Aachen Buschtunnel – Moresnet railway line

Aachen Buschtunnel – Moresnet
Route number :	2554 / L 24a
Route length:	5.1 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Dual track :	Yes
Legend from Aachen Hbf Bush tunnel (691 m) 4.3 Buschtunnel ( Abzw ) to Hergenrath 3.223 Germany / Belgium Buschhausen from Aachen West Moresnet ( branch ) to Montzen

Buschhausen tower station

The Aachen Buschtunnel – Moresnet railway was a German-Belgian connecting line between the Aachen Hauptbahnhof – Liège and Aachen West – Tongeren lines . It opened in 1918 and closed in 1969.

history

In order to Aachen the change of direction of trains from Cologne to the new, under construction route Tongeren to avoid was the First World War , from the end of 1915, on the orders of the Chief of the Field Railway Service, General Wilhelm Groener a two-track, five-kilometer connecting track between the western end of the Bush Tunnel and Moresnet . The Berlin company Lenz & Co. carried out the construction work on the southern edge of the Aachen Forest . These included, among other things, large earth movements due to deep cuts, an overpass structure for crossing-free opening behind the Buschtunnel and in Aachen a bridge structure over the Lütticher Straße. The branch structure at Moresnet was built by the Dortmund company Franz Schlüter. It consists of three levels, below the road from Kelmis to Gemmenich , in the middle the track level of the connecting railway and above the tracks of the line from Aachen West to Tongeren. The building was planned as a tower station and also included stops for passenger trains on the two routes, which were accessed by stairs and a connecting passage. The line went into operation on March 25, 1918. In peacetime, the express train service from Aachen to Brussels should take place on the line. Therefore it was in both branch structures in the straight rails.

After the end of the Second World War, there was still a single-track train service. As part of the electrification of the Aachen – Liège line, the Deutsche Bundesbahn changed the track layout in the area of ​​the branch structure in front of the Buschtunnel. For a crossing-free change from German right-hand traffic to Belgian left-hand traffic in 1966, the directional track to Aachen was swiveled into the Moresnet route under the bridge. After the completion of freight train turning tracks in Aachen West station , the Aachen Buschtunnel – Moresnet line was shut down on June 1, 1969 and the tracks dismantled. At the beginning of the seventies, most of the cuttings were filled with rubble.

After the commissioning of a second tunnel tube in the Buschtunnel, the overpass structure not far from the west portal, which since 1966 has enabled the crossing-free change from left-hand to right-hand traffic, disappeared as part of the re-routing of the route to Liège. Left-hand traffic ends or has since started in Aachen Central Station . The neighboring railway overpass on Lütticher Straße was demolished in summer 2013.

business

The connecting route was mainly used by freight trains. Passenger traffic with a stop in Buschhausen took place from November 4, 1942 to September 9, 1944. During the electrification of the Aachen – Liège line , Trans-Europ-Express trains ran on the route in diversion traffic .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Hans Schweers, Henning Wall: Railways around Aachen: 150 years of the international route Cologne - Aachen - Antwerp. Verlag Schweers + Wall, Aachen 1993, ISBN 3-921679-91-5 , p. 115f
2. ^ Hans Schweers, Henning Wall: Railways around Aachen: 150 years of the international route Cologne - Aachen - Antwerp. Verlag Schweers + Wall, Aachen 1993, ISBN 3-921679-91-5 , p. 150
3. ↑ Thomas Kreft: The demolition of the Bildchener Bridge has a historical dimension. In: www.aachener-zeitung.de, August 1, 2013
4. ^ Reinhard Gessen: Mining and railways in the Aachen-Düren-Heinsberg region