Route
From Ludwigshafen to Schifferstadt the line runs directly toward the southwest, it then turns right and runs in a straight line until just before Neustadt-Böbig; it then leaves the Upper Rhine Plain and begins to climb the Haardt range. From there, it has the character of a mountain railway line.
After Neustadt an der Weinstraße it passes through the Palatinate Forest, running through 12 tunnels. First, it passes through the Wolfsberg Tunnel. After Lambrecht is the branch of the Cuckoo Railway (Kuckucksbähnel), which is a preserved railway running to Elmstein. Then, the line passes through more tunnels on the way to Kaiserslautern (Lichtensteiner-Kopf, Retschbach, Schoenberg-Langeck, Mainzer Berg, Gipp, Köpfle, Eisenkehl, Kehre, Schlossberg, Franzosenwoog and Heiligenberg tunnels). In the 33.5 km long section between Neustadt and Kaiserslautern the line climbs 109 metres.
A few kilometres west of Kaiserslautern, the line leaves the Palatinate Forest behind and runs almost straight through the West Palatinate lowland moor (Westpfälzische Moorniederung) through Landstuhl to Homburg.
After Homburg the line divides into two branches: one runs as a branch over the original line of the Ludwig railway via Bexbach to Neunkirchen (now called the Homburg–Neunkirchen railway) and the other runs through Sankt Ingbert to Saarbrücken. A junction after Homburg connects to the Blies Valley Railway.
The line then passes the former Limbach-Altstadt station, which was a customs post on the 19th century border of Bavaria and Prussia. It then crosses the Blies river, winds through the St. Ingbert-Kirkel forest to the densely populated valley of Rohrbach and continues to its finish in Saarbrücken.
Read more about this topic: Palatine Ludwig Railway
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