Bülach-Baden Railway

Route length:

approx. 12.7 km + 6.22 km

		SBB- BR from Bülach
	15.26 ?	Niederglatt	424 m above sea level M.
		SBB route to Oerlikon
		SBB- Wehntalbahn (Niederweningen – Oberglatt)
	23.9	Oberhasli (1922–1937)
		Mettmenhasli tank farm
		The route was demolished in 1969
		Bösbuck (Schwenkelberg)	476 m above sea level M.
	29.6	Buchs ZH (1877–1937)
		The route was demolished in 1969
		Tank farm Otelfingen (until 2000)
		SBB route from Seebach
	33.8 36.52	Otelfingen	427 m above sea level M.
	39.05	Würenlos	420 m above sea level M.
	39.05	VL Würenlos-RBL (1981)
		SBB route from Zurich
	42.74	Wettingen	388 m above sea level M.
		SBB route to Brugg

Swell:

The Bülach-Baden-Bahn , also called Schwenkelbergbahn or jokingly Schipkapass-Bahn after the Schipkapass in Bulgaria , was a 19-kilometer-long standard-gauge railway line of the Swiss Northeastern Railway (NOB) that opened in 1877 and connected Niederglatt with Wettingen . It mainly served the continuous goods traffic Winterthur - Baden and had the task to compete with the route of the Swiss National Railway (SNB) opened in the same year . After the national railway was taken over by the Nordostbahn in 1880, the Bülach-Baden-Bahn with its steep gradients was no longer important for freight traffic. As early as 1882, by dismantling the track between Wettingen and Otelfingen, the operating length was reduced to just under 13 kilometers. Operations on the remaining Niederglatt – Otelfingen line were discontinued in 1937 by the Swiss Federal Railways (SBB); after the final closure in 1969, around four kilometers of track in the center of the village of Buchs ZH were immediately demolished. The Bülach-Baden-Bahn is one of the few railway lines in Switzerland that has been shut down.

history

construction

Map of the Winterthur-Wettingen connections of the Swiss Northeast Railway (NOB) and the Swiss National Railway (SNB) shown in the railway network from 1877.

According to the Railway Act of 1872, freight traffic had to be routed via the shortest connection between departure and destination stations. By the Swiss National Railway (SNB) by the Furttal therefore planned railway line threatened the existing connection Winterthur - Zurich's main station - Baden the Swiss Northeastern Railway to compete (NOB) by one to 3.7 kilometers shorter path through Kloten - Regensdorf - Wettingen created . In order to prevent the national railway from digging up the entire freight traffic between Winterthur and Baden as well as between the stations west of Baden and east of Winterthur, the Nordostbahn also planned a new route that would be even shorter than the national railway route should. The centerpiece of this route was the Bülach-Baden-Bahn, which, together with the Bülach-Regensberg-Bahn taken over by the NOB on January 1, 1877, and the Dettenberg line opened on August 1, 1876, made a 2.7 km shorter connection between Winterthur and Baden offered. It ran from Winterthur via Bülach and Niederglatt to Wettingen and measured exactly 40 km between Winterthur and Wettingen, instead of the 42.7 km of the national railway connection that was under construction. The Bülach-Baden Railway was put into operation on October 1, 1877 - two weeks before operations on the connection of the national railway through the Furttal began on October 15, 1877.

route

The line left the Bülach - Oerlikon line in Niederglatt , which already belonged to the NOB on January 1, 1877 through the takeover of the Bülach-Regensberg-Bahn (BR) and crossed the associated Wehntalbahn ( Oberglatt - Dielsdorf ) on an overpass shortly before Niederhasli . Then the train climbed in a large curve past Oberhasli to the Schwenkelberg and continued from there to Buchs ZH . From Otelfingen it ran parallel to the Furttalbahn via Würenlos to Wettingen, where it met the new Wettingen train station and the NOB line to Baden , which had been relocated at the same time .

With the takeover of the SNB in 1880, the NOB considered the parallel Otelfingen – Wettingen lane to be superfluous and in 1882 removed the second lane. The track would have been useful for the Zurich S-Bahn more than a hundred years later .

old railway bridge of the Bülach-Baden-Bahn near Oberhasli

attitude

When the NOB was nationalized, the Bülach-Baden-Bahn fell to the SBB . Due to a lack of passengers, the line was shut down on January 18, 1937. Due to the steep incline over the Schwenkelberg, the route was no longer interesting for freight traffic either, although it was shorter than the former competing routes through the Furttal. On March 6, 1969, the line was finally canceled and the railway systems in Buchs, between the intersection on the Schwenkelberg (so-called Schipka Pass, named after the Bulgarian counterpart ) and the western end of the village in the direction of Otelfingen, were immediately demolished over a length of about 4 kilometers .

Remnants of the railway line

The former route in the municipal area of Buchs ZH is still largely present today, but a dense forest has now grown in the east between Schwenkelberg and the edge of the village, which is designated as a protected area. In the village center, however, the route is still free. The old Buchs train station and the former stationer's house on the road from Adlikon to Dielsdorf are still standing.

The eastern remnant still serves as an industrial connecting track and ensures the supply of the Niederhasli and Oberglatt tank farms. The Niederhasli tank farm is still supplied daily by rail - the non-electrified route is served by a diesel locomotive stationed in Niederglatt. The section between the tank farm and the buffer stop on the Schwenkelberg is used as a siding for freight wagons and, in winter, for the railway wagons of the Knie Circus .

The western remnant served until 2000 as an industrial connecting track for the occasional supply of the tank farm in Otelfingen. This has meanwhile been canceled and the track was taken out of service on February 28, 2007 when the ESTW Otelfingen was put into operation.

literature

Rainer Siegenthaler: The "Schipkapass" -bahn Bülach - Baden. In: Swiss Railway Review 8–9 / 2002, pp. 390–396 and 10/2002, pp. 482–486. Text without pictures online: The Schipkapass-Bahn Baden – Bülach (PDF, 18 pages; 102 kB).
R. Wanner: 50 years ago: The fire at the Schipka Pass ended. In: Eisenbahn Amateur 1/1987, pp. 14-19 and 2/1987, pp. 81-86.

Web links

Eduard Gautschi: The trains wheezed over the Schwenkelberg for 60 years. Zürcher Unterländer , October 1, 2002, p. 3 , archived from the original on September 4, 2004 ; accessed on June 6, 2019 (original website no longer available).
Chrigu's railway pages: Otelfingen – Schwenkelberg – Niederglatt
Swisstopo, time travel through old maps with the route of the railway.

Individual evidence

↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 8th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89494-140-6 .
↑ According to R. Wanner: 50 years ago: End of fire at the Schipka Pass. In: Eisenbahn Amateur 1/1987, pp. 14–19 and 2/1987, pp. 81–86, here p. 14, is the nickname for the battle at the Schipka Pass between Russian and Turkish troops at the time of the opening of the railway line ( Russo-Ottoman War (1877–1878) ). Of course, this cannot be proven, and there are also other attempts to explain it.
↑ The Schipkapass Railway Baden – Bülach (PDF, 18 pages; 102 kB)

[1] Railway Atlas Germany . 8th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2011, ISBN 978-3-89494-140-6 .

[2] According to R. Wanner: 50 years ago: End of fire at the Schipka Pass. In: Eisenbahn Amateur 1/1987, pp. 14–19 and 2/1987, pp. 81–86, here p. 14, is the nickname for the battle at the Schipka Pass between Russian and Turkish troops at the time of the opening of the railway line ( Russo-Ottoman War (1877–1878) ). Of course, this cannot be proven, and there are also other attempts to explain it.

[3] The Schipkapass Railway Baden – Bülach (PDF, 18 pages; 102 kB)