User:Lenn2105/Nördlingen–Dombühl railway

The Nördlingen-Dombühl railway, also known as the Hesselberg Railway (Hesselbergbahn), is a partially disused 54.441 kilometer long single-track, non-electrified branch line in the Bavarian administrative districts of Swabia and Middle Franconia. A reactivation of the disused section is planned.

Conditions
As early as 1857, the towns of Feuchtwangen and Herrieden made a written request to the Bavarian Parliament for a connection to the railroad network. A route from Ansbach via Herrieden and Feuchtwangen to Crailsheim was envisaged. However, the geological conditions made this route too costly. From the state side, due to existing terrain advantages, the connection from Ansbach to Crailsheim with the construction of a route via Leutershausen and Dombühl was advocated, which was later executed. The draft of another petition for the construction of a railroad to King Ludwig II is in the Feuchtwangen city archives.

The leasehold railway system had proved unsuitable since the 1860s at the latest, as no surpluses covering the lease were generated (Ansbach-Gunzenhausen line, opened on July 1, 1859). The government therefore rejected all applications from 1864 onward and referred to the existing regulations for the construction of vicinal roads. The law on the construction and operation of railway lines of minor importance of 29 April 1869 stipulated the construction of ten new state railway lines and was intended to promote the branch lines as a supplement to the Bavarian railway network. To this end, the state approved the substantial sum of 157,714,000 marks for ten railway lines to be built immediately. In terms of both the number of railways and the size of the construction sum, this law was the most important ever passed in Bavaria for railways.

The characteristic feature of the vicinal railway was that the financing of land acquisition and substructure did not lie with the state, but had to be provided by the neighbouring communities. The Royal Bavarian State Railways built the superstructure and operated the railway. The Vicinal Railway Law of 1869 specified Dombühl station as the starting point for the branch line to Feuchtwangen. The line from Wassertrüdingen to Dinkelsbühl (later with the starting point at Nördlingen instead of Wassertrüdingen) was laid down in the extension of the Vicinal Railway Act. Technically, the standards for main lines were prescribed.