Hespertalbahn

Updated: August 2026 – The Ruhr area once had more works track than state railway lines. Almost all of it has disappeared. The Hespertalbahn is one of the few pieces that survived: an old colliery railway in Essen-Kupferdreh, today a heritage line a few kilometres long, right on the shore of Lake Baldeney.

Record industrial locomotives properly

Works number instead of class – record what's actually written on the vehicle, not what you assume.

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A railway built for coal

This line’s origin isn’t transport planning, it’s a transport need. Mines needed a way to get their coal to the nearest connection, and built that route themselves. Railways like these, known as colliery railways, belonged to the mine, had their own vehicles, their own staff, and were never listed in the national rail guide.

That explains its route. The alignment follows the terrain and the former operating points, not a line between two towns. Anyone riding along Lake Baldeney today is riding on a 19th-century logistics solution – the recreational landscape only came along much later.

Which vehicles you’ll see here

Heritage railways with a works railway past have a different fleet from branch line operations. Typical are shunting and industrial locomotives: short, heavy, with high tractive effort at low speed. They had to move loaded coal wagons over a few kilometres, not passenger trains across the countryside.

Such machines often carry builder’s plates instead of class numbers – names like Henschel, Krupp, Deutz or MaK. If you want to document them, note the manufacturer, type and works number. Alongside them, from state railway stocks, come shunters from the V 60 family and railcars like the Uerdinger railbus, which manages short lines without a locomotive change.

For steam, the historic freight classes of the Prussian era are the ones that worked the region – types such as the Class 55 represent that era. Which machine actually runs on a given running day depends on maintenance schedules, workshop status and staff.

Why works railways are identified differently

For a state railway vehicle, the class gives you a rough placement, and the twelve-digit vehicle number makes it unambiguous. For an industrial locomotive, that approach doesn’t work. It was never part of a national numbering system, but instead carried an operating number from the mine or industrial company – often just a one- or two-digit number that turned up again at every other works.

Such a machine only becomes unambiguous through the builder’s plate: manufacturer’s name, type designation, works number, year built. That combination stays valid even if the locomotive changes owner, gets repainted or renamed. That’s exactly why a close-up of the plate is the most important shot of the day at heritage railways with an industrial past.

In practice, that means: note down what you read, not what you assume. If a plate is missing or illegible, record that too. An honest gap in your documentation is better than an invented number that nobody can correct later – and for vehicles that have passed through several club collections, that happens more often than you’d think.

Heritage railways in the Ruhr area: what fits together

Hardly any other region has so many heritage railway sites packed so closely together. That makes combined tours realistic – provided the dates line up.

Document a combined tour in the region

Several heritage railways in one day – keep track of which vehicle you saw where.

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Photographing a short heritage line

Does the Hespertalbahn fit your day?

What the association-run operation means

It’s run by a registered association, and that shapes every aspect. The association maintains not just the vehicles but also the line itself: track, vegetation, level crossings, signalling. At a heritage railway with its own infrastructure, that’s a significant share of the effort visitors never see.

That sets the order of priorities. First the line has to be fit to run on, then a vehicle has to be available, then staff. If any one of those falls through, the running day is cancelled. That’s not an organisational failure, it’s the reality of an operation funded entirely by spare time and donations.

For you, that mainly means one thing: check the date, and expect short-notice changes. If you’re out in the region, you have the advantage that an alternative destination is rarely far away – further sites nearby are collected in the spotting guide for Essen.

Verdict

The Hespertalbahn is not a big heritage railway, and it doesn’t try to be. Its value lies in where it came from: it preserves a piece of mining logistics that was once ubiquitous in the Ruhr area and has now almost entirely disappeared.

If you go with that expectation, you get a compact, easy-to-reach heritage line with a lakeside setting found nowhere else in the region. And if you want to extend the day, the next destination is only thirty minutes away.

Record your Ruhr area tour

Works number, location and date – that way even a small heritage railway stays properly documented.

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