Bleicherode – Herzberg railway line
The Bleicherode – Herzberg railway was a 41 km long, single-track , non- electrified branch line that opened up the eastern Eichsfeld and the Ohm Mountains. It connected the Halle – Hann railway line. Münden near Bleicherode with the southern Harz line in Herzberg am Harz . It was mainly used to transport goods from several former potash shafts, most recently in Bischofferode , and to a former lignite power station in Rhumspringe .
The route led through difficult terrain. At Weißenborn-Lüderode a tunnel had to be drilled and a loop had to be laid to gain height.
history
This railway line was opened in sections from 1908 to 1911. On September 30, 1908, it went from Bleicherode Ost to Großbodungen, on October 1, 1910 from Großbodungen to Bischofferode and on November 1, 1911, traffic between Bischofferode and Herzberg (Harz) began. The station buildings along this route were based on designs by Alois Holtmeyer .
In 1945 the zone border and later the inner-German border in Zwinge interrupted the route. Therefore, the loading road on the Lower Saxony side became the new terminus with the name Zwinge West . In literature, Zwinge was nicknamed the longest train station in the world because "a journey from one end of the divided platform to the other requires a detour of about 400 km via Helmstedt or Bebra". The German Federal Railroad stopped passenger traffic on May 27, 1961, goods traffic followed in February 1971 east of Rhumspringe and on January 30, 1982 in full length.
On the southeast side, the Deutsche Reichsbahn gave up traffic between Zwinge and Bischofferode in 1972. Freight traffic on the remaining route, like the Bischofferode potash plant, lasted until 1993, passenger traffic was withdrawn from May 23, 1998 to Großbodungen and abandoned for the entire length on June 27, 2001; On December 31, 2003, the infrastructure was formally shut down . Finally, five pairs of passenger trains ran between Bleicherode Ost and Großbodungen, and twenty trains between Bleicherode Ost and Bleicherode Stadt.
Current condition
On the Lower Saxony side, the route was almost completely converted into a cycle path . However, one piece is missing in Rhumspringe, as two bridges had already been torn down, and the piece between the Hilkerode stop and the Zwinge train station was also not rebuilt due to a parallel dirt road. On the Thuringian side there is a cycle path between Zwinge and Weißenborn-Lüderode, the further course to Stöckey is a farm road . The tracks are still between Großbodungen and Bleicherode Ost. Today the Weser-Harz-Heide-Radfernweg leads over parts of the former railway line .
literature
- Paul Lauerwald: Railways in the Eichsfeld. Mecke Druck und Verlag, Duderstadt 1994, ISBN 3-923453-56-6 , p. 116 ff.
- Paul Lauerwald: Railway line Bleicherode – Bischofferode (–Herzberg) in the past and present . Reprint of the Eichsfelder Heimathefte. Issue 3. Heiligenstadt 1983.
- Paul Lauerwald: The "Kali-Express" - reminiscences of a rail-bound worker traffic between Großbodungen and Bischofferode . In: Eichsfelder Heimathefte. Issue 3. Heiligenstadt 1987, pp. 203-209.
- Wolfgang Fiegenbaum, Wolfgang Klee: Farewell to the rails - disused railway lines 2000–2005. transpress, Stuttgart 2006, ISBN 3-613-71295-4 , p. 114 ff.
- Paul Lauerwald: Bleicherode Ost - Herzberg (Harz) - branch line between East and West 1908 - 2003. Herdam, Gernrode, 2009, ISBN 978-3-933178-23-7 .
- Paul Lauerwald: Bleicherode East - Zwinge - Herzberg (Harz) . In: Secondary and narrow-gauge railways in Germany once & now, 98th supplementary edition , GeraMond, Munich 2012, ISSN 0949-2143 .
Web links
- Forgotten paths
- Images of the tunnel portals
- The history of the railway line at karstwanderweg.de
- Driver's cab ride Bleicherode – Bischofferode