Mullheim – Mulhouse railway line

Müllheim – Mulhouse
Route number (DB) :	4314
Route number (SNCF) :	124,000
Course book section (DB) :	703
Route length:	22.140 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Route class :	D4
Power system :	(D) 15 kV 16.7 Hz ~ (F) 25 kV 50 Hz  ~
Maximum slope :	(D :) 5  ‰
Minimum radius :	(D :) 450 m
Legend from Mannheim 0.000 Muellheim (Baden) to Basel 3.322 Neuchâtel (Baden) 4,592 17,548 State border Germany - France Rhine bridge between Neuchâtel and Chalampé 16,937 Chalampé (Eichwald) from Neuf-Brisach 14.330 Bantzenheim (Banzenheim) 10,555 Grunhutte (Grünhütte) Rhine-Rhône Canal 4,520 Île Napoléon (Mulhouse-Hardtwald) from Basel 0.000 Mulhouse-Ville (Mulhouse) to Strasbourg to Paris

The Müllheim – Mulhouse railway line is a 22.140-kilometer single-track railway line crossing the Upper Rhine from Baden to Alsace . It is electrified throughout with overhead lines, on each side with the respective national standard traction current system . In Müllheim , the line branches off from the Rhine Valley Railway , and at the Mulhouse ( Mulhouse ) railway junction , lines to Basel , Strasbourg ( Strasbourg ), Belfort and Thann connect .

Since the Breisach – Colmar line was closed, it has been the only railway line that crosses the Rhine between Strasbourg and Basel and is therefore important for connecting the city of Freiburg im Breisgau with Alsace. Since December 9, 2012, regular public transport has been taking place again after it was discontinued in 1980. Between 2013 and 2018, the French high-speed train TGV also ran on the route Freiburg (Breisgau) Hauptbahnhof - Paris Gare de Lyon before the pair of trains was relocated to the LGV Est européenne .

history

Establishment and first years of operation

In 1865 there were first petitions from some neighboring communities to the Grand Duchy of Baden to build a railway line from Müllheim to Mulhouse. On March 30, 1872, the Baden government passed a law on “The installation of a railway from Müllheim to Neuchâtel, possibly to Mulhouse,” a license was not granted. On May 13, 1874, a contract for three Rhine crossings was passed; Construction work on the line began at the end of 1876. The line was opened on February 6, 1878, to supply the area around Mulhouse with food and wood from the area around Müllheim. The owners were the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways on the right bank of the Rhine with a distance of 4.592 kilometers and on the left bank of the Rhine with 17.548 kilometers the Reichseisenbahnen in Alsace-Lorraine , which also operated until 1919. At the beginning, one or two pairs of trains ran daily; in 1891 there were five pairs of trains between Mulhouse and Freiburg. In 1906 the Rhine bridge was expanded to two tracks. In 1913, 13 pairs of trains ran daily on the route, including one pair of express trains from Freiburg to Mulhouse. After the First World War , the entire line did not go back into operation until February 1, 1921. De Dietrich diesel railcars were used for passenger transport in France and Kittel steam railcars in Germany .

Second World War

Aerial photo of Neuchâtel from the west ( Allied flights on the Rhine “September 6, 1953”): Left road to Chalampé with parts of the temporary pontoon bridge over the Rhine; below left a corner of the now defunct Rhine port; On the right the Müllheim – Mulhouse railway line with shadows cast by the remains of the Rhine bridge between Neuchâtel and Chalampé, blown up by the Wehrmacht on their retreat on February 9, 1945 (picture dated before the completion of the Rhine canal )

On October 7, 1939, the Rhine bridge and the ship bridge built in 1872/73 were blown up by French troops just five weeks after the Second World War was instigated . The German railroad rebuilt the bridge on a single track for military purposes between 1940 and 1941, and on August 15, 1941 it was opened to traffic. As a replacement for the destroyed ship bridge, a makeshift bridge was built by pioneers, the so-called Schwabenbrücke . It was demolished after the withdrawal of the German troops and replaced by a pontoon bridge. On their retreat, the German troops destroyed the railway bridge again on February 9, 1945, according to a Führer order .

Electrification and cessation of passenger transport

The line from Müllheim to Neuchâtel was electrified by May 1965. From the summer of 1975 there were only four pairs of trains between Mulhouse and Müllheim. Passenger traffic on the Müllheim – Neuchâtel section was stopped on May 31, 1980. On the Alsatian side, three pairs of trains ran daily between Mulhouse and Chalampé. In 1981 the Neuchâtel – Mulhouse section was electrified. On September 28, 1986, the rest of the passenger traffic on the French side was set. The annual deficit was 2.5 million francs . However, the route remained in operation for freight traffic.

Resumption of regular passenger traffic

In October 1998 there was a special trip with a Regio-Shuttle of the Breisgau-S-Bahn GmbH . Feasibility studies in spring 2004 confirmed that the line had a positive cost-benefit factor.

Diesel railcar "Baleine" of the SNCF

Rhine bridge between Neuchâtel and Chalampé

After a three-week trial run, the opening ceremony for the resumption of passenger traffic took place on August 27, 2006. However, the connection was temporarily only carried out on certain Sundays on special occasions. In 2006 this was a total of 14 days. There were six journeys in each direction at two-hour intervals. In the following years the international excursion traffic continued under the motto “Sans frontière” (Eng .: “Without border”). In 2011, due to expansion work on the French section of the route, operation could only be offered on individual days of traffic in late summer, plus the Sundays in Advent.

The only stop the trains made was Neuchâtel on the Rhine . The operator was DB Regio AG Südbaden on the order of the Baden-Württemberg local transport company (NVBW) for the German section and the French state railway company SNCF on the order of the Alsace region for the French area . A diesel railcar of the type X 73900 "Baleine" (blue whale) of the SNCF with 82 seats was used. The French train operated on German territory on behalf of Deutsche Bahn.

In the long term, the aim was to resume regular passenger traffic on the route. It was therefore partially modernized from 2009, including replacing the mechanical interlockings with electronic ones. Since December 2009 there have been six daily train pairs, mostly every two hours, from Neuchâtel mostly in one pass to and from Offenburg , but sometimes only to Freiburg Hbf.

The route was also examined as an option for the rail connection to Basel Mulhouse Freiburg airport . In 2003, the railway companies of France, Germany and Switzerland named in a memorandum "Trinational Platform Basiliensis" a management of freight traffic between France and Switzerland via the Müllheim – Mulhouse route and further via the German Rhine Valley Railway as the preferred future option for bypassing the Basel bottleneck. This would require the construction of a new south curve near Müllheim.

The Upper Rhine region called for the LGV Rhin-Rhône TGV line , which began operating in 2011, to be extended to Freiburg via this route. As part of the preliminary investigations for the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2003, the costs of expanding the section on the German side to two tracks and speeds of up to 160 km / h were estimated at 40 million euros. It was decided not to include the project in the federal transport infrastructure plan.

In regional traffic, there have been up to seven connections a day between Müllheim and Mulhouse since December 9, 2012, with at least one pair of trains running as an Interregio-Express directly to Freiburg (Breisgau) Hbf . French X73900 , which also stop in Bantzenheim, are used.

Since the end of August 2013, a pair of TGV trains has been traveling from Freiburg via the route to Paris .

After the completion of the third and fourth tracks of the Rheintalbahn, an hourly S-Bahn service with the S41 line from Mulhouse to Sasbach via Freiburg is planned as part of the second expansion stage of the Breisgau S-Bahn 2020 .

literature

• Peter-Michael Mihailescu, Matthias Michalke: Forgotten railways in Baden-Württemberg . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-8062-0413-6 , p. 105-111 .
• Hannes Linck: Then and now: Rail links Baden and Alsace . Freiburg 2012, ISBN 978-3-9807191-4-8 .

Web links

Commons : Müllheim – Mulhouse railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Homepage of the route of the regional regional transport association Freiburg
• Beate Beule: Salomon is speeding up the TGV , Badische Zeitung of September 9, 2008
• Report on the resumption of passenger traffic (French)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ National Rail Network Statement for France ( Memento of the original of November 24, 2006 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF, 62 kB)  
2. ↑ ^{a b} see H. Linck, p. 9
3. ^ Johann Hansing: The railways in Baden. A contribution to traffic and economic history, Fleischhauer & Spohn, Stuttgart 1929, p. 8
4. ↑ ^{a b c d} See H. Linck, p. 11
5. ↑ badische-zeitung.de, Lokales, Neuenburg , October 7, 2009, Winfried Studer: The destruction of the railway bridge 1939
6. ↑ ^{a b c d} See H. Linck, p. 17
7. ↑ Event transport Mulhouse - Müllheim. regioverbund.de, archived from the original on September 30, 2007 ; accessed on November 12, 2016 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} Printed matter 15/1430 of the German Bundestag (PDF, 91 kB)
9. ↑ Badisch-Alsatian bond in Badische Zeitung , December 10, 2012
10. ^ "Blue whale" daily from Mulhouse to Müllheim . In: Swiss Railway Review . No. 2 , 2013, p. 88 .
11. ↑ Joachim Röderer: Premiere at the main train station: This is how the TGV to Paris started , Badische Zeitung, August 26, 2013, accessed on December 30, 2014
12. ↑ Bärbel Nückles: Freiburg-Mulhouse railway line resumes operation , Badische Zeitung, November 23, 2012, accessed on May 10, 2014
13. ^ Joachim Röderer: South Baden and Freiburg benefit from the TGV offensive , Badische Zeitung, December 8, 2011, accessed on May 10, 2014