Borna – Großbothen railway line

Neukirchen-Wyhra-Großbothen
Route number :	6916; sä. BGr
Course book range :	170n (1947)
Route length:	24.96 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Maximum slope :	10  ‰
Minimum radius :	240 m
Top speed:	60 km / h
Legend from Neukieritzsch 0.00 Borna (b Leipzig) 168 m 5.43 Neukirchen-Wyhra (formerly Bf) 168 m to Chemnitz Hbf 7.69 Schönau (b Frohburg) 176 m 11.76 Flößberg 164 m 12.85 Anst HASAG (1944–1945) 163 m 13.66 Eula Bridge (12 m) 15.34 Bad Lausick West (formerly Heinersdorf) 154 m 17.47 Steingrundbach Bridge (10 m) Geithain – Leipzig Hbf from Leipzig Hbf 18.55 Bad Lausick 169 m to Geithain 22.26 Glasses 185 m 25.13 Kleinbardau 175 m 27.65 Coswig Abzw B-Borsdorf (Sachs) from Borsdorf 30.15 EÜ Bundesstrasse 107 (19 m) from Wurzen 30.54 Großbothen ( Inselbahnhof ) 147 m to Glauchau (Sachs) after Coswig Abzw B

The Borna – Großbothen ("Querbahn") railway was a branch line in Saxony . It ran from Borna via Bad Lausick to Großbothen . The opening of the line in 1937 was one of the last railway line openings or extensions, after only 10 years of operation the line was dismantled in 1947 as a reparation payment.

history

Already in the 1850s there were plans for the Pegau – Borna – Grimma connection. However, these were not implemented, although lignite was already being mined in the area and there was therefore a sufficient need for transport. Several petitions from a committee founded in the early 1880s were also unsuccessful.

After 1900, the railway construction began to move again; after all, in 1907 a section of the route planned in the 1850s was approved with the Neukieritzsch – Pegau railway line . There were also new investigations for the Borna – Grimma section. Ultimately, Großbothen station was chosen for the connection to the existing rail network, as the conditions there were better than in Grimma. In 1909, surveying work began on the Borna – Großbothen line, for which construction costs of around 3.5 million marks were estimated. At first nothing happened. It was not until 1913 that a larger sum was made available for the railway construction for the first time. However, there were still uncertainties about the exact route, on the one hand as many places as possible wanted to have a rail connection, on the other hand the mining areas near Borna made the route more difficult. Altogether there were eight different proposals, since it was not possible to agree on one until 1914, the first World War , which had just broken out, prevented construction from starting.

After the end of the war, the costs had increased to such an extent that the municipalities first had to purchase the building plots for the state. Construction work began in September 1920, but was stalled by inflation . In 1924/25 there was no work at all. The substructure was finally partially completed by the 1930s . Due to the aftermath of the global economic crisis, construction work was stopped again in 1933. By 1936/37, the route was finally completed through National Socialist job creation programs with great personnel expenditure. The Bad Lausick train station was also extensively rebuilt. The line was opened on October 2, 1937, after the Heinersdorf – Großbothen section had already been opened for freight traffic on July 1, 1936.

Passenger traffic was always limited to regional traffic, only in freight traffic was the route permitted for a maximum of 20 tons axle load of greater importance. Lignite was mainly transported from the area south of Leipzig to the Riesa Elbe port.

At the end of the Second World War, traffic was stopped on April 15, 1945, and only a few trains started running again from June 1945. Mainly fuel for the Hirschfelde power station was transported. For a short time, the Liebertwolkwitz – Bad Lausick section of the Leipzig – Geithain line was intended as a reparation payment for the Soviet Union . However, the decision was then made to take the Borna – Großbothen route. On September 30, 1947, the line was closed and subsequently dismantled. Only the track from Bad Lausick to Bad Lausick West remained as a siding for a fireclay plant ; it was still used until October 1952.

A tourist cycle path is to be built in sections on the railway line, connecting Borna and Grimma . After the creation of the Leipzig district , planning began in 2011. In October 2018, work began on the first, three-kilometer-long construction section of the Mulderadweg - which runs on the route of the Muldentalbahn - via Großbothen into the Glastener Forest. The federal government takes over the financing between Bad Lausick and Flößberg as an alternative to a cycle path parallel to federal highway 176 .

Route description

Operating points

Borna (b Leipzig) ⊙

Borna train station (b Leipzig)

The Borna (b Leipzig) Bahnhof as the terminus of the private railway was built near the city center. Due to the lignite mining and the extension of the route to Chemnitz , the importance of the station increased more and more. Soon it was no longer possible to expand at the previous location (near the intersection between today's B 93 and B 176 ). Therefore, a completely new train station was built on the outskirts of the city in 1903/04 to the southwest of the old location. This station went into operation on October 1st, and the old station served as a connecting line for goods traffic. In addition to connecting railways to various lignite opencast mines, a locomotive station with a two-tier boiler house was also built . From then on, various shunting locomotives were stationed here.

In the following decades, the station continued to grow. The last major construction work took place in the 1930s with the construction of the Borna – Großbothen railway line. The line first branched out at Neukirchen-Wyhra station, but the trains ran from and to Borna. After the end of the Second World War, the station experienced another increase in traffic, as there was hardly any foreign fuel available. Briquette production around Borna reached its peak in the 1960s. Over 10 block trains with briquettes or raw lignite were driven off every day. With the electrification of the Leipzig – Borna section, the station also became a locomotive exchange station.

After 1989/90 the Borna train station began to decline rapidly, and all the briquette factories in the surrounding area closed in the first half of the 1990s, meaning that freight traffic almost completely collapsed. Today there is no longer any freight traffic, and the tracks have been severely dismantled. Only the reception building was renovated.

The station already had five different names during its operation, in detail these were:

• until September 30, 1901: Borna
• until June 30, 1911: Borna near Leipzig
• until December 21, 1933: Borna b Leipzig
• since December 22, 1933: Borna (b Leipzig)

DB Station & Service has been running the station as Borna (Leipzig) station since May 28, 2000 , although the railway office has not been renamed.

Bad Lausick ⊙

Lausigk station around 1910

In addition to Liebertwolkwitz, Lausigk station was the most important intermediate station on the line when the Leipzig – Geithain line opened. Initially equipped with five tracks, the station was soon expanded due to the increased traffic. As a result of the railway connection, among other things, Lausigk developed into a health resort, until the end of the First World War the express trains on the route did not stop here.

As early as the early 1920s, the station was rebuilt for the long-planned “cross line” Borna – Großbothen. The line was not opened until 1937, but was dismantled again in 1947 as a reparation payment.

In the 2000s, the remaining tracks were radically reduced to two tracks, but Bad Lausick still serves as a crossing station today.

Großbothen ⊙

The Großbothen station was opened in 1867 with the Grimma – Leisnig section of the Borsdorf – Coswig line of the Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company . Although the station is located on the Kleinbothen corridor , it was initially intended as a "train station for Colditz in Großbothen". The connection to Colditz was made by stagecoaches. With the opening of the Glauchau – Wurzen railway, Großbothen became a railway junction, and the reception building in an island location was also built at this time. At that time, plans were already being made on the Borna – Großbothen railway, which was only opened in 1937 after a long construction period.

Already after the Second World War, Großbothen lost a lot of its importance with the interruption of the line towards Wurzen and the dismantling of the line Borna – Großbothen. Passenger traffic on the Colditz-Großbothen section was suspended on May 27, 2000. Today the station only has three platform tracks, and a fourth track has been leased to DRE.

• 

  Großbothen station around 1910

• 

  Großbothen station in the present

literature

• Steffen Kluttig: Rail connections between Chemnitz and Leipzig - the Kieritzsch – Chemnitz and Leipzig – Geithain railway lines. Bildverlag Böttger, Witzschdorf 2006, ISBN 3-937496-17-3 .

Individual evidence

1. ^ Steffen Kluttig: Rail connections between Chemnitz and Leipzig - the Kieritzsch – Chemnitz and Leipzig – Geithain railway lines. P. 50.
2. ^ Steffen Kluttig: Rail connections between Chemnitz and Leipzig - the Kieritzsch – Chemnitz and Leipzig – Geithain railway lines. P. 50 f.
3. ^ Steffen Kluttig: Rail connections between Chemnitz and Leipzig - the Kieritzsch – Chemnitz and Leipzig – Geithain railway lines. P. 52.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Steffen Kluttig: Rail connections between Chemnitz and Leipzig - the Kieritzsch – Chemnitz and Leipzig – Geithain railway lines. P. 54.
5. ↑ Cycle path construction from Grimma to Borna starts. In: Leipziger Volkszeitung. September 22, 2018, accessed November 8, 2018 . 
6. ^ Sören Müller: Contracts signed for the planned Grimma - Borna cycle path. In: Media portal Grimma. April 25, 2017. Retrieved November 8, 2018 . 
7. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register ( Memento from February 11, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
8. ^ Steffen Kluttig: Rail connections between Chemnitz and Leipzig - the Kieritzsch – Chemnitz and Leipzig – Geithain railway lines. P. 91 ff.
9. ^ Steffen Kluttig: Rail connections between Chemnitz and Leipzig - the Kieritzsch – Chemnitz and Leipzig – Geithain railway lines. P. 130 ff.
10. ^ Manfred Berger: Historic train station buildings I - Saxony, Prussia, Mecklenburg and Thuringia. 2nd, revised edition. transpress Verlag, Berlin 1987, ISBN 3-344-00066-7 , p. 99 ff.
11. ↑ Tracks in service facilities. (PDF; 171 kB) In: www.deutschebahn.de. April 1, 2010, accessed October 7, 2013 . 

Web links

Commons : Borna – Großbothen railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• The railway line on www.sachsenschiene.de
• Excerpt from the course book 1944
• www.eisenbahnrelktionen.de