Trackbed of the former Kies-Feldbahn at Schönauer Lachen

The first detectable missions of this 800mm lane track date back to 1856. She was employed in the construction of today's Karl-Heine-Kanal. The wooden lorries procured for transport, which were pulled by horses, mastered the implementation of the earth masses. When the sewer construction site in 1888 came upon the mighty gravel layers of the Schönauer corridor, its further growth and development was always associated with the gravel quarrying. From then on, she took over all transport tasks between the gravel pits and the 1891 set up mortar plant. As early as 1896, electric locomotives replaced the horses as pulling means for the lorries. In 1902, the canal project was discontinued and the gravel pits expanded from the canal route in all directions. The bucket chain excavators procured from 1906 further increased the transport volume of the gravel track. New electric locomotives, from 1905 also steam locomotives were procured. After the compulsory expropriation of the gravel pits for the port construction in 1938, new pits were opened at Schönauer Park and the railway had to be re-routed for the most part. But especially after World War II, the railway had to prove its efficiency. The heavily destroyed Leipzig urgently needed the materials for reconstruction that were funded here. With four operated pits, 12km of route network and up to 35 locomotives and 700 tippers on two gauges (600 & 800mm) in 1960, the Lindenau gravel track reached its greatest extent.

Due to the exhaustion of the pits and the technological change in construction (prefabricated) began in 1965, the decline. So in 1965 the steam locomotive operation was discontinued, in 1967 the electric locomotive operation and also the up to then transport-determining mortar plant. With only three diesel locomotives operating between the Rückmarsdorf pit and the screening plant at the port, the train ran until its closure in May 1991.
Source: museumsfeldbahn.de/geschichte

Small trail along the track bed of the former gravel field railway.