Kurzel – Teterchen railway line

Kurzel – Teterchen
Peltre train station on a historic postcard from around 1900
Course book range :	ex 267e
Route length:	35.0 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Dual track :	Kurzel – Teterchen
Legend Bisttalbahn to Bous / Völklingen Germany / France border to Béning (Beningen) 0.0 Falck-Hargarten tunnel 49 ° 13 ′ 15 "  N , 6 ° 36 ′ 28"  E tunnel 4.4 Railway line Völklingen – Diedenhofen to Thionville 4.9 Téterchen (Teterchen) wedge station 13.0 Boulay (Bolchen) 16.4 Volmerange-lès-Boulay (Wolmeringen) 19.2 Condé-Northen (Konden) 23.1 Landonvillers (Ladenweiler) 26.3 Courcelles-Chaussy (Kurzel (street)) 30.6 Pange (clips) 34.2 Forbacher Bahn from Saarbrücken 35.0 65.5 Courcelles-sur-Nied (Kurzel (Nied)) 42.0 Peltre (Pelters) 45.2 Downtown Metz bypass 46.9 Railway line Paris – Strasbourg from / n. Paris-Est 48.4 78.9 Metz Metz-Ville – Zoufftgen railway line to Thionville and Luxembourg

The railway Kurzel-Teterchen was until 1944 a continuous double-track connection between the Saar Valley and the capital of Lorraine , Metz . The line was an important strategic railway , as it was the only other railway line in addition to the Forbacher Bahn into the deployment area towards the French border immediately before the Second World War .

history

The railway line was built in two sections. On June 15, 1873, the junction of the Forbacher Bahn, completed in 1867, ran from Kurzel ( Courcelles-sur-Nied ) to Bolchen ( Boulay ), and from October 15, 1876, the connection to Teterchen was on the Beningen – Diedenhofen (Béning – Thionville line) ) completed. Since the topography did not pose any major challenges for the engineers, there were no artificial structures along the line, only a few roads were bridged or the tracks were bridged. In 1880 the piece followed up to the Saar via Überherrn to Bous .

The operator was the private Lorraine Railway Company , which received support from many sides for a connection to the Saar Valley: the Lorraine district presidents , the district administrator and the Saarlouis city ​​council , the Saarbrücken regional mining directorate , the Saarbrücken railway directorate (see  Saarland railways ) and that The military were all in favor of this low-cost route. The company also sought a license to operate as far as Merzig.

The route was listed with the number 267e in the timetable and was named as a line via Béning to Sarreguemines (Saargemünd), although the routes have nothing to do with each other in terms of route construction history. Four pairs of trains ran daily on the Kurzel – Bolchen section , three times as many between Bolchen and Beningen. There was also a direct connection with three pairs of trains Bolchen - Falck-Hargarten - Völklingen via the Bisttalbahn , which took into account the shift times of the Völklinger Hütte . The increasing number of train pairs towards the east shows that the orientation towards the Saar Valley was stronger than towards the district capital Metz .

In addition, there was a brisk movement of goods on the route between Metz and Bous / Völklingen, not only because there were many smaller businesses along the route that could accelerate or at least make goods traffic cheaper. In particular, coal and ore transports from and to the Saar-Montan-Revier ran mainly over this route. The operation of this line was called "at the turn of the century [as] the most profitable railway in Germany. In terms of quantity, before the last war, more than 90% of the total exchange of goods between Germany and France went through the Überherrn border crossing point. "

The line was badly damaged by the effects of the war in 1944 and was not restored. Shortly afterwards, it was deedicated because the new borderline meant that there was initially no longer any exchange of goods or people.

The Kurzel – Teterchen route is named after the name last used. All place names are listed both in today's French and in German according to the last timetable.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://www.zeno.org/Roell-1912/A/Elsa%C3%9F-Lothringische+Eisenbahnen
2. ↑ ^{a b} http://elsassbahn.free.fr/strecken_12a_bis_14e.htm
3. ↑ http://www.memotransfront.uni-saarland.de/bisttallinie.shtml about the construction of the Bisttalbahn
4. ↑ Kurt Hoppstädter , The emergence of the Saarland railways, 1961, p. 150f