Nassauische Touristenbahn e.V.

Updated: August 2026 – Between Wiesbaden and the Lahn valley lies a railway line that arguably shouldn’t still exist: a branch-line route surviving continuously over a great length, with no scheduled traffic. The Nassauische Touristenbahn runs heritage services there – and alongside that does the work without which such a route would vanish under vegetation within a few years.

Log trips on lines with no regular service

Vehicle, place and date recorded in seconds – with sections that change, that's your only reliable reference later.

4.8(23 ratings) 4.4(35 ratings)

What makes the Aartalbahn unusual

Most disused branch lines in Germany have vanished: dismantled, built over, turned into cycle paths. The Aartalbahn is one of the exceptions. Its route has survived continuously over a considerable length, complete with station buildings, outbuildings and engineering structures – a condition barely found on active lines any more, since almost everything there has been modernised in recent decades.

What it isn’t: a continuously operated railway. Scheduled local services have been gone for decades, and the runnable extent has shifted repeatedly over the years. That’s exactly where the difficulty lies for any description: what’s true today can be wrong in two years.

Everything “disused” can mean

On lines like this, one term is constantly misused. Between a line with no timetable and a dismantled line lie several states that mean completely different things operationally and legally.

The practical point: even a route with no visible traffic almost always remains railway land. Anyone stepping onto it because “nothing runs here anyway” is wrong, both operationally and legally.

Maintaining the route is more work than running it

At most heritage railways, running operations are the biggest item of effort. On a long branch-line route, it’s line maintenance. Vegetation grows fast, and a railway line with no regular traffic becomes unusable within a few years. On top of that come level crossings, drainage, bridge structures and safety systems – all tasks that arise even when not a single train runs.

That’s why a society like this ties up a large part of its volunteer effort in work no visitor ever sees. Anyone wondering why so little runs on such a long line finds the answer here. At shorter operations such as the Hessencourrier, the ratio of maintenance to running operations is different.

Which vehicles you can expect to see here

Heritage services on branch lines of this size run on diesel. Two-axle Uerdinger railbuses shape the picture, built for exactly this kind of line: low axle load, minimal crew needs, a short unit. For locomotive-hauled trains, machines of the V 100 class and small locomotives of the V-60 family come into play.

It’s worth comparing this with what runs a few kilometres away in regular service. On the region’s active lines, modern diesel railcars define the picture, while on the Aartalbahn stand vehicles long since withdrawn elsewhere. Older DB railcars such as the Class 628 mark the transition between the two worlds.

We don’t name individual vehicle numbers here. At societies, fleets change through hire, overhaul cycles and restoration work – if you need one for your logbook, read it off the vehicle itself.

Photographing on a line with no regular service

The big advantage is calm: no clock-face service gets in the way, no other train sits in the shot at the crucial moment. The heritage train has no competition on its running day, and you can concentrate on it entirely.

There are two downsides. First, the narrow, wooded valley limits the number of usable locations considerably – open sightlines are scarce, and where one exists it’s often already in the slope’s shadow by the afternoon. Second, opportunities are few: if a shot fails, you don’t wait ten minutes but until the next date. Anyone dealing with that works with prepared locations and test shots rather than improvising on site – the heritage railway guide covers how to prepare.

Track rare workings in the Rhine-Main area

With the Traintrack app you can see what others are reporting about heritage and special trains in the region.

4.8(23 ratings) 4.4(35 ratings)

Does this suit what you’re after?

For vehicle variety on the same day, the distance is short: Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof delivers more classes in an hour than the Aartalbahn does in a season, and the Middle Rhine valley at Boppard adds freight traffic in dense succession.

Verdict

The Nassauische Touristenbahn is an unusual case among Germany’s heritage railways. It doesn’t run on a short surviving remnant but keeps a long branch-line route open whose future has been disputed for decades – with an effort that mostly falls outside the running operation itself.

For spotters that means: the visit needs preparing, and the most important piece of information isn’t the timetable but the operating status. Anyone who checks that beforehand, calculates the light window in the valley and treats the preserved railway installations as a subject in their own right gets something here that barely exists any more in Germany’s railway scene.

Dated sightings beat old route maps

Where the operating extent keeps changing, your own logbook is the most reliable source.

4.8(23 ratings) 4.4(35 ratings)