Haldensleben – Gardelegen railway line

Haldensleben – Gardelegen
Route number :	6906 Letzlingen – Gardelegen
Course book range :	210a (1944)
Route length:	37.2 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Magdeburg from Eilsleben 0.0 Haldensleben to Weferlingen and Oebisfelde 5.3 Bülstringen 7.7 Satuelle formerly Prussia / Braunschweig 9.2 Uthmöden 12.3 Dorst 14.8 Zobbenitz formerly Braunschweig / Prussia 17.2 Klüden 19.9 Roxförde 22.9 Tub field 23.8 Combat Training Center Army 24.8 Saplings 30.7 Letzlingen forest Hanover – Berlin high-speed line and Berlin-Lehrter Railway 34.1 Neuendorf Monastery from Kalbe (Milde) from Stendal 37.2 Guards to Wolfsburg

The Haldensleben – Gardelegen railway line was a single-track, non-electrified branch line in northern Saxony-Anhalt . Freight traffic continues between Gardelegen and the military training area near Letzlingen .

Route description

The route connected the district town of Haldensleben (until 1939: Neuhaldensleben) in the north of the Magdeburg Börde with the former district town of Gardelegen in the Altmark . In the middle section of the route, the route led through the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide . Letzlingen was the largest place between the end points of the route .

history

In 1871 Gardelegen was connected to the Berlin-Lehrter Railway . A year later, what was then Neuhaldensleben could be reached by train from Magdeburg . From then on there were efforts to connect the two cities by a railway line. The villages along the possible route also hoped for an upswing. There were several alternatives for such a route. The problem was that the Brunswick exclave Calvörde was on the direct route. The place Calvörde had been connected to the railway network since 1909 by the Wegenstedt – Calvörde railway line .

The Kleinbahn AG Gardelegen-Neuhaldensleben was founded on April 5, 1910. On May 21, 1911, the 38-kilometer, standard-gauge line was officially opened after freight traffic had already taken place in November 1910. It crossed the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide from south to north and touched the Calvörde exclave in the area of Zobbenitz over a length of five kilometers.

In the first decades, the management of the line was the responsibility of the railway department of the Provincial Association of Saxony in Merseburg .

When operations began, there were two two-axle and two three-axle locomotives built by Henschel , as well as six two-axle passenger cars, two baggage cars and 23 freight cars.

In 1914, five pairs of trains ran daily, and six on market days in Gardelegen.

In 1922, the Kleinbahn-AG Gardelegen-Neuhaldensleben and the Kleinbahn-AG Neuhaldensleben-Weferlingen merged to form the Gardelegen-Haldensleben-Weferlinger Kleinbahn-AG (GHWK). In 1942 it was renamed Gardelegen-Haldensleben-Weferlinger Eisenbahn-AG (GHWE).

In 1933, GHWE also used double-decker buses converted to rail buses on the Haldensleben – Gardelegen line . The mission lasted until the first year of the war.

From 1939 to 1943, in addition to the usual local trains, a daily pair of express trains ran from Salzwedel via Kalbe (Milde) and Gardelegen to Haldensleben.

In 1946, operations on the line were transferred to the Sächsische Provinzbahnen GmbH, and finally to the Deutsche Reichsbahn on April 1, 1949 . This shut down the Haldensleben – Letzlingen section on October 3, 1951 and dismantled the tracks. Passenger trains ran from Gardelegen to Letzlingen until September 25, 1971, freight trains until December 21, 1993.

After an important bridge for the construction of the high-speed line from Hanover to Berlin was demolished in the mid-1990s, the line was formally closed on January 31, 1998. In 2002, however, a new bridge was installed so that trains can run to Letzlingen again. The line is now a non-public connecting railway of the Bundeswehr, which connects the training area in the Colbitz-Letzlinger Heide.

literature

• Dirk Endisch: The small railway Gardelegen – Neuhaldensleben – Weferlingen (GHWK) , in: Dirk Endisch: Small and private railways in the Ohrekreis . Dirk Endisch, Korntal-Münchingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-936893-12-0

Web links

• Historical rail traffic between Letzlingen and Gardelegen (accessed on March 8, 2009)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Dirk Endisch: Small and private railways in the Ohrekreis . Dirk Endisch, Korntal-Münchingen 2007, ISBN 978-3-936893-12-0
2. ↑ Martin Krauss: Development of the Railway Infrastructure 1997/98, in: Bahn-Report 2/1999, p. 4–7, here: p. 6.