Bruhrainbahn
| Bruchsal – Germersheim | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route number (DB) : | 3450 (Rheinsheim – Germersheim) 4132 (Bruchsal – Rheinsheim) |
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| Course book section (DB) : | 665.33 704 (until December 2011) |
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| Route length: | 26.6 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route class : | D4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Power system : | 15 kV, 16.7 Hz ~ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maximum slope : | 12 ‰ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minimum radius : | 300 m | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dual track : | Bruchsal-Graben-Neudorf | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Bruhrainbahn is a railway line from Bruchsal via Graben-Neudorf to Germersheim in the federal states of Baden-Württemberg and Rhineland-Palatinate . While it used to be part of a supraregional main line and thus served long-distance traffic , the route is now almost exclusively served by local traffic.
It got its name from the Bruhrain , a landscape that is located in the northwestern district of Karlsruhe and which it crosses.
Route
The route runs completely within the Rhine plain ; between Bruchsal and Graben-Neudorf it is almost straight. The two largest engineering structures are the overpass over the Rheinbahn north of Graben-Neudorf and the Rhine bridge between Rheinsheim and Germersheim .
Bruchsal, the municipalities of Karlsdorf-Neuthard and Graben-Neudorf are passed , from Huttenheim to Rheinsheim the route runs on the outskirts of the city of Philippsburg before it finally reaches Germersheim. From Bruchsal to Rheinsheim, the route runs within the Karlsruhe district ; Germersheim belongs to the district of the same name .
history
Planning, construction and opening
The state treaty of April 11, 1862 between Baden and Bavaria had stipulated the construction of a column railway from Bruchsal over the existing ship bridge near Rheinsheim to the Bavarian fortress town of Germersheim, the Baden side interpreted the agreement to mean that it caused a railway line suitable for horse operation to be built on the existing one Roads to be laid. The Prussian Commander-in-Chief, Field Marshal von Moltke , personally decided that the railway should be operated as a steam train.
On August 15, 1870, a provisional " war track " was opened between the two cities against contradictions from Huttenheim and Neudorf on the rails, which were hastily laid with about 1000 workers from old usable material, but was interrupted again from August 12, 1871 after not even 30 military transports had been carried out, but had proven the poor suitability of the temporary arrangement. On November 23 of that year there was a renewed state treaty between the two countries, which included the construction of the lines from Bruchsal to Germersheim and from Heidelberg to Speyer .
The Bruchsal – Rheinsheim section was opened on November 23, 1874. The extension to Germersheim was initially delayed by a few years, as the military authorities insisted that the bridge should be given a location that does not obstruct the field of fire of the Germersheim Fortress . In August 1874, after an agreement had been reached regarding the location of the Rhine bridge, the plan to extend the line to Germersheim was approved so that work could begin on April 9, 1875. On May 15, 1877, the gap between Rheinsheim and Germersheim was closed. The Bruhrainbahn was henceforth continuously passable. The Baden section of the route was owned by the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways , the three and a half kilometers long section of the route within the Palatinate belonged to the Palatinate Maximiliansbahn-Gesellschaft .
Further development
While the Bruhrainbahn was initially only operated on a single track when the line was opened, the second track was put into operation a few years later. From 1890 it was initially part of the national connection Bruchsal – Germersheim– Landau - Biebermühle - Zweibrücken - Saarbrücken , which is now closed between Germersheim and Landau (see also the Germersheim – Landau line and the Landau – Rohrbach line ). From this time on, long-distance trains on the Munich - Saarbrücken route also ran via the Bruhrainbahn.
The long-distance won even more important than in 1909, a level-free threading of Bruhrain Railway north of Graben-Neudorf in the Rheinbahn in operation was taken. The old route between Huttenheim and Graben-Neudorf can still be recognized today by the routing of the road and by the two station guards' houses.
Since the train weights on the route had increased steadily, it became necessary to reinforce the bridge structure of the Rhine bridge. This was done in the period from 1927 to 1930. In 1938, however, the express trains on the Saarbrücken – Munich route using the Bruhrainbahn were discontinued. From now on, the Bruhrainbahn was to only handle freight traffic in long-distance traffic , while long-distance passenger traffic was to be conducted instead via Karlsruhe and Wörth and then via Landau and Zweibrücken to Saarbrücken.
During the Second World War , several military trains also drove over the route. In the course of the war, the importance of the route grew, as gradually all Rhine bridges - with the exception of the Rhine bridge between Rheinsheim and Germersheim - were blown up by German troops in order to make it difficult for the Allied troops to cross the Rhine. The aforementioned Rhine bridge was finally blown up on March 24, 1945.
German Federal Railroad (1945–1993)
The demolition of the Rhine bridge meant that traffic on the Bruhrain Railway, whose western end point was now Rheinsheim, decreased. As a result, it was dismantled on a single track between Graben-Neudorf and Rheinsheim. However, since the section between Graben-Neudorf and Bruchsal was of great importance in rail traffic, it kept its second track and was electrified in the 1950s, so that electrical operation could start there on June 1, 1958.
From the 1960s onwards, the rebuilding of the Rhine bridge was heatedly debated. Opponents of the reconstruction pointed to the low traffic importance of the bridge; Nevertheless, the construction was put out to tender in 1964. Three years later, on October 23, 1967, the Rhine Bridge was reopened. However, contrary to expectations, it no longer achieved any supra-regional importance.
In 1987, national trains on the Saarbrücken – Zweibrücken – Landau – Karlsruhe route ran for a few weeks on the Bruhrainbahn, as the Rhine bridge between Karlsruhe and Wörth had to be repaired after a shipwreck and the express trains had to be diverted.
Deutsche Bahn (since 1994)
Since 1994 the Rhine bridge between Rheinsheim and Germersheim has only been operated on a single track; at the same time, the Rheinsheim train station was dismantled as a stop . In May 1994, the Graben-Neudorf Nord stop was put into operation between the Graben-Neudorf and Huttenheim train stations , which has since made the Neudorf district better accessible. From May 2000, the Mainz –Germersheim– Karlsruhe regional express line was also introduced every two hours, serving the Germersheim – Graben-Neudorf Bruhrainbahn section.
As part of the expansion for S-Bahn operations, the Graben-Neudorf-Germersheim section was electrified in 2010 and 2011 and three new stations were built: Bruchsal Sports Center , Bruchsal Am Mantel and Germersheim Mitte / Rhein . The six existing stations have been modernized. The platforms were expanded to a height of 76 cm and a usable length of 140 m (corresponding, for example, to two multiple units of the 425 series ). For timetable change 2011/2012 on Sunday, 11 December 2011, the new commuter train line was opened between Bruchsal and Germersheim and a line S 33 in the route network of the Rhine-Neckar S-Bahn integrated.
business
Timetable
The Bruhrainbahn is listed as KBS 665.33 in the timetable of the Deutsche Bahn . As of May 1994, the Bruhrainbahn also benefited from two increases in attractiveness in local transport: on the one hand, through the establishment of the Karlsruher Verkehrsverbund (KVV), which has been in effect on the entire route since then and which gave it the designation "R9", and on the other hand, also in May 1994 introduced " Rhineland-Palatinate Clock ". An hourly service was introduced and, for the first time since 1945, continuous trains ran on Sundays.
S-Bahns of the RheinNeckar S-Bahn operate on the route with class 425 multiple units , which run as line S 33 from Bruchsal to Germersheim, these are partially connected from Germersheim as S3 or S4 in the direction of Mannheim , one train runs Monday to Friday even to Mainz Hbf . In the Graben-Neudorf-Germersheim section, regional express trains on the RE 4 line Karlsruhe-Germersheim-Speyer-Ludwigshafen-Worms-Mainz run every two hours as part of the Süwex network; class 429 multiple units (Stadler Flirt) are used here. The only intermediate stop of the RE trains between Graben-Neudorf and Germersheim is Philippsburg . Furthermore, a pair of IC trains ran from Karlsruhe via Graben-Neudorf (without stopping) and Germersheim to Frankfurt am Main from Monday to Friday . This has been running since the 2013/2014 timetable change on December 15, 2013 on the Winden – Karlsruhe line and the Schifferstadt – Wörth line with a stop at Wörth (Rhine) station to Germersheim. The Bruhrainbahn lost its only long-distance connection to date.
The journey with the S-Bahn from Bruchsal to Germersheim takes a total of 30 minutes, a journey with the Regional Express from Graben-Neudorf to Germersheim takes 16 minutes.
traffic
The line is electrified. In the Bruchsal – Graben-Neudorf section, supraregional freight trains run towards Kornwestheim . Freight traffic on the Graben-Neudorf-Germersheim section has declined significantly in recent decades; In Philippsburg station, however, there is still a siding to the Philippsburg nuclear power plant, to which individual freight trains still run.
Crossing possibilities exist on the Bruhrainbahn on the entire route section Bruchsal-Graben-Neudorf as well as in the stations of Philippsburg and Germersheim.
From the beginning of the nineties until the introduction of the RheinNeckar S-Bahn, trains on the route Bruchsal – Germersheim– Ludwigshafen am Rhein - Mannheim - Heidelberg - Neckargemünd - Meckesheim - Sinsheim –Steinsfurt– Eppingen / Heilbronn operated with locomotives of the 218 series and Silberlingen wrong. At the end of 2003, however, the circular routes to Eppingen and Heilbronn were given up with the opening of the RheinNeckar S-Bahn, and since then the Bruhrainbahn trains have only run to Speyer. As a result of the extension of the RheinNeckar S-Bahn via Speyer to Germersheim in December 2006, the Bruhrainbahn trains only run to Germersheim. Since December 2011, with the integration of the Bruhrainbahn into the RheinNeckar S-Bahn, individual trains have been running again beyond Germersheim.
At the end of 2004, the push-pull trains hauled by class 218 locomotives were completely replaced by class 628 diesel multiple units, after the latter had already provided most of the local transport services on the Bruhrainbahn since the Rhine-Neckar S-Bahn opened. These, in turn, were almost completely replaced by class 425 electric multiple units in December 2011. Only three connections are still operated by the 628 series.
future
An extension of the Hardtbahn (tram S1 / S11) beyond Linkenheim-Hochstetten with a threading in the Phillippsburg train station into the Bruhrainbahn was considered, but this seems rather unrealistic under the current circumstances.
No statements were made about the double-track expansion of the western Bruhrainbahn that might become necessary, although this area represents a single-track bottleneck in the network of the Rhein-Neckar S-Bahn and is exposed to an immense load with the existing and planned traffic.
The state of Rhineland-Palatinate has approved the double-track expansion of the Graben-Neudorf - Germersheim section together with the double-track electrified expansion of the Rohrbach (Saar) - Zweibrücken - Pirmasens North - Landau line and the reconstruction of the Landau - Germersheim line as a "West-East expansion concept" Corridor ”registered for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2030 .
Operating points
Bruchsal
The Bruchsal train station is not far from the Bruchsal core city. It was opened on April 10, 1843 as part of the Badische Hauptbahn Heidelberg –Bruchsal– Karlsruhe . Ten years later, as the northern terminus of the Württemberg Western Railway, which began in Bietigheim , it became a railway junction . Since Baden had used a gauge of 1600 mm, while Württemberg used the standard gauge , the tracks on both lines could only be linked with one another in 1854 when the Baden railways were re-gauged. In 1896 the private branch lines to Odenheim ( Katzbachbahn ) and Menzingen ( Kraichtalbahn ) were added. The former was extended to Hilsbach in 1900 ; however, this section was closed again in the period from 1960 to 1986. The station has also been electrified since the 1950s.
Karlsdorf
Today's stop and former train station Karlsdorf is located on the northern outskirts of Karlsdorf . The former reception building is now used as a residential building, and the former rail connections are no longer available.
Graben-Neudorf
The Graben-Neudorf station was opened in 1870 as part of the Rheinbahn Mannheim - Schwetzingen - Graben-Neudorf - Eggenstein - Karlsruhe line. With the creation of the Bruhrain Railway, it became a railway junction a few years later. With the opening of the Graben-Neudorf– Blankenloch –Karlsruhe line, which was opened for strategic reasons , the section via Eggenstein - henceforth known as the “ Hardtbahn ” - was sidelined and functioned exclusively as a branch line. In 1967 passenger traffic ended there , whereupon the Leopoldshafen – Graben-Neudorf section was dismantled. On parts of the remaining route, a light rail line to Hochstetten was built from the late 1970s . In 1988 the station also became the southern terminus of the Waghäusel Saalbach – Graben-Neudorf railway , which connects it with the Mannheim – Stuttgart high-speed line .
Graben-Neudorf North
The Graben-Neudorf Nord stop is located on the western outskirts of Neudorf, not far from the separation of the Bruhrain Railway from the Rhein Railway on the route opened in 1909, which serves as a level crossing. It was put into operation in 1994.
Huttenheim
Today's stop and former Huttenheim station is located on the eastern outskirts of Huttenheim .
Philippsburg (Baden)
Philippsburg (Baden) train station is located on the southern edge of the city center of Philippsburg . It has two tracks. It is the only remaining crossing station between Graben-Neudorf and Germersheim . West of the platform in the direction of Bruchsal there was also a third track before the Second World War .
Rheinsheim
Today's stop and former Rheinsheim train station is located on the southern outskirts of Rheinsheim .
Germersheim center / Rhine
The Germersheim Mitte / Rhein stop was built in 2010 - on the Schifferstadt – Wörth railway line - and in 2011 on the Bruhrainbahn. It is located shortly after the two lines have separated from each other and therefore resembles a wedge station . The stop serves as a train stop close to the city. The platform at the Bruhrainbahn was built on the disused southern track.
Germersheim
Germersheim train station is located on the northern outskirts of Germersheim . Some of its tracks are already on the Lingenfeld district . The original, east lies the railroad tracks station building is also under monument protection . In 1864 it was initially a terminus ; with the opening of the Germersheim – Landau railway line , it became the terminus . This situation only changed when the Schifferstadt – Germersheim line to Wörth was tied south in 1876. A year later, the Bruhrain Railway, which had previously ended in Rheinsheim, was tied through to Germersheim. As a result, it was initially an important hub in long-distance traffic in the east-west direction , and from 1906 also in the north-south direction. When Alsace-Lorraine fell back to France after the First World War , it lost its importance for north-south traffic. It has been part of the RheinNeckar S-Bahn network since 2006 and the Karlsruhe Stadtbahn network since 2010 . In this context, its platforms have been upgraded to accommodate the disabled.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Werner Greder: Bruchsal and the railway . Publication No. 2 of the Historical Commission of the City of Bruchsal 1983 p. 96ff
- ↑ a b c d e kbs704.de: A bit of track history . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on December 19, 2013 ; Retrieved December 5, 2013 . 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.
- ↑ Heinz Sturm: The Palatinate Railways (= publications of the Palatinate Society for the Advancement of Science . Volume 53 ). pro MESSAGE, Ludwigshafen am Rhein 2005, ISBN 3-934845-26-6 , p. 200 .
- ↑ Chronicle 1874-1949. (No longer available online.) In: queichtalbahn.beepworld.de. Archived from the original on December 10, 2013 ; Retrieved December 5, 2013 .
- ↑ Press release of the VRN from December 9, 2011 ( Memento from March 25, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
- ↑ metropolnews.info: New Flirt railcar in service from Monday as a regional express along the Rhine . Retrieved March 16, 2015 .
- ↑ BMVI (Ed.): Overview of the current projects and the Federal Railways projects proposed for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan ( Memento of July 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Status: February 9, 2015, accessed on March 11, 2015
- ↑ a b kbs704.de: Description of the Bruchsal-Germersheim route . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 13, 2014 ; Retrieved December 5, 2013 . 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.
- ↑ kbs704.de: Reconstruction of the platforms in Philippsburg station . (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on March 31, 2014 ; Retrieved December 5, 2013 . 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.
- ^ General Directorate for Cultural Heritage Rhineland-Palatinate (ed.): Informational directory of cultural monuments - district of Germersheim. Mainz 2020, p. 8 (PDF; 6.5 MB).
