The Eis Valley Railway () is a

branch line A branch line is a secondary railway line which branches off a more important through route, usually a main line. A very short branch line may be called a spur line. Branch lines may serve one or more industries, or a city or town not located ...

in the German state of

Rhineland-Palatinate Rhineland-Palatinate ( , ; ; ; ) is a western state of Germany. It covers and has about 4.05 million residents. It is the ninth largest and sixth most populous of the sixteen states. Mainz is the capital and largest city. Other cities are ...

, that runs through the

Palatine Forest The Palatinate Forest (; ), sometimes also called the Palatine Forest, is a low-mountain region in southwestern Germany, located in the Palatinate in the state of Rhineland-Palatinate. The forest is a designated nature park () covering 1,771&n ...

. It runs from

Grünstadt Grünstadt () is a town in the Bad Dürkheim (district), Bad Dürkheim district in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany with roughly 13,200 inhabitants. It does not belong to any ''Verbandsgemeinde'' – a kind of collective municipality – but is noneth ...

in a southwesterly direction through the valley of the Eisbach (or "Eis") to Enkenbach. The section from Grünstadt to Eisenberg was opened as early as 1876 by the

Palatine Northern Railway Company The Palatine Northern Railways Company (''Gesellschaft der Pfälzischen Nordbahnen'') – abbreviated to Palatine Northern Railway (''Pfälzer Nordbahn'') - was founded on 17 April 1866 as the last of the three major private railway companies ...

. The

iron ore Iron ores are rocks and minerals from which metallic iron can be economically extracted. The ores are usually rich in iron oxides and vary in color from dark grey, bright yellow, or deep purple to rusty red. The iron is usually found in the f ...

industry in and around Eisenberg gave the line considerable importance for the transport of goods, whilst passenger services played a rather secondary role. The remaining stretch of line to Enkenbach was not completed until 1932 under the direction of the

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 ...

. After passenger services had been withdrawn in 1976, strategic considerations during the

Cold War The Cold War was a period of global Geopolitics, geopolitical rivalry between the United States (US) and the Soviet Union (USSR) and their respective allies, the capitalist Western Bloc and communist Eastern Bloc, which lasted from 1947 unt ...

prevented its complete closure. Goods traffic between Eisenberg and Enkenbach ended in 1988. In the period from 1994 to 2001 the line between Grünstadt and the Eiswoog reservoir was re-opened; the remaining section, however, stayed closed. Goods traffic ceased entirely in 2001.

Literature

* * *

References

External links

Infos zur Eistalbahn

Förderverein Eistalbahn e. V.

{{coord missing, Rhineland-Palatinate Transport in Rhineland-Palatinate Railway lines in Rhineland-Palatinate Palatinate Forest Donnersbergkreis Buildings and structures in Bad Dürkheim (district)