Finspång – Lotorp railway line
| Finspång – Lotorp | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Finspång Railway Station (2011)
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| Route number : | FgLpJ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 7 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 891 mm ( Swedish 3-foot track ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Maximum slope : | 16.67 ‰ | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Minimum radius : | 270 m | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top speed: | 25 km / h | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Operating points and routes | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Finspång – Lotorp railway was a narrow-gauge railway between Finspång in Östergötland and Lotorp in Sweden . It had a track width of 891 mm and was built by the entrepreneur Carl Edvard Ekman in 1854/1855 as a horse-drawn tram.
history
In 1854 the factory owner Carl Edvard Ekman took an initiative to create an efficient transport route from Finspång to the port of Norrköping with the Norrköping – Fiskeby Järnvägs- och Ångbåts share Bolag . For this he had the Fiskeby Järnväg built.
Ekman had big plans to expand his ironworks in Finspång. Ore was melted in the blast furnaces and the pig iron was processed into guns. He wanted to expand his activities in the fields of steel, malleable iron and cast steel. Finspångsån's hydropower has already been used. The waterfalls at Butbro and Lotorp still offered a lot of untapped hydropower. A sawmill and a planing mill were built in Butbro, and in Lotorp the old steelworks were demolished and replaced by a large new ironworks.
That is why Ekman had a 7.5 km long railway line between Finspång and Lotorp built from its own resources in 1854/1855. The tracks were U-shaped and had a track width of 891 mm. The four-wheeled goods wagons were drawn by horses and, depending on their weight, were drawn by two or four horses. These could then carry a load of three to four tons on the rail.
The route began in the workshops in Finspång and led to the loading docks and warehouses on Skutbosjön. There it led over a wooden bridge over Finspångsån, about 50 meters west of the Aurora pavilion. The route went via Butbro and a wooden bridge over Lotorpsån to Lotorp. There a siding led to a goods shed at Herrgården and another to a steam saw opposite the bathing area. Then the track reached the loading quay on the river, and another opened up the old melting tank below the fishery.
The Västra stambanan Stockholm - Göteborg was put into operation in 1862. The private Pålsboda – Finspång railway line was built on Carl Ekman's initiative and completed in 1874. In the same year, the 20-year-old horse-drawn tram to Lotorp was demolished and a new line built on the same subgrade with the same standard as the Finspång – Pålsboda line. This included new, more resilient bridges over the rivers. The horses were replaced by the LOTORP steam locomotive ( Kristinehamns Mekaniska Verkstad , No. 12/1875, C 2 t wheel arrangement). New freight cars with a capacity of six tons were procured but were soon replaced by even larger vehicles as the smelter expanded.
Pig iron, scrap metal, lime, quartz stone and food such as herring barrels and sacks of sugar were transported to Lotorp. Iron, steel plates, cast steel parts, wrought iron and sawn timber were transported in the opposite direction. Up to three journeys a day with around twenty freight wagons were necessary.
In 1861 King Carl XV visited the area around Finspång and took a pleasure trip on the Lotorpsbanan . Otherwise, passenger traffic was only carried out twice a month on market days in Finspång at your own risk in an open car. Otherwise only two special trains with normal passenger cars are known: on a train going to a charity soccer game , the train rammed a car at Spikbruksövergången , and two people died. The second time was on Child's Day (Barnens Dag) in 1954. This train was called boomerang .
Between 1915 and 1919, iron processing in Lotorp ended and the transportation of iron and steel products came to an end. The sawmill in Yxviken was built in 1918 and the railway line was extended. Large quantities of wood chips were then loaded in Lotorp. In 1916 there were also plans to carry out passenger transport to Lotorp. For this purpose, a passenger car for 30 people was purchased and the route at Butbro was converted. Bus transport later became a strong competitor for the railways. Trucks that enabled direct transport made rail traffic a problem. In 1962 the end of the railway line came and the rails were dismantled.
Individual evidence
- ^ Association of Central European Railway Administrations (ed.): Station directory of the railways of Europe (formerly Dr. Koch's station directory) . Barthol & Co., Berlin-Wilmersdorf 1939.
- ↑ Routing in Lotorp to Stig Lundin
- ^ Runeberg, Nordisk familjebok 1913 - Norra Östergötlands järnvägsaktiebolags järnvägar and predecessor companies
- ↑ Manufacturer list Kristinehamns Mekaniska Verkstad
- ↑ Route history (Swedish) ( Memento from August 8, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
Web links
- History of Pålsboda – Finspång Järnväg at historiskt.nu (swed.)
- Järnvägen Finspång - Lotorp. Archived from the original on August 8, 2007 ; Retrieved February 6, 2016 (Swedish).
- Abbreviations used by Swedish railway companies at Stig Lundin