Benzelrath – Nörvenich railway line

Benzelrath – Nörvenich
Route number (DB) :	2607 (Benzelrath – Mödrath) 2605 (Mödrath – Nörvenich)
Course book section (DB) :	most recently (1972) 247a
Route length:	19.8 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Track until 1914:	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Legend from cheeky 0.3 Benzelrath to the north-south railway 1.9 Electric smelter 3.0 Grefrath - Bottenbroich (Hp & Anst) 6th, 0 Mödrath East from Horrem 6.45 Mödrath to Liblar 9.6 Kerpen (Erft) 11.1 Langenich 12.7 Bergerhausen 14.4 Blatzheim 17.4 Niederbolheim 18.4 Oberbolheim from Düren 19.8 Norvenich to Zülpich Swell:

Milestone in Grefrath

The Benzelrath – Nörvenich railway was initially a meter-gauge , from 1912 standard-gauge railway line, which was largely built by the Bergheimer Kreisbahn . It ran extensively parallel to the high-speed line Cologne – Aachen from Benzelrath via Mödrath to Nörvenich .

history

The Cologne-Frechen-Benzelrath Railway (KFBE) started operating its Cologne – Frechen railway in 1894 to transport lignite briquettes, quartz sand and clay pipes to Melaten station in Cologne-Ehrenfeld .

The Bergheimer Kreisbahn (BKB) extended the route from Benzelrath, initially via Mödrath to Kerpen . Operations began on June 23, 1896, but there was no continuous traffic despite the same gauge. In the same year, on October 25, 1896, another section to Blatzheim was opened. Initially, three pairs of passenger trains ran daily.

It took almost ten years for the BKB to continue building the line to Oberbolheim , and this section was put into operation on November 1, 1905.

Due to the heavy freight traffic and the transfer of freight to the Reichsbahn, the change to standard gauge, which was decided by the district council in 1903, was desirable. In 1912 the third rail was installed, freight traffic became standard gauge, passenger traffic (until 1914 at the latest) continued on meter gauge.

On January 1, 1913, the BKB was nationalized, the traffic operated by the Prussian State Railways. Most of the meter-gauge vehicles came to other railways of the West German Railway Company .

The last section to Nörvenich was built in 1924 by the Dürener Kreisbahn (DKB) and opened on July 14, 1924. The management of this section was taken over by the German Reichsbahn, to which this section of the route was also transferred free of charge in 1944. With this, the DKB had closed the gap to its main route from Düren to Embken , which had ceased operations between December 1922 and January 1924.

In 1949, the Frechen opencast mine was the first large open-cast mine in the Rhenish lignite mining area . In 1951 this required the relocation of the section between Benzelrath and Grefrath-Bottenbroich, and on December 16, 1956 the section between Mödrath and Kerpen was relocated.

With the expansion of the opencast mine, the continued existence of the line was also endangered. First, on May 29, 1960, passenger traffic between Benzelrath and Mödrath and Kerpen and Nörvenich was stopped. Freight traffic and thus the section between Benzelrath and Mödrath was shut down on May 28, 1961. Due to the open pit, the route has now completely disappeared from the landscape.

On the section between Kerpen and Nörvenich, goods traffic was operated until September 1, 1966, almost two years later the line from Düren to Nörvenich was also closed.

On the remaining route between Mödrath and Kerpen, passenger traffic was discontinued on May 28, 1972, and goods traffic followed on October 1, 1978.

literature

• Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways. Volume 4: North Rhine-Westphalia - southern part . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 1997, ISBN 3-88255-660-9 , pp. 105-109.

Web links

NRWbahnarchiv by André Joost:

• Description of route 2607 : Benzelrath ↔ Mödrath
• Description of route 2605 : Mödrath ↔ Nörvenich

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany 2007/2008 . 6th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89494-136-9 .