Lüneburg – Soltau railway line

Lüneburg – Soltau
Lüneburg Süd station: engine shed and tracks (2012)
Route number :	9111
Course book section (DB) :	formerly 162, 109b
Route length:	57.13 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Maximum slope :	17  ‰
Top speed:	50 km / h
Legend from Buchholz / from Hamburg Lueneburg West to Hannover to Dannenberg 0.0 Lueneburg South 12.7 m Friedrich Ebert Bridge End of track 1.1 Engine shed Connection of Lüneburg wax bleaching facility and saline 1.3 Connecting track to the DB Connection of roller and spherical bearings in Lüneburg Ilmenau 2.4 Lueneburg spa gardens to the saltworks formerly planned route to Salzhausen 3.6 Edema 5.0 Rettmer B 209 Norsk Hydro Agrar siding 9.4 Melbeck - Embsen Rail connection Raiffeisen 12.8 Heinsen 15.9 Drögennindorf 90.9 m 19.8 Sheepfold 109 m Lopau 22.4 Amelinghausen- Sottorf 64.67 m 27.4 Soderstorf Luhe 30.2 Schwindebeck 31.7 Grevenhof 33.8 Steinbeck (Luhe) Kleinbahn from Winsen (Luhe) 36.2 Hützel (Lüneb) 69.9 m Brunau 39.5 Bispingen 81.68 m 41.3 Luhegrund A 7 44.2 Timmerloh 47.2 Harmelingen 48.8 Hambostel 53.2 Harber from Uelzen Heidebahn from Buchholz from Celle Connecting track to the DB 57.1 Soltau south 57.5 Soltau (Han) 61.12 m Heidebahn to Walsrode to Neuenkirchen to Bremen

The standard gauge railway line Lüneburg – Soltau of the East Hanoverian Railways is located in Lower Saxony. Freight traffic takes place, and museum trains occasionally run .

history

On June 13, 1913, after extensive planning, the 57-kilometer route from Lüneburg to Soltau was opened by the Lüneburg – Soltau small railway. This was founded on February 15, 1911 by the Prussian state, the province of Hanover and the districts of Lüneburg and Soltau .

It led from Lüneburg through the middle of the Lüneburg Heath via Amelinghausen-Sottorf and Hützel. This is where the Winsen – Hützel railway ends , which was built by the Winsen – Evendorf – Hützel railway . Eventually it reached the Soltau junction, where there was a shared station with the Celle – Soltau railway and, from 1920, also the Soltau – Neuenkirchen railway , as well as the possibility of a transition to the state railway. The management of the railway from June 1, 1923 to July 1944, was the responsibility of the State Small Railway Office of the Province of Hanover . After the merger of the Kleinbahn-Gesellschaft with the Kleinbahn Soltau-Neuenkirchen GmbH to form the Lüneburg-Soltauer Eisenbahn GmbH on January 1, 1944 , it became part of the Osthannoversche Eisenbahnen AG on July 11, 1944 .

The altitude profile of the route is the most demanding of the OHE, as the name “mountain railway” indicates. Almost 100 meters of difference in altitude are overcome.

In 1973 the Soltau – Hützel section was integrated into the remote control route from Celle. The signal box for this was in Soltau Süd . Remote control has become superfluous due to the decline in traffic; it has not been in operation on this section since 2001. The signals in Hützel and Lüneburg Süd were still controlled from Celle for some time. Today (2012) this route is operated in train control according to the FV-NE. All signals are removed. Melbeck-Embsen station used to have its own pushbutton interlocking .

As became known in 2012, the OHE is considering decommissioning the section between Melbeck-Embsen and Hützel in the long term.

In 2018, renovation work took place between Lüneburg and Hützel, during which lost sleepers were replaced.

business

passenger traffic

Passenger traffic was modest in the early years. In 1914 four pairs of trains ran the entire route every day. Between 1932 and 1936 three Wismar rail buses were purchased to handle all passenger traffic. Only the school and excursion traffic was driven by locomotive-hauled trains. The offer was quite moderate, in 1938 there were three continuous pairs of trains a day, plus additional pairs of trains on the Lüneburg – Amelinghausen and Soltau – Hützel sections. After 1950 five to six pairs of trains were driven every day. Between 1950 and 1967, express railcars were also used that drove from Lüneburg to Soltau or to Celle. From May 28, 1961, the passenger trains served the DB station in Soltau . This made it easier to change trains. In Lüneburg there was no agreement with the DB, so that the DB station had to be walked around ten minutes.

Routing in Lüneburg

In the 1967 summer timetable, a pair of trains on the Soltau – Hützel section carried through coaches with the Celle – Soltau – Hützel – Winsen route on Sundays and public holidays and thus served excursion traffic to the Lüneburg Heath. From June 27, 1975, passenger traffic between Soltau and Schwindebeck ceased, the rest of the passenger traffic on May 21, 1977.

In March 2011, the section between the locomotive shed and Lüneburg Süd station was dismantled in favor of a new residential area.

The Arbeitsgemeinschaft Verkehrsfreunde Lüneburg offers trips on weekends in the summer months and in December between Lüneburg and Hützel with historical trains under the name " Heide-Express ".

The Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics has had the reactivation of rail lines in Lower Saxony checked for passenger traffic since mid-2013. Of the 74 routes originally proposed, eight routes, including the Lüneburg – Soltau route, were examined. Due to the negative cost-benefit ratio, the route was not shortlisted.

Freight transport

In the beginning mainly agricultural goods were transported. In Lüneburg the saltworks had its own connecting railway, it was an important customer. In Drögennindorf and Hambostel there were mixing plants for road building materials from the 1960s, they were at times major customers of the railway. The most important shipper was the fertilizer plant in Embsen. There was a freight volume of one million tons; in the prime of 1980, this freight volume made up 30 percent of the total volume of the OHE. In 1989 fertilizer production in Embsen was given up. Up until then there were three local freight trains on the route every day, in 2006 there are still three a week. Through traffic has also decreased. In 1980 there were up to four trains a day, in 2012 there are still three trains a week on the Soltau – Hützel– (Winsen) section. There is currently no more scheduled traffic in the direction of Lüneburg.

literature

• Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways. Volume 10: Lower Saxony 2. Between Weser and Elbe . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-88255-669-8 , pp. 322–343
• Ingo Hütter, Thorsten Bretschneider: The East Hanoverian Railways. EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2010, ISBN 978-3-88255-730-5 , pp. 277-284. (Excerpt: Chapter The Mountain Railway: Lüneburg Süd - Soltau (Han) Süd )

Web links

• Description of the Lüneburg-Soltau railway line
• Image documentation for the Lüneburg-Soltau railway line

Individual evidence

1. ↑ http://eisenbahn-tunnelportale.de/lb/inhalt/tunnelportale/9111.html
2. ↑ cf. "Rail bus" (issue 2/2012)
3. ^ OHE: Rehabilitation of the Soltau - Lüneburg line. In: eurailpress.de. DVV Media Group, May 31, 2018, accessed on September 14, 2019 . 
4. ↑ Reactivation of railway lines Information on the website of the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics, Labor and Transport