Abelitz – Aurich railway line
| Abelitz-Aurich | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route number : | 1573 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course book section (DB) : | last 223c | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 13 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top speed: | 25 km / h | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Abelitz – Aurich railway line is a 13-kilometer, single-track railway line in standard gauge in East Frisia . It connects the Abelitz depot on the main line Norddeich Mole – Emden – Münster (or the East Frisian coastal railway Emden – Norden – Jever) via Georgsheil and Moordorf with the district town of Aurich . Most of the route runs parallel to federal highway 72 . The owner is the company Enercon , operator the railway infrastructure company Aurich-Emden mbH (EAE).
history
The railway line was built in 1883 at the same time as the coastal railway (today's Rheine – Norddeich Mole railway line ) in order not to leave the provincial capital Aurich without a rail connection, but was classified as a single-track branch line from the start. It was opened on June 15, 1883. In the beginning, the Emslandbahn, like the line to Aurich, still ran right next to the Landstrasse, the connection to the main line was at Georgsheil station. When the Emsland Railway was relocated to a further western route on August 1, 1906, a connection was built from the new Abelitz station to Georgsheil so that the trains from Aurich could enter the new route.
Originally, passenger traffic was brisk; in 1944 ten pairs of trains ran on the route. After the Second World War and the increasing motorization of the population, the importance of the route decreased sharply, in 1961 only one pair of trains ran early in the morning and late in the evening on weekdays. It went on like this until passenger traffic ceased on September 24, 1967. Only the freight traffic remained in operation. The route was particularly important for the ammunition depot of the Bundeswehr in Tannenhausen , but also supplied Aurich and other places along the route with goods and fuels such as coal . Here, too, the importance of the route continued to decline in the following years, so that freight traffic was also discontinued on December 31, 1993.
Reactivation of the route
Freight traffic was resumed in April 2008. In order to reactivate it, some parts of the route were modernized from November 2006 onwards by the EAE, which was founded specifically for this purpose.
According to the plans at the time, part of the Abelitz – Aurich railway would have had to make way for the construction of the feeder to the federal motorway 31 required in Aurich . For this reason, the discussion about the continued existence of the line in Aurich was sometimes ideologically hardened. Proponents and opponents of the railway line each stated that the lack of a rail connection or the lack of a feeder A-31 scared off investors .
But when the Aurich-based company Enercon, by far the largest investor in the city, expressly made further investments dependent on reactivating the railway line and was ready to contribute 2 million of the required 7.5 million euros, the state of Lower Saxony also agreed to the financing. In addition, the municipality of Südbrookmerland would like to contribute up to 250,000 euros in the financing of the project in order to obtain a rail connection in the Georgsheil industrial park in the form of two switches and a siding.
The official reopening took place on April 4, 2008. Lower Saxony's then Prime Minister Christian Wulff opened the line in the Aurich-Tannenhausen industrial area together with Enercon managing director Aloys Wobben . The company's main plant is located here. Before that, the politician and the head of the company laid the foundation stone for a new iron foundry in the Georgsheil industrial park . This means that the municipality's desired rail connection is now within reach.
Plans to resume passenger traffic
The reintroduction of local rail passenger transport has been discussed since the line was reactivated. In the reactivation for freight traffic, however, for cost reasons, only an expansion for a maximum speed of 25 km / h as an industrial mainline took place, so that reactivation of passenger traffic in this form does not initially appear attractive. Nevertheless, the “Aurich - ran an die Bahn” association is campaigning for this in Aurich. He would like to offer some special trips in cooperation with the museum railway coastal railway Ostfriesland to raise passenger awareness on the route. The LNVG as the responsible transport authorities closed a reactivation in regional rail transport by 2013, due to the financial situation and the additional initial charge which annual operating costs from.
When the state government changed in 2013, the coalition agreement stipulated that possible reactivation of rail lines in local rail transport should be checked. A total of 74 route sections took part in the process, eight of which ended up on the shortlist. The Abelitz – Aurich route achieved third place in the ranking of the utility value analysis, so that a cost-benefit analysis is now carried out and a decision can then be made about operation in the local rail transport.
The final investigation, however, showed a negative cost-benefit analysis. However, due to advance payments such as existing platforms, operation could also be possible without state subsidies.
Politicians are also investigating a continuation of the route to Wittmund in order to connect there to the East Frisian coastal railway . The aim is a continuous rail connection for freight traffic between the ports in Emden and the JadeWeserPort in Wilhelmshaven .
In 2015, Enercon announced that the company no longer needed to widen the route to transport its products. This also stopped the reactivation of passenger traffic on the Aurich – Emden line.
Web links
- Website of the Oldenburg-Ostfriesland railway company
- Western Railway: Abelitz-Aurich
- Railway in Aurich
- aurich-emden-bahn.de Project page for the expansion of the line and the reactivation of local rail transport
- Aurich `ran to the Bahn eV
Individual evidence
- ↑ LNVG, SPNV-Konzept 2013+, pp. 87–88
- ↑ Lower Saxony Ministry of Transport, reactivation of railway lines
- ↑ Opportunity for SPNV revival . In: railway magazine . No. 5 , 2015, ISSN 0342-1902 , p. 24 .
- ↑ Closing the gap between the lines “Emden-Aurich-Wittmund” ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . ILEK Ostfriesland-Mitte. Retrieved October 18, 2011.
- ↑ Enercon stops railway expansion. Retrieved August 9, 2017 .
