Ammersee Railway

Ammersee Railway
A LINT train near Utting in 2013
Overview
Other name(s)	Mering–Weilheim Railway
Native name	Ammerseebahn
Type	Heavy rail, Passenger rail Regional rail
Status	Operational
Locale	Bavaria
Termini	Mering Weilheim
Stations	14
Line number	5370
Operation
Opened	1898
Owner	Deutsche Bahn
Operator(s)	Bayerische Regiobahn
Technical
Line length	54.6 km (33.9 mi)
Number of tracks	Single track
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Electrification	15 kV/16.7 Hz AC Overhead line (Mering–Geltendorf)
Route number	985
Route map from Augsburg 0.0 Mering to Munich Paar 2.6 Merching 6.3 Schmiechen (Oberbay) 8.9 Egling Paar 11.4 Wabern(closed 1962) 14.0 Walleshausen Paar 17.2 Kaltenberg(closed 1985) from Lindau 21.3 Geltendorfterminus to Munich 23.0 St. Ottilien 26.2 Greifenberg (Oberbay)(closed 1984) 27.9 Theresienbad(closed 1964) 29.8 Schondorf (Bay) 33.2 Utting 37.9 Bk Riederau 39.8 St. Alban(reopened in 2006) 41.6 Dießen 46.0 Raisting(former station) Crossing of the Ammer 51.2 Wielenbach(closed 1983) from Munich 54.6 Weilheim (Oberbay) to Schongau to Garmisch-Partenkirchen

The Ammersee Railway (German: Ammerseebahn) is a 54 km long single-tracked main line in the provinces of Swabia and Upper Bavaria in southern Germany. It runs from Mering near Augsburg via Geltendorf to Weilheim and is listed by the Deutsche Bahn as Kursbuchstrecke 985.

The Mering–Geltendorf–Schondorf (29.77 km) and Weilheim–Dießen (13.07 km) sections were the first to be constructed. They were built by the Augsburg railway division of the Royal Bavarian State Railways and were completed simultaneously on 30 June 1898. The intervening 18.36 km section from Dießen to Schondorf was finished on 24 December 1898.

The line was electrified between Mering and Geltendorf from 7 September 1970 in order to provide a diversionary line for the heavily trafficked trunk route from Augsburg to Munich, the Geltendorf–Munich-Passing having been electrified two years earlier.

Nowadays the Ammersee Railway in only of regional importance. Trains run hourly from Augsburg-Oberhausen via Weilheim to Schongau and back. Until the early 1990s there were still long-distance trains (the FD-Züge) on the line that did not take the 'bypass' via Munich on their way from the north of Germany to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, but went directly from Augsburg along the Ammersee Railway to Weilheim. One curious aspect was the mode of operation on the non-electrified section from Geltendorf to Weilheim. A diesel engine was hooked up to the train in Geltendorf or Weilheim and the electric locomotive was hauled along with its pantographs lowered.