South Harz Railway Company

The South Harz Railway Company (German: Südharz-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft) or SHE was founded in 1897 and, on 15 August 1899, opened a 24 km long, winding and hilly, metre gauge railway from Walkenried via Wieda and Brunnenbachsmühle to Braunlage in the Harz Mountains of central Germany. On 1 November 1899 a 3 km extension for goods trains was opened to the Wurmberg mountain.

This article is about the narrow gauge operator and line. For standard gauge railway of the same name, see South Harz Railway.

Walkenried–Braunlage–Tanne
Technical
Track gauge	1000 mm
Minimum radius	60
Maximum incline	4,0  %
Route number	former 200 f (1962)
Route map Walkway to the South Harz line 0.0 Walkenried SHE 275 m Wieda 3.4 Wieda Süd (former Wieda match factory) 312 m 3.7 Match factory siding Wieda 5.2 Wieda 339 m 6.9 Wieda Smeltery 365 m 10.5 Stöberhai 463 m 16.0 Kaiser Way 592 m summit 607.5 m 20.3 0,0 Brunnenbachsmühle 531 m Schächerbach 24.3 Braunlage 548 m 25.8 Carton factory 27.6 Wurmberg 618 m Brunnenbach 3.7 Warme Bode, Lower Saxony–Saxony-Anhalt 4.7 Link to the Harz Railway from 1913 4.9 Harz Railway Nordhausen–Wernigerode 5.1 Sorge (upper stn / SHE) 486 m 7.3 Tanne Smeltery siding 8.5 Tanne 460 m Walkway to the Rübeland Railway

Share of the South Harz Railway Company, issued November 1926

From 24 August 1899 an 8 km line branched off in Brunnenbachsmühle that ran through Sorge to Tanne. It provided a link with the Harz Railway operated by the Nordhausen-Wernigerode Railway Company and the Harz line run by the Halberstadt-Blankenburg Railway. This branch was cut in 1945 by the border zone and services were interrupted.

The "main branch" was worked by passenger trains and railbuses until 30 September 1962. Goods trains stopped running on 3 August 1963; the Wurmberg line had not been worked since 1958. Its operator was the Hermann Bachstein Central Office for Branch Lines (Centralverwaltung für Secundairbahnen Herrmann Bachstein), which had purchased the majority of shares in the South Harz Railway Company shortly after its foundation and which was turned into a public limited company (GmbH) in 1965.

Sources

• Manfred Bornemann: Die Südharz-Eisenbahn. Verlag Ed. Piepersche Druckerei, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 1981
• Gerhard Zieglgänsberger, Hans Röper: Die Harzer Schmalspurbahnen. Transpress Verlag, Stuttgart 1999, ISBN 3-613-71103-6
• Wínfried Dörner: Die Südharz-Eisenbahn – eine Region und ihre Eisenbahn. Papierflieger Druck und Verlag, Clausthal-Zellerfeld 2007, ISBN 978-3-89720-929-9

External links

• Media related to South Harz Railway Company at Wikimedia Commons
• Information about the South Harz Railway Company and the present-day cycleway
• 1944 timetable
• Info at Harzlife – the online travel guide
• Locomotives of the SHE