The Darmstadt-Kranichstein Railway Museum (''Eisenbahnmuseum Darmstadt-Kranichstein'') is a railway museum in the German city of

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it the ...

. It is also the largest railway museum in the state of

Hesse Hesse or Hessen ( ), officially the State of Hesse (), is a States of Germany, state in Germany. Its capital city is Wiesbaden, and the largest urban area is Frankfurt, which is also the country's principal financial centre. Two other major hist ...

. The former

railway depot A motive power depot (MPD) or locomotive depot, or traction maintenance depot (TMD), is where locomotives are usually housed, repaired and maintained. They were originally known as "running sheds", "engine sheds" or just "sheds". Facilit ...

(''Bahnbetriebswerk'' or ''BW'') includes a

locomotive shed A motive power depot (MPD) or locomotive depot, or traction maintenance depot (TMD), is where locomotives are usually housed, repaired and maintained. They were originally known as "running sheds", "engine sheds" or just "sheds". Facilit ...

turntable A phonograph, later called a gramophone, and since the 1940s a record player, or more recently a turntable, is a device for the mechanical and analogue reproduction of sound. The sound vibration waveforms are recorded as corresponding phys ...

, coal bunkers and other locomotive facilities. There is also an adjoining repair shop (''Ausbesserungswerk''), where major repairs can be carried out. The depot is located on the Rhine-Main line from

Aschaffenburg Aschaffenburg (; Hessian: ''Aschebersch'', ) is a town in northwest Bavaria, Germany. The town of Aschaffenburg, despite being its administrative seat, is not part of the district of Aschaffenburg. Aschaffenburg belonged to the Archbishopric ...

. It was established in 1898 by the United Prussian and Hessian State Railways and opened as a railway museum on 29 May 1976 when the site was leased from the

Deutsche Bundesbahn Deutsche Bundesbahn (, ) or DB () was formed as the state railway of the newly established West Germany (FRG) on 7 September 1949 as a successor of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG). The DB remained the state railway of West Germany u ...

to the board of trustees of the museum railway. A large collection of locomotives may be viewed in the museum, such as the still-operational DRG 23 042, 01 1056, 41 024 and 44 404 steam engines,

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, Fuel oil, oil or, rarely, Wood fuel, wood) to heat ...

4981 "Mainz", (a

Prussian G 8 The Prussian Class G 8 locomotives were eight-coupled, superheated, freight locomotives operated by the Prussian state railways. There were two variants: the G 8 built from 1902 with a 14 tonne axle load and the "reinforced G 8" (''verstärkte G 8 ...

) that was transferred from

Turkey Turkey, officially the Republic of Türkiye, is a country mainly located in Anatolia in West Asia, with a relatively small part called East Thrace in Southeast Europe. It borders the Black Sea to the north; Georgia (country), Georgia, Armen ...

, the Austrian locomotive ÖBB 97 210, a rack railway steam engine from the

Erzberg The Ennstal Alps (German ''Ennstaler Alpen''), the Alps of the Enns valley, are a mountain range of the Northern Limestone Alps System. They are located primarily in the Austrian state of Styria, and also into the state of Upper Austria. The most ...

railway, the DB locomotive number 103 101-2 and the DRG E 16 08 electric engine, several DB Class V 36 diesel locomotives, a Wismar Railbus and a host of other railway vehicles, including several ''Culemeyer'' heavy trailers. The large vehicle fleet cannot be visited at present. In the meantime, however, there are exhibits to aid technical understanding, such as the sectioned boiler of

Deutsche Reichsbahn The ''Deutsche Reichsbahn'' (), also known as the German National Railway, the German State Railway, German Reich Railway, and the German Imperial Railway, was the Weimar Republic, German national Rail transport, railway system created after th ...

steam engine number 50 1397, and the driver's cab of 50 1745; as well as a signalling collection with historical signals and

signal box A signal is both the process and the result of transmission of data over some media accomplished by embedding some variation. Signals are important in multiple subject fields including signal processing, information theory and biology. In ...

equipment. In addition, the evolution of fare tickets over the years is portrayed, from manually produced examples from the early years to the present-day computer printouts, as well as their related equipment. The museum also has its own ticket-printing press. An H0-

model railway Railway modelling (UK, Australia, New Zealand, and Ireland) or model railroading (US and Canada) is a hobby in which rail transport systems are Model building, modelled at a reduced Scale (ratio), scale. The scale models include locomotives ...

layout depicts Darmstadt station on the Main-Neckar line at the time the route was opened. Special train services visit the museum several times a year, running between Darmstadt Ost and Bessunger Forst.160 Several vehicles, e. g. the 23 042 and the G8 4981 "Mainz" haul specials throughout the whole of Germany. The vehicles are run by the

German Museum The Deutsches Museum (''German Museum'', officially (English: ''German Museum of Masterpieces of Science and Technology'')) in Munich, Germany, is the world's largest museum of science museum, science and technology museum, technology, with a ...

Railway GmbH (DME) as the operating company. (''Deutsche Museums-Eisenbahn'') GmbH (DME).

References

Literature

* Uwe Breitmeier, ''Rückkehr aus dem Morgenland: die abenteuerliche Reise einer preußischen Dampflok'', Transpress Verlag, Stuttgart 1997,

*Uwe Breitmeier, ''Das Eisenbahnmuseum Darmstadt-Kranichstein'', Eigenverlag

External links

Website of the museum
{{authority control Railway museums in Germany Transport in Hesse Deutsche Bahn Museums in Darmstadt