Jülich repair shop
The repair shop Jülich was a railway repair shop (AW) in Jülich , which was put into operation in 1918 and closed in 1964 by the Deutsche Bundesbahn . When the plant was closed, it was seamlessly handed over to the Bundeswehr , which has been repairing military vehicles here to this day (mechatronics center); Part of the site is now also used by individual departments at Forschungszentrum Jülich . The extensive factory site (1120 m long and up to 320 m wide) is located south of Jülich, immediately east of the Jülich – Düren railway line and still has a siding to this day . The settlement of the plant and the influx of numerous workers led to a significant increase in the population of Jülich and had a significant influence on the further development of the city, which was thus given the character of a railway town for almost half a century .
To the right of the last wagon, the research center stop, which was expanded in 1995 to become a train-bus junction, can be seen.
Prehistory, construction and commissioning
Choice of location
In view of the increasing traffic in the Aachen hard coal area , in the Rhenish lignite area and also in the Ruhr area , the Prussian State Railroad planned a new large railway repair shop (AW / EAW) in the left bank of the Rhineland to expand its inventory of main workshops shortly before the First World War . Several cities applied for the location, but Jülich was ultimately chosen, as its train station was then accessible from five directions via state railway lines , the building site there was made available free of charge and the wages in Jülich were the lowest. The fact that the five railway lines were all single-track branch lines was not a significant disadvantage given the relatively low train density at the time (especially in passenger traffic).
Preparation for construction with narrow-gauge railway
The area intended for the EAW comprised 35 hectares - partly old beech forest, mostly young growth. The forest treasury provided 25 hectares and the city of Jülich 10 hectares. The construction plans were drawn up in 1913, the cost of construction was given as twelve million gold marks , and construction began shortly after the outbreak of the First World War. The first two years of construction were, apart from the construction of a few foundations, characterized by little visible changes. This was due to the fact that 500,000 to 1,000,000 cubic meters of sand and gravel had to be brought in from Wolfshoven (today part of Jülich- Stetternich ), which is 3 kilometers away, to fill up the building site . Two excavators with a daily output of 1,200 cubic meters each were available in Wolfshoven, which results in a dismantling time of 200 to 400 working days under full load.
A construction narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of 900 millimeters was built through the Hambach Forest for transport , the route of which can still be seen today in the form of a dead straight, wide forest path . Five locomotives and 100 transport wagons, each with a capacity of four cubic meters, were used, which means a total of around 6,000 to 12,000 train journeys for 20-wagon trains. In addition, more than 10,000 wagonloads of other building materials were transported on the state railways .
Installation
From autumn 1916 the actual factory buildings were erected and connected with over 30 parallel tracks and three large transfer platforms as well as several turntables (a total of 27 kilometers of track were laid) so that the factory was inaugurated on August 1, 1918. The celebration was clouded by an air raid on neighboring Düren at around 2 p.m., which resulted in several deaths. After the still unfinished buildings (carriage hall, rapid repair hall, etc.) were successively completed, full operation began in October 1919, four months after the Treaty of Versailles .
Infrastructural connection
To connect to the Jülich train station about one kilometer away, but especially as a "buffer" for locomotives and wagons in need of repairs or those that have just been repaired, as well as an intermediate storage facility for wagons with supplies and operating materials, a front station with 18 points was built between the north end of the AW and the south head of the Jülich station and five parallel tracks (almost 6,000 meters long). (Until the beginning of the 1980s it still existed with four tracks, of which only one was used for the works entrance, the others were temporarily used to park goods wagons intended for retirement. Today, next to the main track, there is only one track left from the former station available as access to the Bundeswehr repair shop.)
The plant obtained electricity via its own 25-kilovolt line from the Weisweiler power plant, which was built in 1914, 10 kilometers away . The corresponding transformer tower is still standing today, separated from the actual factory premises by a railway line and road, but the overhead line has long since disappeared.
The old Jülich – Düren road, which ran straight through the AW site, was built around it to the west and on a bridge (originally with a central pillar) over the Jülich – Düren railway line and the neighboring AW access tracks .
New Jülich-Süd train station
The Jülich – Düren railway line, which ran next to the AW and the Vorbahnhof, had no intermediate station between Jülich and Krauthausen (6 kilometers) until the AWs was built. A new Jülich-Süd train station was therefore created at the southern end of the plant for workers to travel to, which was provisionally put into operation on November 10, 1917 as a simple stop without switches and which could therefore also be used by the construction workers (at times up to 700). About two years later it was expanded into a small train station.
The Jülich-Süd station had a signal box (Jsn), a small station building (half the size of that of Huchem-Stammeln), two tracks and a central platform that stretched south from the Waldstrasse level crossing and just before today's ( The siding to the research center, which was only built in 1979, ended. There was also a small underground bunker with an elongated zigzag-shaped passage. One track is still there today, the other ran roughly where the bus turning loop, parking lot and bike stand are today. Immediately north of the level crossing there was a direct access track from the direction of Düren into the plant from 1919, which manifested itself in a right-angled offset in the concrete wall surrounding the plant. Meetings ( crossings ) of scheduled passenger trains also took place in Jülich-Süd and are documented in old course books . Deviating from the planning documents from 1919, the station also received a flank protection switch at its southern end to secure the main track. The corresponding concrete buffer stop has been preserved to this day and is easy to recognize.
From the commissioning to the abandonment of the railway AWS in 1964, special workers' trains ran between Jülich and Jülich-Süd at the start and end of work, which were even released to the public from the 1961/62 winter timetable and appeared in the timetable. The reason for this may have been that from July 1961, parts of the workforce were taken over by the Bundeswehr and thus (formally) no longer had access to the Bundesbahn's internal employee timetables.
After the complete takeover of the plant by the German Armed Forces in 1964, the Jülich-Süd station lost a lot of its importance; The signal box, crossing track and switches disappeared; instead, the level crossing was equipped with train-controlled flashing lights in 1965 - and accordingly with two single-track platforms north and south of Waldstrasse, so that the trains could always cross the street first, regardless of their direction of travel, and only then could stop.
Due to the ever decreasing use, the stopping point was finally given up completely in 1982; the platforms remained, however. When the railway line was taken over by the Düren Kreisbahn in 1993, the stop went back into operation, two years later it was completely refurbished, and now it is very popular thanks to the regular schedule and a good shuttle bus and bicycle connection to the research center, which is 15 minutes' walk away.
Buildings and operations
In 1927, the entire factory premises covered an area of 28 hectares, 21% of which were built on with over thirty different buildings up to the dining room, "bathing establishment" (bathtubs and showers), apprentice sheim and others.
The two-aisled locomotive hall (parallel to the railway line, 192 meters × 70 meters) and the boiler smithy (at right angles to it, 150 meters × 45 meters) are particularly striking and still present in full size today. The less high wagon hall (166 meters × 133 meters) was severely damaged in 1944, only poorly restored after the war and soon afterwards, still under DB management, completely demolished.
The locomotive hall had six or seven entrance gates for locomotives on both of its front sides, the location of which can still be seen today. Inside there were up to eleven locomotive booths arranged one behind the other on each track, where repairs could be carried out. These stands were grouped according to the usual work processes from north to south in six work steps called cycles and each equipped with the necessary machines:
- I: dismantling
- II: Adjusting framework work, fittings, boiler
- III: measuring, grinding, boiler installation
- IV: Locomotive construction work
- V: Grow up the locomotive
- VI: Locomotive ready .
From the beginning, four heavy locomotive lifting cranes, each with a load capacity of 50 tons, were built into the hall, which could lift entire locomotives in twos and hover over other locomotives through the entire hall.
After certain repair work, test drives were required. These took place in the numerous gaps in the timetable on the branch lines starting from Jülich, for example in the north to Ameln (where there was a train station restaurant) and in the south at least as far as Krauthausen. In the 1950s and 1960s, these lines were approved for speeds of up to 60 km / h; higher speeds were possible on the surrounding main lines Cologne - Aachen - Mönchengladbach - Cologne.
history
Between the world wars
Initially, the plant was used for repairs and general inspections of steam locomotives and wagons (mainly freight wagons). During the Allied occupation of the Rhineland , operations came to a standstill for months in 1923/24; During this time, however, there was also a "smuggling" of five freshly repaired modern express train locomotives: These were harnessed to the evening workshop train that brought the workers from Jülich-Süd to Jülich, and in Jülich, to the surprise of the Belgian occupation forces, they were uncoupled and quickly drove via Ameln to Bedburg in the British occupation zone, whereby they were "saved" for the Deutsche Reichsbahn instead of being given to France as war reparations under the Versailles Treaty .
The repair of passenger train cars was stopped in early 1927. In 1927, 2500 people were employed in the RAW Jülich, now known as the Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk, and around 30 locomotives and up to 1000 freight wagons were restored every month. The repair of freight cars was also stopped at the end of 1929. Attempts to use the factory capacities by repairing diesel vehicles and trucks were immediately given up, and the workforce fell to less than 1,000 in the following years, which were marked by the global economic crisis . On August 14, 1931, the 5,000th locomotive since the RAW was built was completed. On February 15, 1938 - apparently in the course of the Nazi regime's preparations for war - the repair of freight wagons was resumed; a workforce of 1200 is reported for this year.
In World War II
During the Second World War , new records were set: In March 1940, 100 locomotives were repaired for the first time per month, and in 1943 the workforce reached its all-time high with 3,305 people. In the forest to the east of the plant, separated from it by the road, a barrack camp for foreign (mostly Russian) forced laborers was built during the war . From 1942 onwards, there were a few smaller air raids, which, however, only caused moderate damage in the RAW. In autumn 1944, however, the front reached the German western border near Aachen; some machines were therefore already removed from August 1944.
The operation of the RAW was effectively ended on September 29, 1944 by a heavy air raid by American bombers, which was aimed specifically at the RAW. From the first wave of the attack, which began around 5:30 p.m., only some of the bombs dropped fell on the factory premises, while the majority fell on the neighboring forced labor camp in the forest. Since the day shift had ended at 4:40 p.m., there were around 1,500 forced laborers in the barracks at the reception. Cautious estimates by survivors of the attack put around 400 dead. The next waves of the attack hit the actual RAW, in which there were only a few people, but which was badly damaged and from then on could practically no longer be used for its intended purpose. In the weeks that followed, excavation work took place on the site, and machines that were still usable were dismantled and removed.
On November 16, 1944, the city of Jülich was almost completely destroyed by the heaviest British air bombing ( like Düren ) as part of Operation Queen from 3:28 p.m. The RAW Jülich got off relatively lightly this time because the attack had concentrated on the actual city. However, it was no longer possible to operate at all, as German troops were holed up in the RAW, the front had already reached the Rur in early December 1944 and there was no longer any living space for the workers in the city, or in neighboring Düren. At the end of November, the last night-time transfers of individual locomotives and wagons with clearance material in the RAW took place via Düren towards the east.
By the German Ardennes offensive and the (by blowing up the Rurtalsperre ) over the banks came Rur stopped, American troops could seize upon the city Jülich and their hard-fought remains only on February 23 1945th From the afternoon of that day, when the actual urban area was already in the hands of the Americans, a report from a German NCO was received who was assigned to the defense of the RAW and only had six men available for this purpose. A little later, the US troops should have taken possession of the RAW.
post war period
As early as June 15, 1945, less than six weeks after the end of the war, the RAW went back into operation. Almost three years later, 1,000 locomotives and 10,000 freight cars had already been repaired; the workforce reached its peak after the war with 1,705 people in October 1948. The working conditions were anything but good, so initially the roof of the locomotive hall was missing, so that in winter there was snow in the hall and on the locomotives to be repaired. Most of the freight wagons had to be repaired outdoors, as it was clear from the outset that this area of activity was a post-war provisional facility, and so the wagon repairs were stopped on April 1, 1951.
Since, after a long period of uncertainty, it was not clear until 1950 for locomotive repairs that the AW should go back into operation permanently, the repair of war damage dragged on until the early 1950s. For example, due to war damage on May 20, 1950 at 7:10 a.m., the early train that brought the AW workers from Jülich to Jülich-Süd derailed when entering the Jülich-Süd station; due to its slow speed, however, there were only minor injuries. Due to the fact that the plant's range of services was now limited to locomotives, only about 10 of the formerly more than 30 parallel tracks on the plant site existed in the last few years before the closure.
Takeover by the Bundeswehr
The 5,000th locomotive since the end of the war had left the AW on November 18, 1955 - so it only took ten years to reach this anniversary after the Second World War, compared to 13 years after the First World War. After the first German soldiers since the end of the war were sworn in that same month, a meeting took place on March 15, 1956 in the AW with representatives of the Bundeswehr , which was currently being established, with the aim of taking over the plant from the Bundesbahn. Even at that time, the Federal Railroad wanted to replace steam locomotives with the newly developed diesel and electric standard locomotives and concentrate locomotive repairs on a few large plants. The structure of AW Jülich, which was geared towards steam locomotives and could only be reached via non- electrified single-track branch lines, seemed increasingly unattractive to the DB.
After some negotiations between the Federal Railroad and the Federal Armed Forces, as well as violent protests by the AW employees and the population of Jülich, the AW staff council was informed on August 28, 1959 that the German Armed Forces would take over the plant. From April 1960 on, the AW apprentices received an additional contract from the Bundeswehr. On December 31, 1960, the AW Jülich was dissolved as an independent plant and incorporated into the AW Köln-Nippes as a works department. At that time, 80 civil servants and 570 workers were still employed in the plant. On July 1, 1961, the Bundeswehr took over the first workers at AW Jülich, and in August 1964 the Jülich Federal Railroad Repair Works was closed. The purchase contract, which the Federal Railroad and the State of North Rhine-Westphalia had concluded on March 23, 1964, showed the AW 16.5 million DM as the purchase price . Since the end of the war, the AW has repaired a total of 9,269 locomotives until they were closed. In October 1977, 13 years after the closure, the Federal Railroad took its last steam locomotive out of service.
The Bundeswehr redesigned the factory premises for their own purposes and removed a large part of the remaining tracks. To this day, however, two tracks with switch connections have been preserved, which enable the Bundeswehr factory locomotive to maneuver around wagons (so-called repositioning ). Both tracks end on the factory premises near Waldstraße at a loading ramp.
The workers' trains that run specifically with the destination Jülich-Süd appeared for the last time in the timetable in the winter timetable 1963/64, as a replacement a works bus line for members of the nuclear research facility had already been set up in April 1960 .
A training workshop has been integrated in the plant since 1976. The Bundeswehr used the following names for its maintenance work:
- from 1961 repair battalion 961
- From October 1, 1971 Army Repair Plant 800
- from April 1, 1994 System Repair Center 800 (SysInstZ 800)
- from April 1, 2008 Mechatronics Center of the German Armed Forces (MechZBw)
Todays use
Since the Bundeswehr did not need the entire factory premises, individual departments of the nearby nuclear research facility, which was then under construction at the time, moved into some of the former AW buildings, so that the total area has since been divided into three similarly sized areas: the Bundeswehr in the southeast with the large repair halls, in the middle the research center with the smaller buildings (today, for example, the central incoming goods department and the central vocational training) and in the northwest, where the track harp for the wagon repair abandoned in 1951 was located until the early 1950s (10.67 hectares), a fallow area that over the years grew into a small forest and has been the nature reserve "Former Jülich-Süd (DN-023) railway repair shop" since 1984.
In the last few years of its existence, the Federal Railway Repair Shop, mostly known as the BAW, lives on as a term to this day. For example, the bus stop at the former main entrance was labeled with Former BAW at the time when only the research center's buses stopped there ; it was not renamed Leo-Brandt-Straße until the public express bus line to Aachen was set up in 2008 . In the linguistic usage of the research center, the term “former BAW” or “branch office BAW” is still common today.
The two largest halls of the former AW, also known as the “Holy Halls” by today's workforce, are now under monument protection. After the roof of the former locomotive hall (now called Hall 5) leaked, renovation began in 2009, which also included the second largest hall, the former boiler shop (now Hall 2). The Bundeswehr's own shunting locomotive is permanently stationed on the factory premises (including Deutz 56997, later Deutz 56896), which usually provides or picks up wagons outside the factory wall in the area of the former Jülich front station. Until at least May 2011, Bundeswehr vehicles in need of repair were delivered by rail via the siding. However, this was also in need of renovation, so that at the end of 2013 a comprehensive renewal of the 2.5 km long works tracks including the substructure and drainage system took place for around 1 million euros.
For decades, the focus of work in Jülich was the repair of wheeled vehicles ( trucks , buses , Unimogs, etc.), tracked vehicles did not come to Jülich. In recent years, the repair of field camp material (e.g. containers, power generating sets, air conditioning units) has also been added. In August 2013 it was still intended to upgrade the tracks for the transport of 1,800 wheeled vehicles and 5,000 containers from the Afghanistan mission, which ended at the end of 2014 . However, there were no such rail transports to Jülich. In October 2017, the management of the mechatronics center was transferred to Lieutenant Colonel Michael Kommoss. In March 2018, he expressed considerations about using the siding for tank transport in the future. A prerequisite for this, however, are some restructuring, the background being a rethinking of defense issues, which was triggered by the Crimean crisis in 2014 and includes faster and more frequent repairs of vehicles and tanks. Here the Jülich site will benefit from the renovation of the siding.
Memorial for war victims
On December 24, 1954, a memorial for “the victims of the plant in World War II” was inaugurated at AW Jülich. More than 30 years later, on October 31, 1985, another memorial was inaugurated at the site of the former forced labor camp on today's Leo-Brandt- Strasse . It bears an Orthodox cross and is intended to commemorate the slave laborers who were mainly of Russian origin who died in the American bombing of September 29, 1944.
Mended locomotive types
Over the years, the AW Jülich mainly improved the following steam locomotive series : 74 , 78 , 89 , 91 (all of them Prussian regional railway types, constructed before 1914), also - mainly before the Second World War - the Reichsbahn standard locomotive series 64 and 86 from the 1920s as well as the Prussian series 93 and 94 . After the war, the series 62 (Reichsbahn standard locomotive) and 65 (Bundesbahn redesign , built 1951–56) were added instead .
If all of these were tank locomotives, a large number of the significantly longer freight train locomotives with tender class 50 (the last Reichsbahn standard locomotive , built from 1939) and class 55 (Prussian, until 1939 the most-built German steam locomotive) have stopped by in large numbers . In the last ten years of its existence, the series 50 , 55 , 65 , 74 , 78 , 91 , 92 were the guests at the AW .
The supply of the locomotives sometimes involved very long distances. The focus of the AW Jülich remained on the locomotives from Prussian times until the end, but these were increasingly replaced in their home locations by newer steam locomotives and, especially from the 1950s, by diesel and electric locomotives. This left fewer and smaller "islands" with old Prussian machines nationwide, which the DB concentrated on as few repair works as possible due to their structural similarities. The rarer the old machines became, the longer the average distances to the next AW became. For example, at the end of the 1950s in the Hamburg Hbf u. a. home to some steam locomotives of the Prussian series 74 and 78. A locomotive heater from Hamburg reports on this:
“Transportation trips for a machine to or from the repair shop were tours through half of Germany, because the AW was in Jülich. On August 30, 1957, engine driver Alfred Ringel and I fetched the 74 948 from the factory in the Börde near Düren. [Further to locomotive 78 330:] Engine driver Ehlers and I brought you to AW Jülich at the beginning of May 1959 because of a loose tire at a maximum of 60 km / h. "
Such a journey at 60 km / h over approximately 500 km would take around eight hours even in the unlikely event that the locomotive had free passage everywhere, i.e. under realistic conditions (low priority compared to scheduled, faster trains) it would have at least two 8 hours - Requires shifts for the outward journey as well as an additional shift for the return journey of the staff on regular trains. (A trip from Jülich or Jülich-Süd to Hamburg could not be made in less than six hours in the 1959 summer timetable, even when using the first-class F trains and, depending on the specific departure time, even took significantly longer.) For planned AW- Therefore, whenever possible, several locomotives were transported together. Documented, for example, was a locomotive train journey with 3 units of the 74 series in 1939 from RAW Jülich over about 200 km to Bingerbrück on the Rhine and to Alzey in Rheinhessen, another 30 km away .
In 1957, AW Jülich built the first prototype for a cabin tender , with which over 700 locomotives of the steam locomotive series 50, which were most popular after the war, were equipped from 1961. The last locomotive to leave the factory was the 50 2422 equipped with a cabin tender on June 5, 1964.
literature
- Railway Amateur Club Jülich e. V. (Hrsg.): Chronicle of the railway repair shop Jülich . Jülich 1979.
- Railway Amateur Club Jülich e. V. (Ed.): Jülich, the old railway city . 2nd Edition. Jülich 1986.
Web links
- Information and historical photos of the main railway workshop in Jülich near Wisoveg
- Site plan from 1919 for the construction of a Jülich-Süd stop as a digitized version at the State Archive of North Rhine-Westphalia
Individual evidence
- ↑ Site plan of the main workshop near Jülich [and] site plan for the construction of a Jülich-Süd stop , drawn up in June 1919, checked August 17 and October 3, 1919, archival signature: Landesarchiv NRW Rhineland Department, No. 1276, Aachen government planning chamber BR 0092
- ^ Martin Schack: New stations - station building of the German Federal Railroad 1948–1973 . Verlag B. Neddermeyer, 2004, ISBN 3-933254-49-3 , p. 201 .
- ↑ Replacement of the locally operated barrier with a flashing light system at the level crossing in km 3.016 (Jülich-Süd) , Landesarchiv NRW, Rhineland department, inventory BR 1009 (Aachen government), order signature BR 1016 No. 168, file number 53.70.01 (1965)
- ↑ Oral communication (2014) by a contemporary witness from the Railway Amateur Club Jülich
- ↑ Oral communication (approx. 1985) from a resident of Selgersdorf who, in his youth, used to deliberately cross the tracks shortly before approaching single locomotives and was sometimes pelted with pieces of coal
- ↑ a b Welcome to the Jülich - Jülich site and the Bundeswehr. Retrieved May 19, 2020 .
- ↑ "E" for "Eisenbahnausbesserungswerk" (research center blog by Prof. Dr. Bernd-A. Rusinek, head of the FZJ archive). Retrieved January 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Nature reserve "Former railway repair shop Juelich-Sued" (DN-023) in the specialist information system of the State Office for Nature, Environment and Consumer Protection in North Rhine-Westphalia , accessed on March 10, 2017.
- ↑ Acquisition of the Federal Railway Repair Works Jülich (BAW) , Landesarchiv NRW, Rhineland department, order signature NW 245 No. 261, file number Min.f. VB2,2a, A2-7.3 2-1 (August 1962 – September 1966)
- ↑ Directions to the research center for the company medical service and the central vocational training at the former BAW. Retrieved May 30, 2015 .
- ↑ Site plan. Accessed January 30, 2019 .
- ^ Sports facility addresses of the company sports association Forschungszentrum Jülich 1963 eV with "BAW-Halle". (PDF) Retrieved May 30, 2015 .
- ↑ Old halls with high tech and perspective . In: Jülicher Nachrichten . October 2, 2018.
- ↑ Millions invested in the mechatronics center of the Bundeswehr (article from August 6, 2013). Retrieved January 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Bundeswehr-diesel Deutz 56896 Jülich on June 4, 2007. Accessed January 27, 2019 .
- ^ Vehicle fleet from Afghanistan is being processed in Jülich (article from August 2, 2013). Retrieved January 27, 2019 .
- ↑ The mechatronics center is growing again . In: Jülicher Nachrichten . March 28, 2018, p. 13 .
- ↑ Texts by Ulrich Budde with photos by Herbert Schambach, see text for picture 09. Retrieved on January 27, 2019 .
- ↑ Hans Butenschön: My time as a class 78 locomotive heater in the Hamburg Hbf depot (= Robin Garn [Hrsg.]: BAHN epoch . Volume 8 ). VGB Verlagsgruppe Bahn GmbH, 2013, ISSN 2194-4091 , p. 54-63 .
- ^ Carl Bellingrodt: Locomotive train with the three Bingerbrücker and Alzeyer locomotives 74 589, 74 502 and 74 992 returning from RAW Jülich . Ed .: Manfred Traube (= Eisenbahnromantik am Rhein - en route with Carl Bellingrodt ). EK-Verlag, Freiburg (Breisgau) 2006, ISBN 3-88255-291-3 , p. 39 .
- ↑ Horst J. Obermayer: Paperback German steam locomotives (standard gauge), 1973
Coordinates: 50 ° 54 '6.5 " N , 6 ° 23' 22.5" E