Braunschweig – Derneburg railway line

Braunschweig – Lebenstedt / Heerte – Derneburg
Route number (DB) :	1903 (Ringbahn Braunschweig North – West) 1924 (Braunschweig West – Barum) 1926 (Barum – Lichtenberg) 1901 ( Braunschweig – Leiferde ) 1920 (Leiferde – Salzgitter Bad) 1923 (Salzgitter-Drütte – Derneburg)
Course book section (DB) :	352
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Dual track :	Braunschweig – Salzgitter-Drütte
Legend Schuntertal Railway 0.0 00.0 Braunschweig North BS HKW Mitte (set up according to BLE times) Oker 1.7 00.0 Braunschweig Celler Strasse (until 1938) Braunschweig Lehndorf (Gbf) Junction Braunschweig Celler Strasse from Helmstedt 0.0 Braunschweig Hbf Oker Old main station 4.8 00.0 Braunschweig West Wilhelmitor (Connection 1941-1960) (Connection until 1938) to Hanover , to Hildeshelm 4.2 Braunschweig- Rüningen (Anst) 10.3 00.0 Geitelde (until 1941) 6.0 Leiferde (Braunschw) (Abzw) Route to Wolfenbüttel 12.7 00.0 Thiede (until 1941) 8.9 Salzgitter-Thiede (formerly Thiede Ost) Hoheweg Route to Wolfenbüttel former route from Groß Gleidingen (1944–1992) former route to Wolfenbüttel (~ 1940–1977?) von Wolfenbüttel (1941 to 1959) 18.5 12.7 Salzgitter-Drütte (since 1944) (New line since 1953) Salzgitter-Immendorf (1954) Salzgitter-Immendorf (since 1953) Salzgitter-Watenstedt (end point 1953/54) 23.1 00.0 Barum (until 1954) 17.1 Salzgitter-Barum (Anst) 26.0 00.0 Salzgitter-Heerte (until 1954) VPS Watenstedt Nord-Immendorf VPS Watenstedt North - Salzgitter-Vosspaß VPS from Salzgitter-Vosspaß VPS to Broistedt VPS "Erzbahn" Broistedt – Calbecht Salzgitter-Beinum Route from Börßum (museum operation) 26.3 Salzgitter bath Route to Kreiensen 30.3 00.0 Salzgitter-Salder (until 1954) Salzgitter-Hallendorf (1954–?) Salzgitter-Lebenstedt (since 1954) Salzgitter-Bruchmachtersen (1954–1984) Salzgitter-Fredenberg (1954–1984,   reactivation planned) 32.8 00.0 Salzgitter-Lichtenberg (until 1984) 35.0 00.0 Osterlinde - Burgdorf (until 1984) 39.8 00.0 Luttrum (until 1984) Grasdorf (until 1984) Line from Goslar Route from Seesen 44.2 00.0 Derneburg Route to Hildesheim

The Braunschweig – Derneburg railway was the main line of the Braunschweigische Landes-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BLE) and was intended to open up the rural area of ​​today's Salzgitter at the end of the 19th century .

In the course of industrialization, the track systems were rebuilt and re-routed several times, which resulted in the

• Braunschweig – Bad Harzburg railway line ,
• Leiferde – Salzgitter-Bad and
• Salzgitter-Drütte – Salzgitter-Lebenstedt railway line .

Original course

The line, which was used from 1886 to around 1938, began in the Braunschweig Nordbahnhof, the center of operations for the BLE. It led through the Braunschweig garden city, Geitelde and Thiede to the south. A connecting line to Wolfenbüttel branched off at the “Hoheweg” station . The railway continued south via Immendorf and Barum , where it bent west to north-west. It went on via Lichtenberg and Osterlinde , only to come back to Derneburg in a south-westerly direction .

As an access route in rural areas, this route was winding and made longer detours. It only allowed low speeds.

Today's course

Today's connection branches off the Braunschweig – Bad Harzburg railway at Leiferde . The routes separate at Drütte : One leads straight to Salzgitter-Bad on the Braunschweigische Südbahn (Börßum – Kreiensen). The other route turns west and serves Watenstedt . There it is connected to the Salzgitter iron and steel works network. It crosses the freight line of the Peine-Salzgitter transport company , which then runs parallel for a while. While the freight route turns to the north, the passenger route turns to the southwest and reaches Lebenstedt south of the town center. From here until 1984 there was an almost straight-line connection to Lichtenberg.

The routes used today were also designed for heavy freight trains and, in contrast to the original route, have hardly any curves.

history

Time of the state railway until 1938

When the long-distance lines were built, the triangle between the Braunschweigische Südbahn (at that time still via Börßum towards Kreiensen ), the Hildesheim – Goslar line and the Hildesheim – Braunschweig line remained free. In order to develop this area, the state government issued a concession to the private BLE in 1885 to build and operate a railway to Derneburg and from there to Seesen . They granted building grants to make the project interesting.

The section to Derneburg was opened on July 18, 1886, initially only for passenger traffic. Freight traffic started on August 5th. On October 17, the connection followed from the Hoheweg train station across Fümmelse to Wolfenbüttel. This, however, also served the purpose of regional development, since the largest cities in the duchy had been directly connected to the current Braunschweig – Bad Harzburg railway since 1838 . The extension to Seesen followed by 1889 . Until the 1930s, the line was a branch line in a rural area with low to medium traffic. Lichtenberg with the castle on the Salzgitter ridge was the destination of excursions.

Conversions from 1938 to 1954

In order to be able to develop the new industrial complex with today's Salzgitter AG, the then Reich government nationalized the BLE in 1938. The Schuntertalbahn Braunschweig – Fallersleben, another BLE line, was also planned for expansion in order to connect the Volkswagen factory near Fallersleben .

From 1938 the passenger trains drove to what was then the main train station in Braunschweig .

A new, straight connection was laid from Leiferde on the Braunschweig – Wolfenbüttel railway to Drütte (route 1920), which replaced the old BLE route north of Drütte in through traffic to Braunschweig. Wolfenbüttel was also newly connected with a straighter route north of Fümmelse. Soon afterwards, the war interrupted further expansion.

After the war, a well-developed north-east half of Braunschweig – Drütte faced a rural western section of Derneburg – Drütte, which bypassed industrial sites and new residential areas with a detour to the south. As a result, the section from Drütte to Lichtenberg via Watenstedt and Lebenstedt was redesigned and significantly shortened (route 1923). As far as Watenstedt, with the connection of the iron and steel works, traffic was started on May 17, 1953, from November 28, 1954, trains continued from there via Lebenstedt to Lichtenberg. From there they continued to use the BLE route. The previous route via Barum and Heerte lost traffic and at most served as a connection.

The last route was built in 1956 with the extension of the Leiferde – Salzgitter-Drütte to Salzgitter-Bad. This enabled trains from Kreiensen to save the detour via Börßum.

Withdrawal from the late 1950s

Road bridge in the Bruchmachtersen area

Fuhsebrücke in the locality of Bruchmachtersen

The Wolfenbüttel branch was abandoned as early as 1959, and from the Wolfenbüttler side part of the route still existed as a connection to the Welger agricultural machinery factory . The rest of the connection lasted until the 1980s, with traffic, especially west of Lebenstedt, falling further and further. The line was known nationwide among railway enthusiasts as one of the last places where the VT 08 series diesel multiple units were used .

The Federal Railroad took its action and stopped passenger traffic on the section between Lebenstedt and Derneburg at the beginning of the summer timetable on June 2, 1984. At the same time, the freight traffic between Derneburg and Osterlinde was given up. On March 31, 1985, freight traffic between Lebenstedt and Osterlinde was over.

The Derneburg – Lebenstedt section has now largely been dismantled and built over. To the east of the Bosch plant in Salzgitter, the old railway embankment including the track structure is still there and spans several streets and the Fuhse . The Kattowitzer Straße in Lebenstedt will be tunneled under, the tunnel is only cordoned off. The parking garage of the Federal Office for Radiation Protection is located directly at Lebenstedt train station, which has only one track, and a longer section of the federal motorway 39 was built over at Lichtenberg .

Planned regional city railway

In Lebenstedt it was planned to integrate the route into the system of the Regiostadtbahn Braunschweig . The diesel hybrid light rail vehicles would then have switched to a new tram route before the current terminus and moved closer to the center of the district. The tram line was supposed to run from Salzgitter-Fredenberg to the Braunschweig Nordbahnhof and in the process run through the city center via tram tracks in Braunschweig. To this end, some train stations or stops were to be rebuilt and the number of trains on this section of the route increased in accordance with the more frequent train cycle of the Regiostadtbahn. The entire project was originally supposed to be completed by 2014. The project failed in 2010 because the cost-effectiveness of the concept was no longer given due to the significantly increased vehicle procurement costs.

Regional rail concept 2014+

In order to increase the attractiveness of the lines even without the tram, the Zweckverband Großraum Braunschweig (ZGB) is pursuing the implementation of the "Regionalbahn Concept 2014+". This provides for modern vehicles and an improved timetable for the Braunschweig – Salzgitter-Lebenstedt regional train line.

business

The RB 44 line, which is fully part of the Braunschweig region's network tariff , was operated every two hours until December 2014 with individual repeater trains during rush hour. Class 628 railcars from DB Regio from Braunschweig were used on this line . A part of the RB 46 Braunschweig Hbf - Herzberg line also runs over this route on which DB Regio has been using vehicles of the 648 series since December 2005. As part of the Europe-wide tender for the Lower Saxony Southeast diesel network (DINSO), DB Regio was awarded the contract for lot 1, which also includes the regional trains Braunschweig - Salzgitter-Lebenstedt and Braunschweig - Herzberg. The company has been operating the lines since December 2014 with modernized LINT -41 multiple units for 15 years. With the start of operations, some improvements in the timetable were implemented as part of the “Regionalbahn Concept 2014+”. The RB44 line runs every hour during the week and the operating hours have been extended.

With the timetable change in December 2017, the offer was further increased from Monday to Friday by the additional RB48 line, which does not stop in Immendorf and Watenstedt. Since then, redesigned LINT-27 railcars have also been used. A real half-hourly service with stops at all stations is currently not possible, as trains cannot cross in the Drütte - Lebenstedt section and the travel time with the turn in Lebenstedt is otherwise too long to reopen this section on time for the next train.

planning

In the course of the planning of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics to reactivate railway lines in passenger traffic, the extension of traffic from Salzgitter-Lebenstedt to a new stop in Salzgitter-Fredenberg achieved the best result. The benefit-cost analysis resulted in a value of 1.82. However, the Zweckverband Großraum Braunschweig (ZGB) announced in March 2017 that, through its own investigations, considerable additional costs and only 280 passengers, of whom only 70 travel to Braunschweig, were determined for this section. The ZGB therefore refrains from reactivation until further notice.

The RGB is planning various infrastructure measures to upgrade the route. The stop in Lebenstedt is to be expanded into a two-track station. This creates the capacity for an overturned turn, which makes it possible to offer a real half-hourly service with all stops on the way in the single-track branch line block from Drütte. The technical feasibility of reactivation according to Fredenberg is to be retained. The RGB had previously argued that the crossing point in Lebenstedt is only necessary when reactivating to Fredenberg and that this also explains the inefficiency of the measure.

The Braunschweig-Rüningen and Leiferde (West) stations are to be expanded again to accommodate passenger trains. This was agreed on March 28, 2019 between the state of Lower Saxony, RGB (successor to the ZGB) and DB. As part of the realization of the station in Leiferde, the RGB demands an additional block division between Leiferde and Drütte in order to create additional capacity for the planned half-hourly service of the RB 46 line to Salzgitter-Bad. The establishment of a new station with a link to the bus network is to be checked between the Salzgitter-Drütte and Salzgitter-Bad junction.

literature

• Wolfgang Fiegenbaum, Wolfgang Klee: Farewell to the rails . Disused railway lines in passenger train traffic in Germany 1980–1985. Motorbuch, Stuttgart 1988, ISBN 3-613-01191-3 , p. 39 ff .

Web links

Commons : Braunschweig – Derneburg railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Derneburg (Han) –Braunschweig North. In: Disused railway lines in Lower Saxony. Retrieved on February 11, 2014 (search for clues on the route). 
• Steam-hauled push-pull trains in Salzgitter. In: Circulation plan for BR 78 of the Braunschweig main station. Accessed on November 29, 2014 . 
• Gisbert Bobert, Hans-Jürgen Behrend, Horst Splitt: The Lichtenberger Bahnhof. In: LICHTENBERG; the history of a Brunswick village from its beginnings until today. Retrieved February 11, 2014 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Online turntable
2. ^ Prussian land survey
3. ↑ ZGB press release on the offer improvements
4. ^ ZGB, regional rail concept 2014+
5. ↑ Press release of the LNVG on the signing of the contract for the DINSO network ( Memento of the original from March 5, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. 
6. ↑ Regional association Braunschweig: Deutsche Bahn connects on behalf of the regional association Salzgitter and Braunschweig every 30 minutes (notification dated December 11, 2017) , accessed on February 26, 2018
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Regional Association Greater Braunschweig, Committee for Regional Transport, Item 2: Local Transport Plan for Greater Braunschweig - Draft, April 24, 2019, pp. 139, 145, 431
8. ^ Press release from the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics, Labor and Transport. March 11, 2015, accessed March 12, 2015 . 
9. ^ ZGB: Question mark when reactivating the route. In: Bus & Train. DVV Media Group GmbH, March 14, 2017, accessed on March 14, 2017 . 
10. ↑ ^{a b} Information template - reactivation of the SZ-Lebenstedt – SZ-Fredenberg railway line. (PDF; 6.73 MiB) Zweckverband Greater Braunschweig, February 17, 2017, accessed on January 20, 2018 . 
11. ↑ reactivation of stations. Retrieved March 30, 2019 .