Left Lower Rhine route

Cologne – Nijmegen
Route number (DB) :	2610, 2620
Course book section (DB) :	495, 450.11
Route length:	146 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Power system :	Cologne – Krefeld: Overhead line 15 kV 16.7 Hz  ~
Top speed:	160 km / h
Legend Route from Arnhem 15.0 Nijmegen Route to Tilburg Nijmegen Heyendaal 10.1 't Holy Land Maas line to Venlo 3.0 Groesbeek 0.0 131.0 The Netherlands / Germany border 129.3 Kranenburg 125.0 Nütterden 122.3 Donsbrüggen 120.4 Cleve Tiergarten former Trajekt von Elten 118.4 Kleve former Lower Rhine route to Duisburg 114.1 Bedburg-Hau 109.5 Pfalzdorf former Boxteler Bahn from Boxtel 105.5 Goch former Boxteler Bahn to Büderich 98.6 Weeze 92.5 Kevelaer 88.6 Bets 83.6 Funds to the route to Venlo or Haltern former route Venlo – Haltern former route Geldern – Meerbeck 80.3 Vernum ( Bk ) 76.3 Nieukerk 72.7 Aldekerk ( Hp Bk ) 68.4 St Hubert -Vösch ( Bk , formerly Hp ) former route from Kevelaer former route from Krefeld-Hüls 65.0 Kempen (Lower Rhine) former route to Venlo former route to Süchtelnvorst 59.0 Benrad - St Tönis Ø Routes from St. Tönis and Hüls Main line from Mönchengladbach Connecting line from Krefeld steelworks Krefeld South 53.6 Krefeld Hbf U70, U76 to Krefeld city center original direct route original route to Duisburg This Royal court Fishing Basic 51.5 Krefeld Gbf Kriba ( Anst ) 50.5 Krefeld oppum Main line to Duisburg Freight route to Krefeld-Linn Freight route from Duisburg 49.1 Krefeld-Lohbruch ( Abzw ) A 44 Meerbusch-Görgesheide U70, U74, U76 to downtown Düsseldorf original direct route 43.2 Meerbusch-Osterath A 57 A 52 37.1 + 0.0 37.0 + 1874.5 37.0 + 1605 Weißenberg ( Abzw ) to the route to Düsseldorf Main line from Düsseldorf S-Bahn route from Düsseldorf Neuss Gbf 36.2 Neuss Hbf ( Inselbahnhof ) Route to Kaarst Main line to Mönchengladbach Route to Bedburg 34.4 Neuss North Canal ( Abzw ) 33.7 Neuss south A 57 29.8 Norf 27.0 Neuss Allerheiligen 24.3 Nievenheim HGK route to Zons A 57 20.8 Dormagen 43  m Chempark Dormagen connection route 17.7 Dormagen Chempark Beginning of the S-Bahn route ( no level ) 14.8 14.8 Cologne-Worringen S-Bahn tunnel Cologne-Kreuzberg (1992 m) 13.6 14.7 Kilometer jump 12.9 Cologne-Blumenberg 12.6 S-Bahn tunnel Cologne-Chorweiler (2238 m) 11.6 Cologne-Chorweiler North 11.0 00.0 hamlet 10.6 Cologne-Chorweiler ( light rail ) 10.3 9.9 Cologne Volkhovener Weg Start of freight route ( same level ) 9.0 09.0 End of the S-Bahn line ( no level ) A 1 7.8 07.8 Cologne-Longerich 6.1 06.1 Cologne – Frechen Link from Frechen 4.8 00.0 Cologne-Nippes Gbf original route (1855–1859) Kempener Str. 3.5 Cologne Geldernstrasse / Parkgürtel ( light rail ) Beginning of the S-Bahn line ( same level ) 3.1 03.0 Cologne Etzelstrasse 2.5 Köln-Nippes turning system 2.3 02.3 Cologne-Nippes Pbf Köln-Nippes Abzw. Freight route to Cologne-Ehrenfeld Freight route to Cologne West Line from Bonn , line from Aachen Cologne Hansaring turning system 0.8 Cologne Hansaring ( light rail ) 0.9 00.0 Köln Hbf 0.0 00.0 Cöln Crefelder Bf to Cologne Messe / Deutz Swell:

The Left Lower Rhine route is a railway line on the Lower Rhine from Cologne via Kranenburg to Nijmegen (Netherlands). In the register of locally permissible speeds (VzG) it is listed under route number  2610.

The left Lower Rhine route can be divided into several sections. The southern section comprises the 55-kilometer electrified double-track main line from Cologne via Neuss to Krefeld . This is followed by the 65-kilometer non-electrified section from Krefeld via Geldern to Kleve . The line is double-tracked to Geldern. The 28-kilometer section between Kleve and Nijmegen is classified as a single-track branch line and has been closed since 1999.

The S 11 line of the Cologne S-Bahn runs between Cologne and Neuss . In the Cologne city area it has its own suburban tracks with the VzG route 2620. In the Cologne borough of Chorweiler , the S-Bahn line runs to the east away from the long-distance railway.

history

Cologne – Kleve section

RE 10 in Kleve

The Cöln-Crefelder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (CCE) commissioned the line on the left of the Lower Rhine between Cologne and Neuss on November 15, 1855 and extended it on January 26, 1856 on the direct route via Fischeln to Krefeld, which has been operated by the K -Bahn , used on today's U76 light rail line . The current route via Krefeld-Oppum was not opened until August 23, 1866. After the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (RhE) had taken over the Cöln-Crefelder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft and its line from Cologne to Krefeld on July 1, 1860 with a contract dated November 11, 1859, the prerequisite for the extension of the line on the left bank of the Rhine to the north was included a connection to the Dutch rail network and the Dutch ports. The section to Kleve was opened on March 1, 1863.

In the course of the expansion program for the network of the German Federal Railroad in 1970, it was planned to use a route between the line and the western entrance to Cologne Central Station , which had been kept free for several decades, but not built on. For trains from the Ruhr area that would run via Cologne Central Station on the new Cologne – Groß-Gerau line and on to southern Germany, there should be no change of direction in Cologne.

Section Kleve – Netherlands

Railway monument in Nijmegen (1884)

Kranenburg – Kleve, Donsbrüggen , kilometer 121.6

Of greater importance was the ten-kilometer extension over the Griethausen railway bridge , the Spyck-Welle and Elten trajectory to the Dutch border , which opened on April 19, 1865 for goods traffic and on April 21, 1865 for passenger traffic . To this end, the Nederlandsche Rhijnspoorweg-Maatschappij (NRS), which already operated a railway line from Rotterdam and Amsterdam via Utrecht and Arnhem to the Dutch-German border, encouraged the RhE. There it had a connection to the Cöln-Mindener railway from Emmerich to Oberhausen ( Holland route ) since 1856 . The Cöln -Mindener Eisenbahn lacked connections to southern Germany , Austria and Switzerland .

This fact prompted the NRS to talk to the RhE, which in the meantime had a connection to the southern German network via Bingen , about a rail connection via Kleve. The attempt by both companies to obtain a concession for the construction of a line from Kleve via Nijmegen to Arnhem from the Dutch government in favor of the RhE failed because of the fundamental attitude of the Dutch government. Even the RhE's offer to build the large bridges over the Waal and the Rhine at its own expense did not lead to any result. Presumably for the Dutch government the protection of its own navigation on the Rhine was in the foreground and the fact that the NRS was mainly controlled by English capital was an obstacle to the promotion of the application for a further railway connection.

Until the nationalization of RhE (1880), the entire freight and passenger ran the RhE to the Dutch North Sea - ports on Kleve Zevenaar. In 1912 the ferry traffic was stopped and the track ramps dismantled on both banks. The passengers were transferred by steamboat. During the First World War , train operations were reduced to two pairs of trains. After the end of the war, the Nederlandse Spoorwegen (NS) terminated the contract and the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG) operated the train and ferry service until August 31, 1926. Around 1930, the tracks on the Welle – Elten line were dismantled on the right bank of the Rhine. On the other hand, passenger traffic on the left bank of the Rhine continued until 1960 and goods traffic to an oil mill in Spyck directly on the Rhine continued until 1987. In 1987 this section of the route was also closed.

From September 9, 1865, another connection from Kleve to Nijmegen was put into operation. Nijmegen was not connected to the Dutch rail network until 1879. From September 18, 1965, the section between Kleve and the state border was only single-track instead of double-track. There have been no passenger trains on the route to Nijmegen since 1991, and it has been out of service since 1999. On December 31, 1991, the Kleve – Kranenburg freight traffic was discontinued. Since April 27, 2008, the section from Kleve via Kranenburg to Groesbeek in the Netherlands has been used for recreational transport with draisines . Recent considerations to reactivate the route between Nijmegen and Kleve, possibly as a high-speed tram, have so far failed due to the high costs of 120 million euros. In particular, a tunnel requested by the community of Groesbeek is considered to be very costly.

According to an expert opinion by the Stadsregio Arnhem-Nijmegen on reactivating the route and extending the RE 10 (as of March 2011), investments of only 50 million euros would result. The reactivation would benefit many students commuting between the University of Nijmegen near the Nijmegen Heyendaal train station and Kleve. The province of Gelderland wants to talk to the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Ruhr about reactivating the railway line; alternatively, an improved bus connection could be considered.

Train

With the S-Bahn line S 11 from Cologne main station to Cologne- Chorweiler , Cologne's first S-Bahn line went into operation on June 1, 1975. On May 22, 1977, the new section to Cologne-Chorweiler Nord went into operation, which was led in the tunnel through Chorweiler. When in June 1985 the extension to Cologne-Worringen, where the S-Bahn line was threaded into the main line at no level, went into operation, the S 11 was taken to Neuss.

Route intersections

In the west-east direction, the left Lower Rhine route was crossed by rail connections in Goch, Geldern and Kempen, which have since been closed. The Noord-Brabantsch-Duitsche Spoorweg-Maatschappij (NBDS) ran its long-distance trains London - Berlin and London - Hamburg from Boxtel in the Netherlands via Gennep and Goch to Wesel ( Boxteler Bahn ). The Paris-Hamburg Railway crossed in Geldern on its section from Venlo via Wesel to Hamburg, which was put into operation by the Cologne-Minden Railway in 1874. From 1867 there was a connection in Kempen via Kaldenkirchen to Venlo . The narrow-gauge Geldern circuit , built from 1901 to 1902 , which opened up the agricultural area west of the state railway from Kempen via Straelen to Kevelaer, could only exist until 1934.

Incidents

On June 5, 1912, the Kevelaer royal railway master Konrad Tewes was killed when he was hit by an express train on his trolley near a level crossing between Kevelaer and Weeze. A memorial stone was erected between route kilometers 94.8 and 94.9.

On August 13, 1945 there was a serious railway accident near Goch . After repairing damage from the Second World War, the line had only been put back into operation a week earlier. Two trains collided head-on. The locomotive drivers were Dutch , the staff who secured the route were German. An older car that was carried with it, which still had wooden superstructures, was particularly badly damaged. 21 people died.

On August 7, 2010, at around 5:20 a.m. in Geldern, a construction train hit parked motor vehicles of the Nordwestbahn, with the driver and the work train driver being slightly injured. The cause of the collision was incorrect actions by the signal box personnel who disregarded the provisions of the operating and construction instructions drawn up for the construction work on the route . Furthermore, the accident was aided by an incorrect transfer of work by the personnel previously deployed in the signal boxes. The Federal Railway Authority found that the signal box workers deployed in Geldern on the day of the accident and the day before "sometimes had significant deficits in the safe application of the applicable regulations."

On December 5, 2017, a train collision between a freight train and a passenger train occurred in Meerbusch-Osterath.

→ Main article : Meerbusch-Osterath railway accident

Service offer

Niers-Express in Krefeld-Oppum before the takeover by NWB

The left Lower Rhine route is used  by the Niers-Express ( RE 10 ) Kleve - Krefeld - Düsseldorf in the section Meerbusch-Osterath - Kleve in the section Meerbusch-Osterath - Kleve every 30 minutes Monday to Friday during the day and in the evening, on weekends and holidays . In Krefeld there is an hourly connection to the Rhein-Münsterland-Express (RE 7) Krefeld - Neuss - Cologne - Wuppertal  - Hagen  - Hamm  - Münster  - Rheine . Since the route from Kleve to Geldern is single-track , the trains of the Niers-Express stop at the scheduled junction stations Bedburg-Hau in the direction of Krefeld five minutes and in Weeze in the direction of Krefeld two and four minutes in the direction of Kleve.

The train crossings in Weeze are omitted every hour. Since the timetable change on December 14, 2014, due to the high passenger demand, the RE 10 has been compressed to an approximate 10/20 cycle every half hour by a Kleve – Krefeld amplifier train every half hour, as well as twice in each direction between Geldern and Krefeld. The fact that the Niers-Express serves all train stations between Meerbusch-Osterath and Kleve in spite of its classification as a regional express is due to the fact that the original regional train stops such as Pfalzdorf, Wetten, St. Hubert-Voesch or Benrad-St. Tönis have been shut down for a long time. All stations along the route have at least two main tracks and can serve as crossing stations.

Local rail passenger transport is carried out by National Express (RE 7; Rhein-Münsterland-Express ) and NordWestBahn (NWB) (RE 10; Niers-Express ). For the Rhein-Münsterland-Express, five-part multiple units of the 442 series with a top speed of 160 km / h are used in double traction . Since the route taken over by NordWestBahn in December 2009, only LINT 41H diesel multiple units have been in operation for the Niers-Express , with single to triple traction and a top speed of 120 km / h.

Due to the high performance of the RE10 between Kleve and Düsseldorf, the Kleve – Geldern section, which is still single-track, is to be expanded to double-track and the entire Krefeld – Kleve line is to be electrified. A new line RB 41 from Geldern to Düsseldorf is planned for 2025, which should relieve the Niers-Express.

The new Krefeld Obergplatz stop is to be built on the Krefeld – Kempen section by 2029 . This is based on a package of measures planned by the Ministry of Transport of the State of North Rhine-Westphalia and DB Netze , which was presented by Hendrik Wüst and Ronald Pofalla in January 2020 and has a volume of 500 million euros.

Since January 1, 2012, the tariff of the Rhine-Ruhr transport association has been in effect between Düsseldorf and Kleve .

literature

• Hans-Paul Höpfner: Railways. Your story on the Lower Rhine . Mercator Verlag, Duisburg 1986, ISBN 978-3-87463-132-7 .

Web links

• Last days of Nijmegen-Kleve 1991. Recordings of the last passenger trains between Kleve and Nijmegen before the setting. October 17, 2010, accessed November 24, 2019 . 

NRWbahnArchive by André Joost:

• Description of route 2610 : Cologne - Kranenburg
• Description of route 2620 : Cologne - Cologne-Worringen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ↑ Paul Werner: Expansion and supplementation of the route network of the German Federal Railroad . In: Railway technical review . Issue 1/1971, January 1971, p. 16-20 .
4. ↑ The rail bus . Issue 2, 2014, p. 66 f .
5. ↑ Good opportunities for the railway line between Kleve and Nijmegen. Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung , March 7, 2011, accessed on April 23, 2017 . 
6. ^ Revitalization of the Kleve-Nijmegen railway line in conversation , NRZ from December 5, 2017, accessed on December 5, 2017
7. ↑ Kävels Blächen of June 8, 1912, quoted in the Kevelaer Blatt of June 6, 2012
8. ^ Peter WB Semmens: Catastrophes on rails. A worldwide documentation. Transpress, Stuttgart 1996, ISBN 3-344-71030-3 , p. 115.
9. ↑ Investigation report of the Federal Railway Authority (PDF; 729 kB) from April 10, 2012, accessed on August 20, 2019
10. ↑ Many advocates for the expansion of the Niersexpress route. Rheinische Post , March 11, 2016, accessed on April 23, 2017 . 
11. ↑ Two-track expansion of the Kleve - Geldern railway line. (PDF) Template No. 405 / WP14. Kleve district, accessed on April 23, 2017 (application from the CDU district parliamentary group from February 11, 2016 / declaration and application from the FDP district assembly group from February 16, 2016). 
12. ↑ Andreas Reiners: Additional train line planned. In: RP Online. October 1, 2018, accessed June 11, 2019 . 
13. ↑ For a better offer in public transport: Ministry of Transport and Deutsche Bahn agree on a project list for North Rhine-Westphalia. In: deutschebahn.com. Deutsche Bahn AG, January 31, 2020, accessed on February 1, 2020 . 
14. ^ State list North Rhine-Westphalia according to LuFV III Annex 8.7. (PDF) In: deutschebahn.com. Deutsche Bahn AG, January 31, 2020, accessed on February 1, 2020 .