Solingen-Wald train station
| Solingen-Wald train station | |
|---|---|
 Reception building
|
|
| Data | |
| Design | Through station |
| abbreviation | KSW |
| opening | 1887 |
| Conveyance | 1994 |
| location | |
| City / municipality | Solingen |
| Place / district | Forest |
| country | North Rhine-Westphalia |
| Country | Germany |
| Coordinates | 51 ° 11 '14 " N , 7 ° 3' 12" E |
| Height ( SO ) | 215 m above sea level NHN |
| Railway lines | |
| Railway stations in North Rhine-Westphalia | |
The Solingen-Wald station is a former station in the Solingen district of Wald , which was on the disused Wuppertal-Vohwinkel-Solingen railway line .
history
prehistory
The mayor's office of Wald , which was only founded in 1807, received city rights in 1856 according to the Rhenish city regulations . The community of Wald, which was industrialized at an early stage by Solingen standards, with large steel goods factories and the umbrella fittings industry initially had no direct connection to the railway network, which would have meant a further location advantage. The railway connection between Gruiten and Deutz, built from 1864 to 1867 , ran over the area of the municipality of Merscheid because of the more suitable, because it is more level, topography . On September 25, 1867 opened Bergisch-Märkische Railway Company on this railway line in Hofschaft cottage the station Ohligs Forest , ie the subsequent Ohligser station and today Solingen Hauptbahnhof . In the beginning, the forest industry had to switch to the train stations in Ohligs , Vohwinkel or Solingen.
Opening of the train station
After the nationalization of the nominally private railway companies, the Prussian State Railways decided to connect the cities of Solingen and Vohwinkel across the Bergisches Land . The first construction phase was to connect the Vohwinkel train station to the forest via Gräfrath . The railway line ran from the Fuhr via Delle and Eigen outside the old town center of Wald. The Wald train station was also placed outside. It is located about one kilometer east of the center of the forest and could be reached from there via Kaiserstraße (today Friedrich-Ebert-Straße). The area in which the station was built was largely undeveloped at the time.
The city of Wald had to bear considerable costs for the construction of the route and the construction of the station. That is why the Walder city council considered collecting a coal pfennig for every hundredweight of coal arriving at the train station in the future . However, this was not implemented. The Walder Zeitung expressed the importance of the construction of the station:
"Forest has not recorded any event that is of such importance and significance for its existence and its future, for its industry, its trade and its trade, as the opening of its railway connection with Vohwinkel"
On November 15, 1887, the first passenger train ran the new route between Vohwinkel and Wald. After completion of the line between Solingen and Wald on February 12, 1890, the Walder station became a through station. The so-called corkscrew track after its winding course reached its full length.
Years of operation
Already in the first years of operation of the Walder station it turned out to be deficient in many respects. It was far too small for actual freight and passenger traffic. The waiting room for first and second class only offered space for 16 passengers, which meant that they often had to stay outside or in the station corridors in bad weather. Before the station opened, it was assumed that 63,000 passengers per year would be used at the station; in fact, it was 164,000 in the first year. The loading and shunting tracks were also inadequate. As early as 1889, the station was expanded to include two open loading tracks and a loading line. In 1893 the station building and the goods shed were enlarged.
At the beginning, the railway line was only of minor importance, which meant that the intersections of the rails north and south of the station were completely unsecured. The risk of accidents was high, not least because long trains often blocked the crossroads. This was particularly true of the southern crossing with Kaiserstraße (today Focher Straße), which is why a barrier system was installed there in 1890 . It was not until 1901 that such measures followed for the northern intersection with Wilhelmstrasse (today Wittkuller Strasse). Wilhelmstrasse was only led over the tracks with the aid of a ramp much later, and all too often the intersection was blocked by shunting trips . The new tram line 2 was supposed to run along Kaiserstraße at the same level in 1896, over the crossing with the railway line, but the responsible railway minister forbade this. The danger point should be defused with the help of an underpass. The city of Wald provided the necessary land, and the railway carried the costs of the construction work that began in 1908. Solinger Kleinbahn AG bore the costs of laying the tram tracks and added them to the fare for the route later. After a construction period of two years, the underpass was opened for normal traffic on August 26, 1910 and for trams on October 12, 1910.
In spite of all adversities, the station was ultimately the main reason for the economic prosperity of the city of Wald after 1890. Various factories settled in the area around the station or expanded their plants there. The number of factories in Wald rose from 78 in 1888 to 132 in 1899. These included Grossmann Stahlguss , Vereinigte Schlüsselwerke (today VS Guss), Bögra and Hugo Bauer. The industrial area to the east of the train station was formed by the proximity to the track systems. The economic boom in Wald correlated with the rapid growth of the population. The population grew from around 11,000 to 17,555 between 1888 and 1899.
After the tram connection between Solingen and Vohwinkel, i.e. line 3, went into operation, the railroad for passenger transport increasingly lost its frequency. However, freight traffic continued to grow steadily in the 1930s. In 1937 17 people were employed at Walder Bahnhof, which was an enormous amount for such a small station. Due to the special summer trains, for example in the direction of the Ittertal lido , the railway line also briefly regained importance for passenger traffic. The platforms were too short for the special trains and had to be extended by 70 meters in 1937.
However, the private connections were a special feature of the Wald station. These were mainly the nearby companies Klein (steel construction) and C. Prinz (pots and pans), which had their own connections to the rail network. The Klein company even had a turntable that enabled the cars to be distributed across the hall tracks.
Decommissioning and current use
After declining cargo handling volumes, the goods and express cargo handling at the Walder train station was closed on December 31, 1975. The station area was still owned by a scrap dealer until May 1994. At that time, the old goods halls also housed a warehouse belonging to the former Solingen seed manufacturer Flora Frey. Until March 1995, individual demand trains drove out of the forest. The last track systems were dismantled by the end of 1997 .
In the course of the Regionale 2006 , the route of the former railway line was converted into a railway cycle path , the corkscrew route . The area around the old Walder train station was built in the third construction phase from Carl-Ruß-Straße to the old Graefrath train station by September 2006.
Today a restaurant , the Kulturverein Waldmeister e. V. , which also offers cultural events there, and houses a firewood center in the warehouses .
In the early morning of July 19, 2015, a major fire broke out in the former warehouse of the train station on Schenkendorfstrasse to the east . The packaging and wood stored there provided a good breeding ground for the fire . Large parts of the halls burned down together with their roof structure. The damage ran into the millions.
literature
- Kurt Kaiß, Michael Zimmermann: The corkscrew railway - on branch lines from Solingen to Vohwinkel , Rheinisch-Bergische Eisenbahngeschichte Volume 2, Verlag A. Kaiß, Leichlingen 1998; ISBN 3-9806103-0-6
- Rhenish City Atlas Forest, Volume VI No. 37, 1980; Editor: Reinhold Kaiser; Rheinland-Verlag Cologne; ISBN 3-7927-0620-2
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Rheinischer Städteatlas Wald, volume VI No. 37, 1980; Editor: Reinhold Kaiser; Rheinland-Verlag Cologne; ISBN 3-7927-0620-2
- ↑ a b c d e f Kurt Kaiß, Michael Zimmermann: The corkscrew railway - on branch lines from Solingen to Vohwinkel , Rheinisch-Bergische Eisenbahngeschichte Volume 2, Verlag A. Kaiß, Leichlingen 1998; ISBN 3-9806103-0-6
- ↑ a b Solingen-Wald train station. In: bahnen-wuppertal.de. Retrieved July 2, 2016 .
- ↑ Fire causes millions in damage , Solinger Tageblatt from July 20, 2015