Railcar VT 1
Thomas Becker drove the first trains of the Wiehltalbahn's modern era together with Wilfried Müller on the 4th and 5th December 1999 and objected immediately if someone dared to call the railcars of the Rhine-Sieg-Railway "railbusses": "You are riding on a real railcar - this is not a railbus!". Both sides were to some extent correct, as the "Machine Works Augsburg-Nürnberg (MAN)" - like other manufacturers - used as many parts as possible from omnibus construction for the construction of their railcars during the 1950s. Their railcars also gave the feeling of being in an omnibus because of their large passenger compartments. On the other hand they differed a lot from the "classical" railcars of the DB that were manufactured during the same period: These already had fluorescent lights on the roof, while the DB ones had naked light bulbs like a pre-war tram. These ones also had single-axle bogies (see technical details below) for smoother running on curves, the others the normal rigid 4-wheel underframe.
One of the "classical", single-engined, original Dieringhausen railbusses - VT95 414 - has been conserved in the Dieringhausen Railway Museum (currently inoperative). But it was the MAN railcar that became the typical vehicle on the Wiehltalbahn.
Five years after the decommissioning of the line by DB we recommissioned the Wiehltalbahn in 1999 with railcars VT23 and VT25 of the Rhine-Sieg-Railway (RSE).
On 3rd of March, 2001, we got the RSE railcar VT7 from Bonn-Beuel to Wiehl. At first the WB WiehltalBahn GmbH leased it permanently and finally bought it.
With its modern painting - designed by the former Wiehltalbahn locomotive driver Dirk Wilkesmann - it became "the face" of the Wiehltalbahn. And its modern painting - picking up the Berg county colour cyan - seems to say: "Yes, I'm nearly 50 years old - but far from being put on the scrap heap!" - and we returned it to the Berg county.
Children especially love the open driver's cab. This way they can look ahead and watch the locomotive driver at work - where else can you do that?
Technical data:
| Running number: | VT1 |
|---|---|
| Type: | Railcar |
| Origin: |
Delivered to the Südwestdeutsche Eisenbahngesellschaft (SWEG) on 11-Nov-1966. Sold to the Rhine-Sieg-Railway Ltd. in 1998 as VT7. Deployed on the Wiehltalbahn since 3rd. March 2001 and sold to the WB WiehltalBahn GmbH for the Wiehl Valley Railway. In 2002/2003 general inspection at the Hochwaldbahn in Hermeskeil, re-painting in red-white-cyan and renumbering to VT1. 2011 general inspection in Dieringhausen by Wiehltalbahn / Rhine-Sieg-Railway. |
|
Owner: |
WB WiehltalBahn GmbH |
| InTheUpperBergCountySince: | 3rd.March 2001 |
|
Manufacturer: |
MAN |
| Year of manufacture: | 1966 |
|
Serial number: |
151 187 |
|
Axle arrangement: |
A`A` |
|
Max. speed: |
70 km/h (44 mph) |
|
Length overall: |
16,200 mm (53 ft. 2 ins.) |
|
Wheel base: |
9,000 mm (29 ft. 6 ins.) |
|
Number of seats: |
- (1st class) / 66 (2nd class) |
| Rated power: | 2 x 149 kW (2 x 200 hp) |
Specific technical characteristics of this type of vehicle are the single-axle bogies. While a car has a steered front axle, the axles of a two-axle rail vehicle normally are not steerable. As the wheels tend to bind in tight curves, two-axle rail vehicles normally are permitted a wheelbase of 4.5 m (14 ft. 9 ins) or in exceptional cases
6.0 m (19 ft 8 ins.) such as the Uerdingen railcar). MAN wanted to build a longer and more comfortable running two-axle railcar and so tested single axle swinging bogies. It turned out rather quickly that this technique offered surprisingly comfortable driving characteristics for two-axle vehicles with a long wheelbase - like our railcar on the curvaceous Wiehl valley.
For more details we recommend an detailed article in the "Lokrundschau (German)", as well as the book "Fahrzeugportrait MAN-Schienenbus" by Stephan Kuchinke (Transpress Verlag Stuttgart, 2002), which is also the source of some of the data used in this article.