Successful Morning at Staatsarchiv Ludwigsburg

[ Murrbahn posts ]

My first visit to the reading room at the Staatsarchiv (state archives) in Ludwigsburg. Since the archives moved into the renovated Arsenalskaserne many years ago, I was curious what kind of stuff you could find in an archive.
The Landesarchiv holds documents of government business from the early 1800's to the 2000's for the state of Wuerttemberg, and Baden-Wuerttemberg after the unification of Baden and Wuerttemberg. I had no idea how easy it is to get access, how helpful the staff is, and what treasures can be found there. A large part of the research consists of figuring out what documents one wants to read. The index is available for querying online. Once the archive identifier of a set of documents is known, it can be ordered for delivery to the reading room.

Since most railroad lines in Germany were government-owned and operated by Reichsbahn or Deutsche Bundesbahn (now privatized to Deutsche Bahn), one can find many documents that are useful for model railroaders (track plans, technical, and civil engineering documents, building documents, etc). Many building plans are even available online.

Detail from a track plan

While digging through the index, the large collection from the estate of Hans Noller covering many railroad lines in Baden-Wuerttemberg caught my eye. I got lost in the station track plans of various railroad stations on the Murrbahn. The amount of detail varies by plan, but is so much fun to go through. There's so much more waiting, I need to schedule more time ...