Ahr Valley Railway

This article describes the railway line between Remagen and Ahrbrück. For the Wiesbaden-Limburg route see Aartalbahn , for the Herborn-Niederwalgern route see Aar-Salzböde-Bahn .

Remagen-Adenau
Route number (DB) :	3000
Course book section (DB) :	477
Route length:	42.4 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Route class :	D4 (Remagen – Ahrweiler) CE (Ahrweiler – Ahrbrück)
Dual track :	Remagen - Üst Walporzheim
Legend Left Rhine route from Bonn 0.0 Remagen Left Rhine route to Koblenz from Abzw Viktoriaberg (- Ludendorff Bridge ) Abzw Reisberg Remagen curve after Abzw Ahrbrücke Hellenberg junction Strategic embankment to Kirchdaun (formerly planning) 4.7 Bad Bodendorf 8.0 Heimersheim A 61 Strategic embankment of rings (unfinished) 10.2 Bad Neuenahr Bad Neuenahr Mitte (planned) 12.9 Ahrweiler 14.0 Ahrweiler market (from 1963) Üst Walporzheim 15.6 Walporzheim Ahr (multiple) 17.5 Marienthal (1939–1950) 18.3 Dernau place (1955-1960) 18.9 Dernau 20.5 Right Strategic embankment of Holzheim (unfinished) 21.2 Abzw Rech (unfinished) Ahr Saffenburg Tunnel (219 m, disused tube: 235 m) 21.8 Mayschoss Laacher Tunnel (384 m) Reimerzhover Tunnel (156 m) Krähardt Tunnel (89 m) Ahr Engelslay tunnel (66 m, disused tube: 75 m) Ahr 25.2 Altenahr Ahr Ahr Ahr 26.7 Kreuzberg (Ahr) Ahr 29.0 Ahrbrück (until 1996: Brück (Ahr) ) Ahr Ahr 31.4 Hönningen (Ahr) Abzw Liers (after 1945 partly loading point (Lst)) Dümpelfelder curve, after Abzw Insul Line from Lissendorf 35.8 Dump field 40.2 Leimbach 42.4 Adenau (not executed, approved according to the 1914 law) Eifelquerbahn from Gerolstein Rengen Eifelquerbahn to Andernach Swell:

The Ahrtalbahn Remagen – Ahrbrück is a 29 km long, about half single-track and non-electrified branch line , which leads from Remagen via Ahrweiler and Dernau to Ahrbrück into the Ahrtal ( course book route 477) and was at times connected to the Eifel route via further routes .

history

The history of the Ahr Valley Railway begins as a branch of the left-hand Rhine route . In 1844/1856 the Bonn-Cölner Eisenbahngesellschaft had built a line upstream from Cologne via Bonn to Rolandseck , which had been extended by the Rheinische Eisenbahngesellschaft in 1858/59 via Remagen and Koblenz to Bingerbrück .

Crossing the Ahr at Marienthal

On September 23, 1879, a ministerial order for the construction of the Ahr Valley Railway was issued. Almost a year later, on September 17, 1880, the Rheinische Eisenbahn opened the first section from Remagen to Ahrweiler, which was continued on December 1, 1886 to Altenahr and on July 15, 1888 to Adenau .

For strategic reasons , the construction of a second track from Remagen to the Liers branch began in 1910. At the same time, the original route was partially relocated. However, an extreme summer flood destroyed scaffolding, canteens and almost all road bridges. In 1912 and 1913, two more railway lines were completed. First, the Dümpelfeld – Hillesheim (Eifel) –Lissendorf railway was opened in 1912 , half of which follows the Ahr upstream and then branches off at Ahrdorf (Ahr) into the Ahbach valley . For this purpose, a track triangle was built to connect the two lines ( Dümpelfelder curve Abzw Liers – Abzw Insul).

In 1913 the Ahrdorf (Ahr) –Blankenheim (Wald) railway followed , which also opened up the rest of the Ahr valley from Ahrdorf to the source and on to the Eifel line .

At the same time, a depot (Bw) was built in Kreuzberg (Ahr ).

The unfinished Adenbach bridge of the so-called " Unfinished " above the Ahrweiler Markt stop

Further construction of new lines, such as the "Unfinished" , a connection from Rech in the Ahr Valley with Neuss via Rheinbach and Liblar (bypassing the Cologne junction), was started, but could not be completed during the First World War and due to regulations by the victorious powers . The unfinished bridge near Ahrweiler has stood as a ruin above the town since around 1910. The tunnels, which had already been completed in the Ahr valley, were initially used by forced laborers for the armaments industry during World War II and served the residents as protection in the bombing war. In the 1950s, the expansion into a government bunker began . The federal motorway 61 now runs along part of the route between Liblar and Ringen (county) .

The extension from Adenau to Daun (straight line 22 kilometers, see also federal road 257 ) did not go beyond the planning stage . Here too the reasons for the construction would have been predominantly military in nature.

Also for strategic reasons, the Ahr Valley Railway was connected with the Ludendorff Bridge (also known as the Bridge of Remagen ) to the right Rhine route to and from the north. However, the bridge was not completed until 1918. After its collapse on March 17, 1945, it was not rebuilt.

On August 16, 1918, a serious railway accident occurred near Dümpelfeld when a passenger train collided with a military train. 31 people died and 73 others were injured.

The construction of the west wall from 1938 onwards brought the Ahr valley railways strategic importance. During the Second World War , they were badly damaged by Allied air raids and German explosions. Nevertheless, the line could be reopened continuously until 1951. In the following years it was partially shut down and dismantled.

On the Remagen - Adenau route, passenger traffic was limited to the Remagen - Kreuzberg (Ahr) section from June 2, 1985, and only resumed in June 1996 to Ahrbrück (formerly Brück (Ahr) ). The freight traffic Hönningen (Ahr) - Adenau was stopped on May 31, 1985. The Ahrbrück - Hönningen (Ahr) freight service, which ran until December 31, 1996, has also been discontinued. The railway line was dismantled in 2001 in the Hönningen (Ahr) area in favor of a bypass road within the framework of the federal highway 257 .

The Ahr Valley Railway is now two-pronged to the transfer point (Üst) Walporzheim .

Until the end of the 1990s, trains with diesel locomotives of the 213 or 215 series ran on the route , and most recently also class 628 railcars .

On the disused former second Streckengleis between Mayschoß and computational runs today as Bahntrassenradweg the Ahr bike path . The two subsequent branch lines were also partially used for cycle paths.

In 2016, the association "Friends of the Ahr Valley Railway" criticized a planned changeover of the operating procedure to a technically supported train control operation between Ahrweiler and Ahrbrück in order to save personnel. According to the DB Netz infrastructure register, the changeover did not take place in December 2016.

In July 2019, the order was placed to equip the line with an ESTW-R .

Service offer

Talent railcars as Rhein-Ahr-Bahn in Bonn Hbf

The currently used LINT vehicle generation (here in Euskirchen )

The Ahrtalbahn is now served by the Rhein-Ahr-Bahn (RB 30) and the Ahrtalbahn (RB 39) in local rail passenger transport. The RB 30 runs every hour on the entire route, with connections to and from Bonn main station .

Additional trains run every hour between Remagen and Dernau as RB 39 throughout the week.

Of rail transport on both lines is carried out DB Regio NRW , which on the Rhine rivers train diesel railcar of the Alstom Coradia LINT starts.

Freight traffic no longer takes place on the Ahr Valley Railway today. When the MORA-C program of Deutsche Bahn came into effect in September 2001, DB Cargo's operation ended . For many years, the mineral water bottler Apollinaris with its own siding in Bad Neuenahr ensured a high volume of traffic .

Tariff

Both the tariff of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Mosel (VRM) and the transitional tariff of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Sieg (VRS) apply to local rail passenger transport on the Ahr Valley Railway . The NRW tariff applies across the tariff area .

Planning

In Bad Neuenahr another train stop to Bad Neuenahr center to be built.

literature

• Kurt Hoppstädter: The development of the railway network in the Moselle valley and in the Eifel. Edited from the files of the Koblenz State Archives. Manuscript University and City Library Cologne. 1963
• Klaus Kemp: The Ahr Valley Railways. Eisenbahn-Kurier, Freiburg 1983, ISBN 3-88255-542-4
• Klaus Kemp: The Ahr Valley Railways. Railways between the Rhine and Eifel. Eisenbahn-Kurier, Freiburg 2013, ISBN 978-3-88255-592-9
• Heinz Schönewald: The History of the Ahr Valley Railway . Eifel-Verlag, Jünkerath 2016, ISBN 978-3-943123-17-3 . , New edition: The history of the Ahr Valley Railway . Gaasterland, Jünkerath 2020, ISBN 978-3-943123-40-1 .

See also

• Unfinished structures

Web links

Commons : Ahrtalbahn  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Illustrated description of the Ahrradweg
• Side of the Ahr Valley Railway
• vrsinfo: "vareo": Premiere for future-oriented vehicle generation in the Cologne diesel network . Accessed on January 17, 2014.
• DB Bahn: vareo. The new train for the region. Accessed January 17, 2014.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ↑ When the Ahr brought death and devastation ( Memento from April 1, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ https://www.eisenbahn-tunnelportale.de/lb/inhalt/tunnelportale/3000.html#geschichte memorandum from 1926
5. ^ Hans Joachim Ritzau: Railway disasters in Germany. Splinters of German history . Vol. 1: Landsberg-Pürgen 1979, p. 79.
6. ↑ Ahr Valley Railway on the siding? Instead of modernizing outdated operating systems?
7. ↑ DTVP. Retrieved July 20, 2020 . 
8. ^ Association meeting, 55th meeting. (PDF; 8.5 MB) (No longer available online.) In: TOP 3. SPNV Nord, p. 6 , formerly in the original ; Retrieved September 26, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )