1844. The organisation grew into the second largest of the German ...
and were completed simultaneously on 30 June 1898. The intervening 18.36 km section from Dießen to Schondorf was finished on 24 December 1898.
Electrification
The line was electrified between Mering and Geltendorf from 7 September 1970 in order to provide a diversionary line for the heavily trafficked trunk route from
Augsburg to Munich, the
Geltendorf–Munich-Pasing section having been electrified two years earlier.
Nowadays the Ammersee Railway in only of regional importance. Trains run hourly from Augsburg-Oberhausen via Weilheim to Schongau and back. Until the early 1990s there were still long-distance trains (the ''
FD-Züge'') on the line that did not take the 'bypass' via Munich on their way from the north of Germany to
Garmisch-Partenkirchen, but went directly from Augsburg along the Ammersee Railway to Weilheim. One curious aspect was the mode of operation on the non-electrified section from Geltendorf to Weilheim. A diesel engine was hooked up to the train in Geltendorf or Weilheim and the electric locomotive was hauled along with its
pantograph
A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen. If a line dr ...
s lowered.
This gap in the electrified network still remains a stumbling block, because all trains on the Ammersee Railway are diesel-hauled, although there is now
catenary
In physics and geometry, a catenary (, ) is the curve that an idealized hanging chain or cable assumes under its own weight when supported only at its ends in a uniform gravitational field.
The catenary curve has a U-like shape, superficia ...
between Geltendorf and Augsburg. This excludes the few trains that, until the end of 2008, used to run only between Geltendorf and Augsburg in the morning and evening and were therefore hauled by electrics. A closure of this gap in the electrified network is planned in the longer term.
The long waits at some of the crossing stations and irregular services meant that travel on the Ammersee Railway was not particularly attractive in the past. This has changed since 14 December 2008 with a new, tauter timetable. The variable interval services have been restricted to the Dießen-Weilheim section. On the rest of the line, as on the through services to Schongau and Augsburg-Oberhausen, a strict hourly service is offered.
Since 14 December 2008, running powers on the Ammersee Railway have been awarded to the
Bayerische Regiobahn
Transdev Germany is the largest private operator of passenger buses and trains in Germany. It is a subsidiary of Transdev.
History
In 1997, Aktiengesellschaft für Industrie und Verkehrswesen was purchased by a CGEA Group (60%) EnBW (40%) co ...
(BRB). The BRB is a sister company of the
Bayerische Oberlandbahn
The Bayerische Oberlandbahn GmbH (BOB) is a private railway company based in Holzkirchen, Germany, and owned by Transdev Germany (formerly known as ''Veolia Verkehr''). Since June 2020 its services are operated under the brand Bayerische Regio ...
(BOB) and belongs to the
Veolia Group. The BRB operates the
Weilheim–Peißenberg,
Schongau–Peißenberg, and Augsburg–Geltendorf–Weilheim lines and, from 2009, has also worked the
Augsburg–Aichach–Ingolstadt and
Ingolstadt
Ingolstadt (, Austro-Bavarian language, Austro-Bavarian: ) is an Independent city#Germany, independent city on the Danube in Upper Bavaria with 139,553 inhabitants (as of June 30, 2022). Around half a million people live in the metropolitan area ...
–
Eichstätt Stadt routes.
References
Footnotes
Sources
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External links
Die Ammerseebahn
{{DEFAULTSORT:Mering-Weilheim railway
Railway lines in Bavaria
Railway lines opened in 1898