page_title: Aar Valley Railway
section_title: Passengers
hierarchical_section_title: Aar Valley Railway / Operations / Passengers
caption_attribution_description: 517 008 in Wiesbaden Hbf
context_page_description: The Aar Valley Railway is a 53.7 km long line between Wiesbaden, the capital of the German state of Hesse, and Diez in Rhineland-Palatinate. From 1985 to 2007, the southern end was operated as a heritage railway with historic trains. The Hessian part of the line is heritage-listed. Currently, two bridges are unusable and several sets of points are defective and need to be repaired. Its northern end is operated with draisines.
context_section_description: The southern section—known as the Langenschwalbacher Bahn (Langenschwalbach Railway)—was used in the Wilhelmine era especially for spa traffic between the world-famous spa of Wiesbaden and the women's spa of Langenschwalbach. Between them in Chausseehaus was a summer resort with hotel, restaurant and several rest homes. The steep and winding line through the Eiserne Hand gap required the development of a short carriages with bogies, which was known as a Langenschwalbacher. In 1892, the Langenschwalbach variant of the class T 9 tender locomotive was put into operation, since the slope was found to be too steep for the Prussian T 3 locomotives that were used originally.
  After the First World War, the Aar Valley Railway crossed at Laufenselden the Free State Bottleneck (Freistaat Flaschenhals), a strip of land between the American bridgehead of Koblenz and the French bridgehead at Mainz.
  After the Second World War, the line was cut between Zollhaus and Kettenbach by the border between the American and French occupation zone. Special passes were required to travel on the trains. Later this became the border between Hesse and Rhineland-Palatinate. From the 1960s on, this line was mainly served by accumulator railcars of class 517, known as Limburger Zigarre (Limburg cigars). In addition, the line was served by Silberling carriages, hauled by class 216 diesel locomotives. On 25 September 1983, the last scheduled passenger train ran between Wiesbaden and Bad Schwalbach. On 28 September 1986, the remaining northern section of the line was closed to traffic; at the end it was still used by Uerdingen railbuses.
  On 28 December 1985, the Nassauische Touristik-Bahn began operating tourist trains, hauled by steam and diesel locomotives. These trains were based in Dotzheim station and originally operated to Hahn-Wehen. From 28 March 1991, was the line was extended to Bad Schwalbach and from 29 April 1994 to Hohenstein. The operation stopped in May 2007 when a bridge was damaged by the collision of a road vehicle and because of several defective sets of points.
caption: "Limburg cigar" in Wiesbaden Central Station
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