Black Forest Railway
Across the Black Forest: With the Black Forest Railway from Offenburg to Constance
​
Do you know the Black Forest Railway? It is one of the most famous mountain lines in Germany and was put into operation in 1873, about 150 years ago. It runs from Offenburg via the Black Forest towns of Hornberg, Triberg, St. Georgen and Villingen to Constance on Lake Constance and is a total of 150 kilometers long.
When you travel on the Black Forest Railway, it's quite a steep climb at first. Especially from Hornberg, the line winds its way over 447 meters in altitude until it reaches its highest point in the Sommerautunnel at just over 830 meters above sea level.
Of course, a train cannot simply climb such a steep incline. Therefore, when the railroad line was built, care was taken to ensure that the gradient did not exceed 1:50 and that there were no curves with a radius tighter than 300 meters. This was planned so that even long and heavy trains could run on the Black Forest Railway without any problems. In addition, one has tried to lay the tracks always on the southern slope of the mountains, so that in winter the load of the snow is not too strong.
Because the train line winds around the mountains several times, there is a place a little below Triberg station where you can see the Black Forest Railway three times on top of each other. The towns of Hornberg and St. Georgen are only twelve kilometers apart as the crow flies, but the railroad line between them is 29 kilometers long. This is due to the fact that it contains two large reversing loops.
But probably the most famous thing about the Black Forest Railway is its 39 tunnels. The longest of them is the Sommerautunnel with 1,697 meters. It is located near the town of St. Georgen, which is the highest town on the railroad line. If you take all the tunnels together, they make up a length of 9.5 kilometers.
St. Georgen is not only the highest place on the Black Forest Railway, but it also has something that is rare elsewhere: a fire engine that can also travel on rails.
At first, of course, the good old steam locomotives ran on the Black Forest Railway. Later, they were replaced by diesel locomotives. In the seventies, the entire line was electrified. For this, the tracks in the tunnels had to be lowered so that they were not too high together with the overhead line. Today, steam locomotives can once again be admired on the line. They are harnessed in front of museum trains that can puff through the tunnels mostly on Sundays in summer.
The Black Forest Railway is not the only railroad line that runs through the Black Forest. Besides it, the Höllental Railway from Freiburg to Donaueschingen, which was completed in 1901, is particularly worth seeing. Like the Black Forest Railway, it was planned by Robert Gerwig. At least on the edge of the Black Forest runs the very elaborately routed Sauschwänzlebahn ("sow's tail line"), whose trademark is a "Sauschwänzle" in the figurative sense, namely a tunnel that contains a complete switchback loop, so that the railroad line runs under itself. This really doesn't happen very often, only once in Germany. In addition, part of this line is operated as a museum railroad with steam locomotives.
