Losheim railway and museum

Everything grinds to a halt if there are no viable roads or railways. The most important factor here is the return on investment. The small gauge railway belonging to the Wadern-Büschfelder Railway Company is a good example of this. It was opened in 1906 and closed down in 1987. Today it is used by the locomotives from the Losheim Railway Museum.

In 1906 a privately run company by the name of the "Merzig-Büschfelder Eisenbahngesellschaft" set up a narrow gauge railway to fill a gap in the railway network in the hilly countryside north-west of Saarbrücken. The 22 kilometre line between Merzig and Büschfeld connected the Saar valley with the Prims valley railway. At the time it was impossible to make a profit from railways in a hilly wooded region. There were just too many trees and too many obstacles. The most one could do was to build auxiliary railway tracks. There were further difficulties after the First World War when the line between Bachem and Losheim crossed the border to the Rhine province. At the end of the 1930s there were four steam locomotives running along the track. By 1961 there were still two diesel locomotives but for years the end had been nigh. In May 1962 passenger transport stopped completely. Goods traffic had already ceased in 1960. Between 1953 and 1987 the route was served by buses until official operations on the Merzig-Büschfeld line ceased completely.

Since 1982 a Museum train from Losheim has been driving along the remains of the Merzig-Büschfeld line. A supporting association keeps the steam and diesel locomotives in trim and, at regular intervals throughout the year, it offers two hour railway trips from Losheim to Merzig and back at a speed of 30 km an hour. From there it is only a small step into the history of the Merzig-Büschfeld railway as told by the Museum in photos, paintings and videos. Members of the Museum Railway Club maintain the wagons in the workshops, whilst the arts centre in the railway station is enlivened by music and cabaret shows. The two railway post wagons take visitors back to an age long before the era of SMS messages and e-mails, when sacks full of letters and postcards went clattering over the rails. All this and more can be experienced in the station at Losheim.