Rasender Roland

The Rasender Roland is a 750-millimetre steam railway that runs along the south-east corner of the island of Rügen, in the Baltic, and it has been doing the same job in the same way since the 1890s: carrying holidaymakers from the little planned town of Putbus out to the seaside resorts of Binz, Sellin, Baabe and Göhren.

It is 24.1 kilometres from end to end, it takes an hour and a quarter, and the line speed is 30 km/h. The island's nickname for it — Racing Roland — is a joke that has outlived everyone who made it.

What makes this one worth a day of anyone's holiday is not that it is preserved. It isn't. The Rügensche BäderBahn is a scheduled public railway with published fares, staffed ticket offices and a timetable that runs on the 24th of December as well as the 24th of July — and the operator puts steam locomotives on all of its regular passenger trains, every day, all year. The two diesels on the books shunt the yard at Putbus and work the standard-gauge branch. What arrives at your platform is a black tank engine with red rods and a rake of green wooden-bodied coaches.

How it got here

Prussia passed its Kleinbahngesetz — the light railways act — in 1892, and Rügen built about a hundred kilometres of 750-millimetre line in the seven years that followed. The stretch that survives opened in pieces as the resorts grew: Putbus to Binz on 22 July 1895, on to Sellin West in March 1896 and Sellin Ost that May, and finally down to Göhren on 13 October 1899.

Everything else went. Putbus to Altefähr closed in December 1967 and the rails were lifted; the rest of the island network followed in stages by 1970, and much of it has been ploughed back into fields. What was left survived because it happened to serve the four busiest beaches on Rügen. In 2008 it passed to the Eisenbahn-Bau- und Betriebsgesellschaft Pressnitztalbahn, a private operator from Saxony, which runs it under the Rügensche BäderBahn name — and which also works the standard-gauge line that brings you to Putbus in the first place.

The one modern addition runs the other way. Since 28 May 1999 the narrow gauge has been able to carry on past Putbus down to the harbour at Lauterbach Mole, sharing the standard-gauge branch on a three-rail track with a third rail laid inside the other two. That extension is a summer arrangement: in winter the Roland's timetable stops at Putbus.

The ride divides cleanly in three: fields, forest, and then the sea.

Putbus to Binz — across the fields

Putbus is the operating centre and the place to start. The narrow-gauge platforms sit alongside the standard-gauge ones, so the change from the main line is made on foot in a couple of minutes, and the yard beyond the station is where the locomotives live. If a train is being prepared you will hear it before you see it.

From there the line runs east across the middle of the island through Beuchow, Posewald, Seelvitz and Serams — all four of them request stops, all four little more than a nameboard and a strip of platform among arable fields and low hills. This is the flat part, and the part where the engine is doing least, so it is the stretch on which to walk the train, get a coffee and find out which side you want to be sitting on.

Binz LB is the halfway point and by some distance the busiest station. It is the narrow gauge's own station in Binz — the main-line station is a separate one, under a different name — and in summer the platform is full, half of it people going up to the Jagdschloss and half of it people who have come out from the beach for the ride.

Binz to Sellin — through the Granitz

Immediately east of Binz the character changes. The line turns inland and climbs into the Granitz, a wooded ridge of beech and pine inside the South-East Rügen biosphere reserve, 228 square kilometres of coast, lagoon and forest declared in 1990. The gradient here is the steepest on the line, and a 750-millimetre tank engine with a full train behind it makes a proper noise about it.

Jagdschloß, in the middle of the trees, is the highest stop on Rügen — and a request stop, so tell the guard if you want it. There is no village: it exists for the walk up through the woods to the hunting lodge on the Tempelberg. Garftitz and Sellin West follow, both request stops too, before the line comes back out of the forest.

Sellin Ost is the station for Sellin, ten minutes' walk above the cliff and the pier.

Sellin to Göhren — the Mönchgut

The last stretch runs onto the Mönchgut, the peninsula that hangs off the south-east corner of the island. Baabe is quiet and half-buried in pines. Philippshagen, a request stop, is the last one before the terminus.

Göhren is as far east as Rügen goes. The train stops about a hundred metres short of the sea promenade, and then it stays for thirty minutes while the locomotive is worked round to the other end of its coaches for the return trip — which happens out in the open, at the end of the platform, in front of whoever wants to watch.

The trains themselves

The steam fleet is a mixture: two engines of the old Lenz Gattung Mh, two more from Jerichow, four of the post-war Deutsche Reichsbahn 99.177 class, and 99 4011-5, which spent more than sixty years hauling freight in the Mansfeld copper district before arriving here in 2008. The nineteen passenger coaches are older than any of them — bodies built between 1907 and 1928, rebuilt by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in the 1950s and 60s, and modernised again in the late 1970s. They are open saloons with wooden interiors and windows that drop, and every train takes luggage and bicycles.

The Rasender Roland runs to a clock-face timetable every day of the year, with a fuller service in the main season. There are two published timetables: the main season, 9 May to 1 November 2026, and the off season, 2 November 2026 to 7 May 2027.

The through trains — main season

Trains leave Putbus at :08, two-hourly from 08:08 to 20:08, and reach Göhren at :23, one hour and fifteen minutes later.

Coming back, trains leave Göhren at :53, two-hourly from 09:53 to 19:53, and reach Putbus at :06 — an hour and thirteen minutes. So the first train of the day is the 08:08 from Putbus, arriving 09:23, and the 09:53 back from Göhren is the same train returning after its half-hour turnround.

The extra trains — main season only

• Hourly between Binz and Göhren. On top of the through trains, short workings leave Binz LB at :44 — 09:44, 11:44, 13:44, 15:44 and 17:44 — reaching Göhren at :27. Back the other way they leave Göhren at :49, 08:49 to 18:49. Between Binz and Göhren that gives a train roughly every hour in each direction; the 18:49 from Göhren carries on through to Putbus, arriving 20:02.
• Down to the harbour at Lauterbach Mole. Five trains a day start from Lauterbach Mole at :22 — 11:22, 13:22, 15:22, 17:22 and 19:22 — and are at Putbus seven minutes later, where they wait to form the :08 departure. Returning trains reach Lauterbach Mole at :17.
• ⚠️ Two late trains run high summer only. The 22:44 Binz–Göhren and the 21:49 Göhren–Binz run only from 23 May to 30 August 2026.

Off season, 2 November 2026 to 7 May 2027

The same two-hourly clock face, one round trip shorter, and Putbus to Göhren only:

• Putbus :08, from 08:08 to 18:08.
• Göhren :53, from 09:53 to 19:53.
• No short workings from Binz, and no trains to Lauterbach Mole — the winter timetable is headed Putbus to Göhren and the harbour extension does not appear on it.
• ⚠️ The last pair of trains — the 18:08 from Putbus and the 19:53 from Göhren — do not run on 24 December 2026.

Getting to the start

The narrow gauge connects with the main line at Putbus, where the standard-gauge branch from Bergen auf Rügen to Lauterbach Mole comes into the same station; the same company, Pressnitztalbahn, runs both. Bergen auf Rügen is on the main line from Stralsund.

⚠️ If you are aiming for Binz instead, note that its two stations are not the same place. Long-distance ICE and IC trains and the RE 9 from Stralsund and Rostock serve Ostseebad Binz; the Rasender Roland uses Binz LB, a separate station.

Times taken from the operator's own published timetables — Rügensche BäderBahn, main season (valid 9 May – 1 November 2026) and off season (valid 2 November 2026 – 7 May 2027) — both read in August 2026. Every stop marked "request stop" is a Bedarfshalt: tell the guard, or signal from the platform.

The Rügensche BäderBahn sells its own tickets on its own fare scale, in five stages: end to end, Putbus to Göhren, is stage 5 at €16.00 for an adult single, €8.00 for a child of 6 to 13 and €40.00 for a family. Bicycles are €3.00 a journey and every train takes them.

If you plan to get off anywhere, buy the day ticket instead. At €35.00 — €77.50 for a family — it covers the whole line all day in both directions, and two adults doing Putbus to Göhren and back have already spent €64 on singles. ⚠️ Two things that will not work: your resort Kurkarte, which the operator explicitly excludes, and the Deutschlandticket, which is accepted only with a €12.00 daily supplement. Boarding away from a staffed station, buy from the guard at no surcharge.

No rail pass carries you along this line for free, and the operator is unusually clear about it. The Rügensche BäderBahn is a private railway with its own five-stage tariff, outside the arrangements that cover the rest of German rail.

The Deutschland-Ticket: accepted, but only with a supplement

This is the one national ticket the railway does take, and it takes it at a price. Holding a Deutschland-Ticket, you pay a Sonderzuschlag — a special supplement — on top:

Compare that with the ordinary €35.00 day ticket and the supplement is worth having if you already carry a Deutschland-Ticket, and worth nothing at all if you do not.

Interrail and Eurail

Neither is valid here. The railway publishes nothing about them — no acceptance, no discount, no mention on its fares page or in its tariff conditions — but Interrail answers it from the other side. Its coverage table for Germany names DB and "all other Regional carriers", and then sends everything it has not named to the closed list of German railway companies the table links. The Rügensche BäderBahn is not on that list, so a pass buys nothing at Putbus, Binz LB or Göhren.

⭐ What a pass does do is get you to the island. Rügen is on the national network: Interrail and Eurail cover the main line through Stralsund to Bergen auf Rügen, which is where the approach on a pass ends.

⭐ The last link, the standard-gauge Zugbringer shuttling Bergen auf Rügen to Putbus and on to Lauterbach Mole, is run by the Roland's own parent company — and behaves nothing like the Roland. Its tariff takes the Deutschland-Ticket, the Mecklenburg-Vorpommern-Ticket, the Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket, the Schleswig-Holstein-Ticket and BahnCard reductions. So the national products that stop dead at the narrow gauge do carry you as far as its platform. An Interrail pass is a different question: the Zugbringer is not named on Interrail's list either way, so the counter at Bergen is where that one gets settled.

And the resort cards do not work either

⚠️ Worth repeating from the Tickets section, because it catches people out: the Kurkarten issued by the Baltic seaside resorts are not valid on this train. The operator says so plainly. If you have met the Black Forest's KONUS card, which carries guests free on the trains, do not assume Rügen does the same — it is the exact opposite arrangement.

Is a pass worth it for this journey?

Not for the train itself. Nothing you can buy nationally makes this ride cheaper, except the Deutschland-Ticket supplement, and that only if you were carrying the subscription anyway.

Buy the railway's own day ticket instead. At €35.00 for unlimited travel along the line it beats two end-to-end singles before you have stopped anywhere, and stopping is the entire point of a railway that serves four beaches and a hunting lodge.

Supplements and fares from the operator's published tariff, Rügensche BäderBahn — a branch of Eisenbahn-Bau- und Betriebsgesellschaft Pressnitztalbahn mbH — with the Zugbringer's tariff from the same company and pass coverage from Interrail's published list of railway companies, August 2026.

Six stops, and no two of them are the same kind of place. The line begins in a planned neoclassical town that never became a city, crosses farmland, climbs through forest to a prince's hunting lodge, and finishes on a peninsula of fishing villages that turned into beach resorts.

The day ticket is what makes this work. Break the journey wherever you like, walk for an hour or two, and pick up the next train — remembering that outside the Binz–Göhren stretch that is two hours later, not one, and that eight of the fourteen stations only stop if you ask.

Rügen has been in the accommodation business since 1816, and the choice along this line runs from apartment blocks behind the dunes to the white villas of the Bäderarchitektur — most of which are holiday flats now rather than hotels.

Where you base yourself changes the railway rather than the other way round. Binz sits halfway along and has the hourly service in each direction in summer, which makes it the easiest place to use the train casually. Putbus is the other sensible choice: quiet, inland, and the one station where the narrow gauge and the main line meet, so you can arrive and leave by train without a bus. Göhren at the far end is the furthest from everything, which is either the point or the problem.

Two houses on the line are worth singling out because of what they are, not because anyone is paying us to say so. Neither of the cards below carries a price or a booking link: we have no affiliate arrangement, and we do not quote figures we have not checked.