Neumünster–Ascheberg railway

Neumünster–Ascheberg (Holst)
Map of the Neumünster–Ascheberg line (about 1908)
Line length:	26
Track gauge:	1435
From Hamburg and Bad Oldesloe 74.7 Neumünster To Kiel, Heide and Flensburg Neumag private siding Stadtwerke Neumünster private siding Current end of the line Nordfaser private siding Dosenbek 83.8 Bokhorst 89.7 Wankendorf Former bridge of the Kiel-Segeberg Light Railway A 21 Former bridge over the Perdöler Weg Alte Schwentine 93.5 Perdoel 96.0 Kalübbe Former bridge over the Bundhorster Chaussee From Kiel 100.1 Ascheberg (Holst) To Lübeck

The Neumünster–Ascheberg railway runs from the mid Holstein city of Neumünster east to Ascheberg near Plön in the German state of Schleswig-Holstein. The 26 kilometre line is currently closed, although there is a campaign to reopen it.

The line runs in the west through the flat, mostly agricultural landscape known as geest. In the east it reaches Holstein Switzerland, which is dominated by lakes and terminal moraines.

The Neumünster–Ascheberg–Eutin–Neustadt line was opened on 31 May 1866. The line was operated by the Altona-Kiel Railway Company (German: Altona-Kieler Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, AKE), which was nationalised in 1884. In railway timetables, the line was soon shown in three sections. From Ascheberg to Eutin it was considered part of the Kiel–Lübeck railway. The easternmost section from Eutin to Neustadt was now managed as a separate line (the Eutin–Neustadt railway).

From 1912 to 1961 the line was crossed on a bridge by the Kiel-Segeberg Light Railway (Kleinbahn Kiel–Segeberg) in Wankendorf. The lines were not connected.

The line was operated almost continuously with both passenger and freight traffic. The longest passenger services operated from the 1950s to the 1970s as a single daily pair of services between Büsum and Eutin and later between Heide and Neustadt. Both routes crossed almost the full width of Schleswig-Holstein. In the 1970s, these fast passenger trains were operated mostly with class 515 accumulator railcars. They stopped between Neumünster and Ascheberg only in Wankendorf and recorded a travel time of 20 minutes on this section, while the local trains took about 28 minutes. These trains mostly ran as railcars, but some were locomotive-hauled. Some passenger trains were bound for places off the main route.

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