While out riding I tend to follow railway lines. This is partly because I'm pessimistic and want a Plan 'B' if something goes wrong, but also because I'm still a train nerd, just a train nerd on a bike.
So when planning a ride a couple of weeks back, I deliberately aimed for a railway station to turn around at.
Eyach, change here for: Haigerloch, Hechingen, Gammertingen, Sigmaringen and Kleinengstingen.
This is why your correspondent ended up one spring Saturday afternoon, with slightly sore legs, at Eyach, junction of the German Railways line between Tübingen and Switzerland, and the Hohenzllerischen Landesbahn (HzL) branch to Hechingen.
DB Track to the left, HzL to the right. Notice relaxed approach to matters like fencing and level crossing signage.
Click here for an image taken in the 1970’s from almost the same location. Notice the HzL/DB link is the other way around.
Hohenzollern was once a semi-independent state, a tiny corner of Prussia, in fact (don’t ask why), and as such it got to build its own railways.
Originally the branch from Eyach only ran as far as Stetten, because someone had realised there was money to be made selling liquid carbon dioxide and mineral water from a natural source in the valley, but after dithering for about ten years the HzL finished the line to the junction at Hechingen up in the hills.
Goods shed. This would make an awesome arts centre.
Surprisingly intact abandoned crane.
By the time the railway was complete passengers with any sense would have caught the Reichsbahn train from Tübingen to Hechingen and left Eyach out all together. There’s not much use for a railway connecting a small town with three houses so passenger services were stopped back in the 1950’s, but Eyach was still needed for transferring 15000 tones of liquid CO2 a year to the Deutsche Bahn system for transport up to Stuttgart and points beyond.
Entrance from DB station to the HzL ‘Station’ beyond. It seems the HzL were not expecting many passengers.
The branch line is still used for some freight. There are also tourist trains in summer: these run on Sunday, which would have been handy to know earlier, as it would have resulted in more interesting photographs.
Deutsche Bahn station on the left, HzL Station on the right. Platforms are for wimps apparently.
I got fairly carried away thinking up ways to make a model based on this, with the HzL becoming metre gauge, with transshipment sidings; and transporter wagons; and mixed trains with railcars…
Of course, this was partly a way of putting off the return trip to Stuttgart…
As I look at these photographs, I realise why I generally find myself on solo bike rides.
(
Pictures of the station in 2009. This is what it looked like when I first cycled through)