Rheinisches Industriebahn Museum

In Cologne the Rheinische Industriebahn-Museum e. V. (RIM) preserves historic vehicles of the industrial railway sector and is dedicated to their research and documentation. The association was founded in 1987 and has been based since 1992 on the site of the former locomotive depot Köln-Nippes.

The locomotive depot was established in 1914 at the initiative of the Eisenbahndirektion Cöln and is one of the distinctive large railway buildings of the Prussian period in the Rhineland. Geographically the site lies in the district of Bilderstöckchen on the border with Longerich; the name Köln-Nippes, however, derives from its association with the marshalling yard Nippes, built between 1912 and 1914.

The museum collection comprises around 70 powered rail vehicles of various gauges (600 mm field railway and standard gauge) and types of propulsion, as they were used in mining, brickworks and other industrial sectors. The collection’s focal points are examples produced in Cologne and locomotives of the Arnold Jung Lokomotivfabrik aus Kirchen-Jungenthal, which shape the institution’s profile.

The history of the locomotive depot shows several phases of change: beginning with Prussian steam locomotives, with an extensive holdings of class G 8 in the 1930s, through the incorporation of captured foreign locomotives during the Second World War to the postwar period, in which freight steam and early diesel locomotives operated side by side. After a rebuild in 1957–1959 the works served as a base for diesel railcars; later diesel locomotives again predominated. The permanent allocation of steam locomotives ended in 1975; in the 1980s there was a larger stock of various diesel locomotive classes. The locomotive depot was dissolved in 1991. On the site a S-Bahn depot (2013) and an ICE depot, which entered service in 2018, were subsequently established.

Since 1992 the RIM and other associations have used parts of the former depot; the operator of the facility today is the Eisenbahn Museum Köln e. V. Several buildings, track installations and the former coaling plant have been listed as historic monuments since 1996. The tracks belonging to the protected site were taken over by Deutsche Bahn at the end of 2001 and are operated as a connection line under state regulations.