Tauern Express
The Tauern Express was an international long-distance train that ran between Ostend and various destination stations in Yugoslavia from 1951 to 1988 . At times he also drove through cars to Athens and Istanbul . In the 1950s it was one of the most important long-distance connections between Germany and the Benelux countries and south-eastern Europe. The sleeping car course from Ostend to Athens was the longest European sleeping car race for several years.
history
The erection of the Iron Curtain after the Second World War had a significant impact on international long-distance rail transport, which at that time was still the main carrier of transport, way ahead of cars and airplanes. At the border stations , the residence time increased significantly, extensive immigration and customs controls and arbitrary arrests of staff of CIWL and travelers made for a significant drop in demand so far one of the main links between Western Europe and the Balkans performing Orient-Express . The Czechoslovak state railway ČSD opposed a transfer of the previous route via Bratislava to a direct route from Vienna to Budapest in order to save at least one border crossing . During the over Yugoslavia leading Simplon-Orient-Express for travelers from France represented a good alternative, this train was for passengers from the Benelux unsuitable countries, and will Germany for lack of suitable connections as a backup. At the European Passenger Train Timetable Conference in Amsterdam in 1950 , it was decided to introduce a new train route from Ostend via Cologne , Mannheim , Stuttgart , Munich and the Tauern Railway to Ljubljana for 1951 . In Ljubljana, the FD 153/154 "Tauern-Express" , which is run as a long-distance express train and named after the Alpine railway used, was connected to and from the Simplon-Orient-Express. Between Cologne and Munich he took over the position of an express train that ran before the war between the Dutch ferry port Vlissingen and Munich via Cologne and Stuttgart. The important connection between London and southern Germany was thus shifted to the shorter ferry route to Ostend.
The Stuttgart “timetable pastor” Richard Ottmar had already developed and propagated the idea for a continuous connection from Western Europe via the Tauern Railway to Athens and Istanbul before the war. In addition to his actual job as a Protestant theologian and religion teacher, Ottmar had worked as a timetable expert for various business associations such as the DIHT for decades and, thanks to his good contacts with the Federal Railway , was able to bring the proposal to the European Passenger Timetable Conference in 1950. The Tauern Railway was previously of comparatively little importance in international traffic. In 1939 only two pairs of trains ran from Munich to Zagreb , with through coaches to the Yugoslav Adriatic coast and to Belgrade . A single through car ran as far as Sofia .
The Tauern Express quickly became a great success, not least because of the border controls that were less feared on the Yugoslavian border, and had to be driven in two parts during the main season. It soon developed into one of the most renowned, but also most crowded trains in Europe. As early as 1953, the Tauern Express was extended to Belgrade, where not only was there a connection to the Simplon Orient Express, but through coaches were also handed over. Seated and sleeping cars from Ostend to Athens were new . With a distance of 3,182 km, this route, which runs three times a week, was the longest sleeper car run in Europe at the time. On the rest of the week, the course only ran to Belgrade. The train was also accelerated, so travelers from Great Britain could take a later ferry to Ostend. Between Ostend and Cologne, the train also carried through cars to Berlin and Copenhagen . Other through coaches ran from Ostend to Graz and from Hamburg to Belgrade. A year later a through car to Rijeka was added for a short time , which was handed over to the Austria Express in 1955 . On the day's section through southern Germany and Austria, the train ran a dining car, which from 1956 was no longer provided by DSG , but by CIWL.
In 1956, the three-class Tauern-Express became a two-class train as part of the Europe-wide class reform with the abolition of the third class. The Deutsche Bundesbahn continued to run it as an F-Zug , while the ÖBB classified it as "Ex". A year later, the train was supplemented by a sleeping car that runs twice a week exclusively in 1st class from Munich to Istanbul.
With a restructuring of the Simplon-Orient-Express timetable, a connection to Athens was no longer possible from 1960. The Tauern Express was therefore extended to Athens, the through coaches to Istanbul were run from Belgrade together with the coaches of the Balt-Orient-Express .
Two years later, however, the railways involved shortened the Tauern Express to Austria, where it received the new terminal in Klagenfurt . At the same time, it was downgraded to the express train and the sleeper carriage from Ostend to Athens was discontinued. This shortening was at least partially reversed three years later, and from the 1965 summer timetable the Tauern Express ran to Zagreb . For the through coaches to Southeast Europe, the "Tauern-Orient" was set up as a replacement from Munich, which received through coaches to Istanbul, among other things. Two years later, the train route from Zagreb to Split was extended, with which the Tauern Express reached the Adriatic again . However, the sleeping car from Ostend only ran to Salzburg permanently , so that the continuous train route with two night trips was only served with a few seated cars. In 1971, continuous train numbers were introduced in Western Europe, the Tauern Express has operated since then as D 218/219, only in Yugoslavia it retained the traditional letter designation as train TB / BT until 1974. Furthermore, the Tauern Express through coaches went to Hamburg, Graz and Klagenfurt. In the following years, the train route did not change significantly, apart from changing through car routes and changing intermediate stations. In 1986 the Tauern Express lost the sleeping car to Hamburg and its dining car. In previous years, the train had been gradually accelerated after expansion measures on the Tauern Railway and in Yugoslavia, but this meant that it arrived in Split before six in the morning at an uncomfortable time for passengers.
The Tauern Express was discontinued for the 1988 summer timetable. He was succeeded by an anonymous D 218/219 between Ostend and Salzburg, which only operated in the summer months, as well as at Christmas and New Year. In winter the train only went to Cologne, with through cars to Munich. A new seasonal train between Stuttgart and Split has been introduced for traffic to Yugoslavia. The Deutsche Bundesbahn justified this with an adjustment to demand. In fact, the Tauern Express had largely lost its task of providing a direct connection between the Benelux countries and Austria and Yugoslavia as early as the 1970s.A traveler count showed that the vast majority of passengers from Yugoslavia and Austria had destinations in Germany, only around 30 the more than 700 passengers a day in the most popular section between Rosenheim and Munich drove from Austria or Yugoslavia to Belgium or Great Britain. The D 218/219 was already discontinued three years later, a group of through coaches from Ostend-Munich remained in the D 224/225 Bayern-Austria-Nachtexpress , the former Ostend-Vienna-Express .
Train formation and locomotives
Like most international long-distance trains of the post-war period, the Tauern Express had a complex train structure, consisting of various through car routes as well as sleeping, couchette, dining, luggage and mail cars. His train set consisted of rolling stock from the participating railway administrations SNCB / NMBS , DB, ÖBB and JŽ . Sleeping and dining cars were provided by DSG and CIWL; from 1969, as before, the couchette cars were only operated by the two companies.
Until 1956, the Tauern Express still had cars in all three classes, after that only two. However, only a few cars ran between the respective terminus of the train. In 1954, for example, only three cars ran continuously between Ostend and Belgrade, even though the train consisted of up to 12 cars. Also in 1969, for example, in the section between Salzburg and Bischofshofen, only three of the 14 wagons used on weekends were used on the entire route from Ostend to Split.
When the Tauern-Express was introduced, the railway administrations involved only used steam locomotives apart from the few electrified routes . Only on the already electrified routes in southern Germany and Austria were electric locomotives harnessed to the train.
In 1955, the DB only used steam locomotives north of Bruchsal as the end point of the electrical network at the time. In addition to the express train series 01 and 03.10 , the 39 series and the 38.10 series, which were rarely used before express trains, were also used. Locomotives of the E 16 , E 17 and E 18 series drove south of Bruchsal . The Belgian state railway SNCB / NMBS occasionally used its Pacifics of the NMBS / SNCB series 1 between Liège and Herbesthal or Aachen until 1955 , from then on only the NMBS / SNCB series 29 , a 1'D locomotive. The contact wire was already hanging between Ostend and Liège. The Belgian steam locomotives before the "Tauern Express" were replaced by diesel locomotives of the NMBS / SNCB series 201 from 1957 and, as these were too slow, soon by the SNCB / NMBS series 204 . The locomotive change at the Herbesthal border station was partly omitted in the next timetable years in favor of the Belgian diesel locomotives going through to Cologne.
With the advancing electrification, the steam locomotives at the DB were replaced by electric locomotives. The Belgian diesel locomotives in front of the Tauern Express were replaced in 1966 after electrification of the Cologne-Aachen railway line by the DB class E 10 , so that the Tauern Express ran electrically from Ostend to Jesenice. The locomotive run to Cologne was resumed after a few years with the commissioning of the Belgian multi-system locomotives of the SNCB / NMBS series 16 . The E 10 and the pre-war locomotives used in southern Germany were gradually replaced by newer series, so until 1988 the DB series 103 and the DB series 111 also covered the Tauern Express in sections. The latter series also ran at times over the Austrian section to Jesenice, and the other way around, the ÖBB 1044 came to Munich.
In Austria, the Tauern Express route, with the exception of the short section from Villach to the Yugoslav border station at Jesenice, had been fully electrified since 1950. Before the Tauern Express, the ÖBB used various series, including the ÖBB 1020 . These were gradually replaced by newer series such as the ÖBB 1010 . Most recently, ÖBB used the 1044 series until 1988. On the short section of the Karawankenbahn from Villach to Jesenice, the steam locomotive series ÖBB 52 , ÖBB 135 and ÖBB 258 were initially used, as were the diesel locomotives of the ÖBB 2045 series . From 1957, after electrification, the ÖBB 1245 came to express trains before the Tauern Express, until after a few years the ÖBB switched to continuous covering between Salzburg and Jesenice.
In Yugoslavia, the JŽ mainly used the 06 series , a 1'D1 'standard locomotive built by Borsig in 1930, until the end of the 1960s . It was not until 1971 that the contact wire hung continuously between Jesenice and Zagreb, on the DC section to Dobova the JŽ series 342 ran before the Tauern Express , and then the JŽ series 441 to Zagreb . The 05 series was used between Zagreb and Belgrade during steam times ; the Tauern Express no longer experienced electrification on this section. On the section to Split served by the Tauern Express from 1967 onwards, the JŽ mainly used diesel locomotives of American origin.
literature
- Werner Sölch: Orient Express. The heyday and decline and rebirth of a luxury train . 4th edition. Alba, Düsseldorf 1998, ISBN 3-87094-173-1 .
- Julius Weber: Traditional express trains in southern Germany. Roots, career and today's meaning. Röhr, Krefeld 1985, ISBN 3-88490-153-2 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Werner Sölch: Orient Express. The heyday and decline and rebirth of a luxury train. 4th edition. Alba-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, p. 86 f.
- ↑ a b Markus Egger: The Tauern Express - Part 1: the first years 1951-1955. January 14, 2013, accessed on August 10, 2013 (German).
- ↑ a b Julius Weber: Traditional express trains in southern Germany. Roots, career and today's meaning. Röhr, Krefeld 1985, p. 60 f.
- ↑ Werner Sölch: Orient Express. The heyday and decline and rebirth of a luxury train. 4th edition. Alba-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, p. 111
- ↑ Wilfried Biedenkopf: Across old Europe. The international train and through car runs as of the summer of 1939. P. 45 Verlag Röhr, Krefeld 1981, ISBN 3-88490-110-9
- ↑ Werner Sölch: Orient Express. The heyday and decline and rebirth of a luxury train. 4th edition. Alba-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, p. 110
- ^ Fritz Stöckl: European railway trains with sonorous names. Carl Röhrig Verlag, Darmstadt 1958, p. 196
- ^ Deutsche Bundesbahn (Ed.): Kursbuch Gesamtausgabe, Summer 1988 , Part B - Long-Distance Connections, p. B4
- ↑ Stefan by stirring: marshaling international passenger trains 1971 - 1998. D 218/219 'TAUERN-EXPRESS' Split - Oostende - Split. Retrieved September 12, 2013 (German).
- ↑ Werner Sölch: Orient Express. The heyday and decline and rebirth of a luxury train. 4th edition. Alba-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1998, p. 204