Bad Doberan (dpa / mv) – The route extension for the Molli baths railway, which is particularly popular with tourists, is off the table. The district council of the district of Rostock spoke out on Wednesday evening after a sometimes controversial debate with a large majority against further plans for the extension of the tracks to Rerik in the west and Warnemünde in the east. District Administrator Sebastian Constien (SPD) then announced the end of the multi-million dollar project. “With the negative vote of the district council, I will no longer pursue the topic of extending the route in the shareholders’ meeting,” he said as its chairman. The district is the majority shareholder of the Mecklenburg Baederbahn Molli GmbH.
A feasibility study commissioned by the University of Dresden in 2019 came to the conclusion that the number of passengers could be doubled by expanding the line for the historic narrow-gauge railway. So far, the train has operated between Kuehlungsborn and Bad Doberan and is particularly well used in the summer months.
The plans to carry out further investigations and preparatory work for the expansion of the route for around 150,000 euros, provided by the Bäderbahn GmbH itself, found only a few supporters in the district council. Several speakers pointed out that the construction costs, estimated at over 100 million euros, would overwhelm the district. An application to first explore funding opportunities at the state, federal and EU levels also fell through. The same applied to the Economic Affairs Committee’s proposal to postpone the vote.
Molli boss Michael Mißlitz had also promoted an extension of the route with a view to climate protection. In this way, more people in the tourist region could be persuaded to take the train instead of taking their car, he argued. At the beginning of September, attention was drawn to the project with a steam locomotive from the Molli baths railway on the promenade in Rostock-Warnemünde.
