Narrow-gauge railways in Saxony

The narrow-gauge railways in Saxony were once the largest single-operator narrow-gauge railway network in Germany. At its peak shortly after World War I, the network had more than 500 km (311 mi) of tracks. At first, it was primarily created to connect the small towns and villages in Saxony – which had formed a viable industry in the 19th century – to already established standard-gauge railways. But even shortly after 1900, some of the railways would become important for tourism in the area.

Around 1875, the Royal Saxon State railway network, unlike other states in Germany, had already expanded to cover most of the territory of Saxony. Due to the mountainous terrain, any further expansion was met with a disproportional cost increase. In order to keep costs down, most new track projects were then planned and executed as branch lines, with smaller radii for curves, simpler operating rules and unsupervised stations and yards as the primary means to save costs. However, to connect the small towns and villages in the deep and narrow Ore Mountain valleys with their diverse industry, standard-gauge tracks were only feasible with an enormous amount of technical and financial investment. Therefore, the directorate of the Royal Saxon State Railways, given the example of the existing Bröl Valley Railway and Upper Silesian Railway, decided in favor of narrow-gauge railways.

The first narrow-gauge railway in Saxony opened in 1881 between Wilkau-Haßlau and Kirchberg. In addition, the Weißeritztalbahn and the Mügeln railway network were already under construction. Many additional narrow-gauge railways, such as the Thumer Netz, were built in short order, almost all of them using a standardized 750 mm (2 ft 5 ¹⁄₂ in) track gauge. In the meantime, standard-gauge projects in Saxony were scaled back to tracks that connected already existing standard-gauge railways, or where the transfer of goods between the standard and narrow tracks was not feasible or profitable.

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