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A Heeresfeldbahn is a German or Austrian military field railway (in Austria also called a Rollbahn). They were field railways ( Feldbahnen ) designed for the military transportation purposes.
As railways developed during the 19th century, the military also discovered the utility of this new mode of transport. In stark contrast to the rudimentary road network of the time, the railways could transport large quantities of supplies, heavy equipment and troops rapidly and efficiently. For operations to the front lines the military developed its own system of field railways ( Feldbahnen ), usually built to a narrow gauge. In addition to the general advantages of narrow gauge railways - they took up less space and could have tighter curves, for example - narrow gauge vehicles and track were more easily transportable and could be quickly moved to conform as the location of the front line changed.
Unlike road transportation, the establishment of a Heeresfeldbahn required the construction of expensive and time-consuming railway infrastructure (albeit of simpler design than conventional railways). They were built by specialist troops trained by the military, known as Eisenbahnpioniere . As a war progressed prisoners of war were also employed. The Heeresfeldbahn is tied to this fixed infrastructure; under artillery bombardment or other acts of war it is not flexible enough compared with lorry transport. A Heeresfeldbahn can also be quickly captured and used by an army's opponents. This could become a major disadvantage if the army has to retreat and is unable to lift or destroy the railway quickly enough.
Due to these disadvantages, the Heeresfeldbahn completely lost its importance in the second half of the 20th century and was replaced by road vehicles which were now more technically advanced, cross-country capable and did not require specially trained crews. In particularly difficult terrain, air transportation is now also used (especially helicopters). The use of military railways is now largely restricted to internal transportation functions on large military sites, e.g. for transportation at munitions depots. In addition there are Feldbahnen on some military training areas e.g. large targets may be mounted on tipper trucks that are hauled by motorised locomotives as mobile targets for live firing exercises.
In addition to the typical tasks of military field railways in war itself, they were also sometimes used for civilian tasks once the war was over or their military function was finished. Such duties were occasionally carried out by military units and sometimes they built long access lines. For example, in the 1870s, when the Imperial and Royal Military Railway built a supply line from Bosnian Brod to Zenica in Bosnia was quickly expanded into a fully operational narrow gauge railway for general use, thus founding the extensive railway network built to the so-called Bosnian gauge of 760 mm (2 ft 5+15⁄16 in). Even after the First World War, when the Heeresfeldbahnen were used very widely, a number of routes were used for public transport. For example, the Grödnerbahn in Tyrol, now in South Tyrol - Alto Adige in Italy was built with 760 mm gauge, like the Fleimstalbahn - Ferrovia della Val di Fiemme, as a supply line to the Dolomite front. The narrow gauge Ohrid line from Skopje to Ohrid in Macedonia, over 200 km (120 mi) long with a gauge of 600 mm (1 ft 11+5⁄8 in), was originally a military railway of this type.
Transportable Feldbahn track materiel, locomotives and wagons were often sold to civilian companies after the cessation of hostilities and the politically driven disbandment of the troops responsible for them. This materiel was occasionally still in use for decades after the war's end. For example, in some peat works today there are still track sections from the Imperial Austrian Military Railway to be found and in Feldbahn museums there is a variety of steel relics to be seen.
Usually special rolling stock was developed for Heeresfeldbahnen. Their locomotives, the so-called Heeresfeldbahnlokomotiven (lit: army field railway locomotives) or Brigadelok were characterised by their simple, rugged design, their ability to negotiate very tight curve radii and travel over extremely poor-quality trackbeds safely. These design features also made them interesting for civilian uses such as the forest railways (Waldbahnen) used in forestry or on civilian field railways ( Feldbahnen ).
A special type of Heeresfeldbahn is the Kasemattenbahn (lit: casemate railway), specifically for use in fortified military installations. It is usually used to ensure a reliable and copious provision of supplies inside the narrow passages of casemates. They are found, for example, on the Atlantic Wall, the fortified installations in the Ardennes and in fortified British harbours.
A narrow-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge narrower than standard 1,435 mm. Most narrow-gauge railways are between 600 mm and 1,067 mm.
A light railway is a railway built at lower costs and to lower standards than typical "heavy rail": it uses lighter-weight track, and may have more steep gradients and tight curves to reduce civil engineering costs. These lighter standards allow lower costs of operation, at the price of lower vehicle capacity.
The War Department Light Railways were a system of narrow gauge trench railways run by the British War Department in World War I. Light railways made an important contribution to the Allied war effort in the First World War, and were used for the supply of ammunition and stores, the transport of troops and the evacuation of the wounded.
Decauville was a manufacturing company which was founded by Paul Decauville (1846–1922), a French pioneer in industrial railways. Decauville's major innovation was the use of ready-made sections of light, narrow gauge track fastened to steel sleepers; this track was portable and could be disassembled and transported very easily.
A Feldbahn, or Lorenbahn, is the German term for a narrow-gauge field railway, usually not open to the public, which in its simplest form provides for the transportation of agricultural, forestry and industrial raw materials such as wood, peat, stone, earth and sand. Such goods are often transported in tipper wagons, known in German as Loren, hence such a railway is also referred to as a Lorenbahn.
Trench railways represented military adaptation of early 20th-century railway technology to the problem of keeping soldiers supplied during the static trench warfare phase of World War I. The large concentrations of soldiers and artillery at the front lines required delivery of enormous quantities of food, ammunition and fortification construction materials where transport facilities had been destroyed. Reconstruction of conventional roads and railways was too slow, and fixed facilities were attractive targets for enemy artillery. Trench railways linked the front with standard gauge railway facilities beyond the range of enemy artillery. Empty cars often carried litters returning wounded from the front.
The military use of railways derives from their ability to move troops or materiel rapidly and, less usually, on their use as a platform for military systems, like very large railroad guns and armoured trains, in their own right. Railways have been employed for military purposes in wartime since the Revolutions of 1848. Improvements in other forms of transport have rendered railways less important to the military since the end of World War II and the Cold War, although they are still employed for the transport of armoured vehicles to and from exercises or the mass transport of vehicles to a theatre of operations. The US Air Force developed the Peacekeeper Rail Garrison mobile ICBM in the 1980s, but it never reached operational status.
The German narrow gauge steam locomotives of military field railway (Heeresfeldbahn) class HF 160 D were 0-8-0 tender locomotives developed for wartime service during the Second World War. The engines were also classified as Kriegsdampflokomotive 11 or KDL 11. After the war the locomotives were put to use for civilian purposes.
A forest railway, forest tram, timber line, logging railway or logging railroad is a mode of railway transport which is used for forestry tasks, primarily the transportation of felled logs to sawmills or railway stations.
Weesen is a village belonging to the municipality (Einheitsgemeinde) of Südheide in the north of Celle district in Germany. It lies within the Südheide Nature Park, on the Lüneburg Heath, about 1 km east of Hermannsburg and currently has around 520 inhabitants. Until its incorporation into Hermannsburg as part of the Lower Saxon regional and administrative reforms in 1973, Weesen belonged to the largest municipality in Lower Saxony by area. A stream, the Weesener Bach, flows through the village which, since 1999, has been placed under conservation protection along its entire length. On several of the farms there are still old Treppenspeicher storage barns from the 19th century.
The South West African Zwillinge 0-6-0T of 1898 was a narrow gauge steam locomotive from the German South West Africa era.
Bosnian-gauge railways are railways with track gauge of 760 mm. These were found extensively in the former Austro-Hungarian Empire as a standardised form of narrow gauge. The name is also used for lines of the same gauge outside Bosnia, for example in Austria. Similar track gauges are the 2 ft 6 in and 750 mm gauge.
The HK 94–100 is a series of four-axled, German Mallet locomotives with a 1,000 mm track gauge.
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The Geriatriezentrum Am Wienerwald Feldbahn was a 500 mm minimum gauge railway constructed in 1904 at the premises of the former nursing home Lainz in the 13th District of Vienna, Hietzing. Until its closure in 2011 it was the oldest feldbahn in use in Austria.
The Ohrid line was a narrow gauge railway line in what is now the Republic of North Macedonia. It ran to a gauge of 600 mm.
H0f gauge is a rail transport modelling scale representing Feldbahn-style 2 ft and 600 mm gauge railways using 1:87 HO scale running on Z gauge 6.5-millimetre (0.26 in) track. The Normen Europäischer Modellbahnen NEM 010 specification defines H0f for modelling gauges 400–650 millimetres (16–26 in), as part of the 1:87-scale family that includes narrow-gauge railway models using H0e gauge and metre-gauge railway models using H0m gauge.
The Elsenborn Camp Railway was a 3.2 km (2.0 mi) long 600 mm gauge railway line which connected the Elsenborn Camp near Elsenborn with Sourbrodt railway station on the standard gauge Vennbahn in Belgium from 1901 to 1939.
The Ivanychi light railway was an approximately 95 km (59 mi) long light railway with a track gauge of 600 mm from Ivanychi via Pavlivka, Rachyn, Horokhiv, Stoianiv and Tartakiv to Sokal in Volhynia, which operated in parts at least from 1915 to 1928.
The Iwanowo light railway was an approximately 170 km (110 mi) long military light railway with a track gauge of 600 mm from Ivatsevichy via Iwanowo to Kamin-Kashyrskyi with two branch lines to the area west of Pinsk.