The county town of Marienberg the remote Oberwesterwaldkreises had until the 1880s, no nearby train station. Only with the opening of the second section of the railway line Limburg-Altenkirchen was located near the county town, a rail connection. The section from Fehl -Ritzhausen to Marienberg was opened together with the Westerwaldquerbahn. [5]
Viaduct on the Nister
The rest of the track was a bit harder to set up. Due to unsuitable terrain near Erbach, the route could not just be led east of the Nister, but had to be built on the western slope of the river. In addition to the crossing of the railway line Limburg-Altenkirchen was a elfbogiges about 300 m long and about 40 m high concrete viaduct, then the largest of the German Empire, built in just six months construction period on the Nister. On August 31, 1911, the railway line was opened.
In 1957 the viaduct on the Nister was extensively renovated. [3] [2]
The traffic was quite active, in 1963 on weekdays ten train pairs, to each a train Erbach-Marienberg and Fehl-Ritzhausen- Marienberg, on Sundays run wrong train pairs. Railbuses were used.
On 26 September 1971, the passenger traffic was set on the entire route and the freight traffic between Marienberg and Fehl-Ritzhausen. On 1 July 1996, the remaining section, which until the end of 1994 [5] - although only sporadically - was still operated in freight traffic, shut down.
Source: Wikipedia