STEAM BETWEEN WESER AND ELBE
Few engines can handle the 1-in-16 to Rennsteig, high up in the Thuringian forest. As a British comparison, Foxfield Bank is ‘only’ 1-in-19.
For the Rennsteigbahn, it’s a question of not only grip and power, but weight too. That’s why this line became home to Prussian ‘T16.1’ 0-10-0Ts and remains so even today. Although a key role for the ‘T16.1’ was shunting, the fact that this bruiser can shift 275 tons up 1-in-40 at over 12mph makes it ideal for lines such as this.
The ‘T16.1’ – or ‘94.5-17’ – became a familiar sight on these steep secondary routes through Germany’s ‘green heart’, right up until 1974, when the Suhl-Schleusingen line went diesel. Steam on the IlmenauSchleusingen stretch of the connecting Rennsteig line ended roughly three years before.
Like the Rübelandbahn, this single-track route was once a rack railway. Also like that other vertiginous line to the north, it has a zig-zag reverse – in this case at the ‘Hansel and Gretel’ station of Rennsteig itself.
The ridge it sits on marks the watershed of two significant German rivers – the Weser (of Pied Piper of Hamelin fame) and the Elbe, which runs through Dresden, Magdeburg and Hamburg. There’s little sign of the Abt rack system now – cog working was abandoned in 1927 – but what remains is a stiff climb to the station from either direction.
Branching off from the line between Arnstadt and Meiningen at Plaue, the home route for the ‘94’ runs nearly 40 miles to Themar, where it joins another line that serves Meiningen, that from Eisenach to
Lichtenfels. Opening took place in stages from 1879.
The Rennsteig line lost importance after the unification of Germany in 1990. However, regular services run as far as Ilmenau, and at weekends to Rennsteig. Between Ilmenau and Schleusingen, the infrastructure is the responsibility of the independent Rennsteigbahn, supported by the society Dampfbahn mittlerer Rennsteig.
Rennsteig station itself has been revamped with old canopy parts from Erfurt and is used to hold events as well as for its more conventional role. In addition to steam trips over its own infrastructure, the organisation promotes special trains further afield.
Just outside Schleusingen is a junction with the even steeper line to Suhl. Disused since the 1990s, this has now also been taken on by the Rennsteigbahn.
Today, No. 94.1538 is the only ‘T16.1’ working out of the more than 1,200 built in 1913-1924.
As well as the 1922-built No. 94.1538, Ilmenau shed has also been home to other examples, No. 94.1292 and Nos. 94.1184 and 94.1692.