Alstertal Railway

Alstertal Railway
Route number :	1241
Course book section (DB) :	101.1
Route length:	5.888 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Power system :	1200 V  =
Top speed:	80 km / h
Legend Volksdorf Sasel Wohldorf Bergstedt 17,457 End of the route, sweeping system 17.089 Hamburg-Poppenbüttel 15.653 Hamburg-Wellingsbüttel 14.364 High oaks 13.406 Hamburg Kornweg (Klein Borstel) 11.612 former route from Ochsenzoll 11,573 S-Bahn from Hamburg Airport Transfer track of the elevated railway 11,201 Hamburg-Ohlsdorf S-Bahn to the main station Swell:

The Alstertalbahn is a 5.888 kilometer long railway line in Hamburg . It is double-tracked throughout and is used along its entire length by the S1 line of the Hamburg S-Bahn . It emerges from the extension of the Hamburg-Altona connecting railway at Ohlsdorf station and leads to Poppenbüttel . The original plans provided for an extension to Wohldorf or Volksdorf .

history

prehistory

Kornweg stop

Shortly after the turn of the century, several villages in the Hamburg area, including the city's exclaves, tried to get a connection to the railway network. In addition to the forest villages , which later received the elevated railway line of the same name , the communities in the Alstertal are also addressed. Just one year after the "Ohlsdorf Contract" was signed, which formed the basis for the Hamburg-Altona urban and suburban railway - the forerunner of the S-Bahn - an interest group was founded on December 12, 1905 with the aim of overriding the suburban railway Ohlsdorf to extend into the Alstertal.

The Havestadt & Contag company in Berlin was commissioned to plan the construction of the line . The line was to emerge from the connecting railway in Ohlsdorf and initially run to Poppenbüttel. The route should then have an eastern section to Volksdorf and a western section to Wohldorf. The trains should serve both villages equally.

The "Alstertalbahn GmbH", which was founded on May 4, 1908 and was to operate the line, negotiated with the Prussian state and the city of Hamburg and, as a compromise, was initially able to negotiate the commissioning to Poppenbüttel, as the subsequent villages partly belonged to Hamburg and thus one separate approval required.

The license for the less than six kilometers long section between Ohlsdorf and Poppenbüttel was granted by Hamburger on December 3, 1912, and by the Prussian side on May 31, 1913. The line should go into operation within three years and be taken over by the Prussian State Railways .

In the meantime, the "Alstertalbahn GmbH" has been converted into a stock corporation and has been renamed "Alstertalbahn-Aktien-Gesellschaft" (ABAG). The main shareholder was the "Alstertal-Terrain-Aktiengesellschaft", which was founded in 1912 by the Hamburg real estate agent Johann Vincent Wentzel (1865-1919) to develop the valley.

Construction and operation

Construction work began in 1913 and the Berlin company Julius Berger AG was commissioned with the construction. However, as World War I began a year later , work quickly came to a standstill due to a shortage of materials and labor. In addition, ABAG had difficulties selling its land and thus got into financial difficulties. The scheduled start-up deadline could not have been met had it not been extended to six months after the end of the war shortly before the end of the period.

Entrance building of Ohlsdorf station, starting point of the route

Class 474 train in the Poppenbüttel terminus

The original plan was to lay a third track for freight traffic next to the S-Bahn tracks, but this was not built. Corresponding free space for this third track can still be seen on two bridge abutments between the Ohlsdorf and Kornweg stations. Under the difficult conditions, the line was initially built on a single track and approved by the state police .

From 1917, freight traffic was carried out on the track, as the clearance profile was sufficient, and from January 15, 1918, temporary passenger traffic was also carried out. Since there was a shortage of copper for the overhead lines , the Prussian benzene railcars VT 15 and VT 18 / 18a to VT 20 / 20a were used for passenger transport until 1924 . These had an additional sidecar with the code letter "a", which was designed as a motorless control car for driving in the opposite direction. There were loading and storage facilities for freight traffic in Poppenbüttel north of the passenger platform.

For the rest of the work, there was still time until July 10, 1920 - six months after the ratification of the Versailles Treaty - but the ABAG no longer had the financial means and the main shareholder ATAG was liquidated on November 10, 1920. The Stormarn district , in which the villages were located, took over the shares of ABAG in 1922 and continued the construction work on the route. The full commissioning with alternating current light rail trains then took place on March 24, 1924.

On April 22nd, 1940, however, the electrical operation was changed again, if only partially. Next to the overhead line, which was fed with 6.3 kV 25 Hz alternating current , there was now a lateral conductor rail with 1.2 kV direct current . The parallel operation continued until 1955, after which the overhead line was removed. The Alstertalbahn was thus the first route that was operated with the current system of the Hamburg S-Bahn.

In the post-war period, freight traffic decreased until it was officially stopped on August 1, 1993. The freight facilities in Poppenbüttel were subsequently dismantled; now there are sidings and the Poppenbüttel maintenance workshop , which is responsible for cleaning the inside and outside of the trains at this end of the line.

literature

• Erich Staisch: The electric S-Bahn in Hamburg. Development history of a modern means of transport . 2nd Edition. Stilke, Hamburg 1964.

Web links

• Freight traffic to Poppenbüttel ( Memento from May 20, 2014 in the Internet Archive )
• Website with a photo of the benzene railcars at Poppenbüttel station ( memento from August 29, 2014 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ^ Preußen-Report Volume 9, page 52, Hermann Merker Verlag, Fürstenfeldbruck 1996, ISBN 3-922404-84-7
4. ^ Workshop letters S-Bahn Hamburg ( memento from February 17, 2013 in the Internet Archive ), status 2010, accessed on December 30, 2015