Northeim – Nordhausen railway line

Northeim – Nordhausen
Route number (DB) :	1810
Course book section (DB) :	357
Route length:	69 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Maximum slope :	10.6  ‰
Top speed:	100 km / h
Dual track :	Northeim – Walkenried (formerly continuous)
Legend Solling Railway from Ottbergen Hannöversche Südbahn from Kassel 88.6 Northeim (Han) wedge station ⊙ 120  m Hanover Southern Railway to Hanover Northeim-Mühlentor (planned) 93.8 Hammenstedt until 1988 97.3 Katlenburg ⊙ (previously station) Rhume B 241 from Leinefelde 103.5 Wulften ⊙ (previously station) 108.0 Sieber 108.1 Hattorf ⊙ (previously station) 115.0 B 27 115.3 to Seesen (planned in 1944) 115.4 formerly B 27 from Seesen (western Harz route) 115.7 Herzberg (Harz) ⊙ 233  m 116.7 to Bleicherode and Siebertal 117.1 Regional border north / south-east 119.7 Scharzfeld West until 1983 121.3 Scharzfeld ⊙ ( SPNV until 2005) 121.6 to St. Andreasberg 121.7 Or 122.6 formerly B 243 122.6 Bad Lauterberg in the Harz Mountains - Barbis ⊙ Weser-Elbe watershed 322  m 128.8 Osterhagen until 1976 321  m 128.9 formerly B 243 129.3 Helmetalbahn to Nordhausen "Talgleis" 130.3 to the Wolfskuhle quarry 130.8 Helmetalbahn to Nordhausen "Berggleis" (only planned, never built) 131.2 formerly B 243 131.3 B 243 Steina (lower course: Ichte ) 131.9 Helmetalbahn 133.4 Tettenborn ⊙ until 1976 135.7 Bad Sachsa ⊙ Uffe 138.4 from Braunlage (narrow gauge) 138.4 Walkenried ⊙ (separate train stations) Again Walkenried tunnel (269 m) (also Himmelreich tunnel ) 142.0 (former inner-German border ) Lower Saxony / Thuringia 142.1 Change of the operational rules of the former DB / DR 142.5 from Zorge 142.9 Ellrich ⊙ 244  m 147.7 Woffleben ⊙ Woffleben Concern Bere 151.0 Niedersachswerfen ⊙ Concern 154.5 Nordhausen-Salza ⊙ from Hann. Münden 157.5 Nordhausen ⊙ 183  m to Halle

The Northeim – Nordhausen railway , also known as the Südharzlinie or Südharzbahn , is a double-track , non- electrified main line from Northeim to Nordhausen , at least in the Lower Saxony part , which runs via Herzberg , Bad Lauterberg - Barbis , Bad Sachsa , Walkenried and Ellrich .

Route

Herzberg (Harz) train station

The route runs roughly in a west-east direction, with Northeim a little further north than Nordhausen. It leads from the Leinegraben along the rivers Rhume and Oder (Rhume) with medium gradients via Katlenburg-Lindau to Herzberg am Harz. From there it rises with 10.6 ‰ in places via Scharzfeld and Barbis to the former Osterhagen train station, the highest point on the route. The route falls a little more gently and runs south from Bad Sachsa to Walkenried. From here the line is only single-track. To the east of this is the only tunnel on the route that reaches the valley of the Zorge . Shortly behind the tunnel is the state border between Lower Saxony and Thuringia , the former inner-German border . From Ellrich the route follows the river to Nordhausen. The Harzquerbahn runs parallel from Niedersachswerfen .

Nordhausen station , around 1907

From Herzberg to Niedersachswerfen, the southern Harz route leads through the southern Harz gypsum karst . At Tettenborn , at Sachsenstein near Walkenried and at Woffleben there were problems with sink marks, the load-bearing capacity of the floor must be checked regularly. When the Walkenried Tunnel was being built, the miners came across the Himmelreichhöhle in 1868 , which made construction difficult. Three workers were killed while the tunnel was being built when the tube collapsed several meters.

The kilometers of the southern Harz line are counted from Hannover Hbf. The route begins in Northeim at km 88.6 and ends in Nordhausen at km 157.5.

history

From the beginning of the 1860s, various railway variants were planned southwest of the Harz in the Kingdom of Hanover . On the one hand, this was intended to create a connection between the planned Altenbeken – Kreiensen and Kassel – Halle (Saale) railway lines in order to preserve part of the east-west traffic. On the other hand, the industrial city of Osterode am Harz was also in the spotlight. In 1865 the agreement was made on today's route with a branch line from Katlenburg to Osterode. The line was to be built and operated in Hanover by the State Railways, in the Prussian section by the Magdeburg-Leipzig Railway Company , which also owned the Halle-Kassel Railway. The war of 1866 halted work. Prussia, as the winner of the war, was still critical of the state railways and awarded the entire route to the Magdeburg-Leipzig railroad, the branch to Osterode was omitted.

216 180-0 reached Northeim on August 6, 1995 with RE 3666 and is now moving back to the other end of the wagon train.

The southern Harz line was put into operation on December 1, 1868 from Northeim to Herzberg and on August 1, 1869 continuously to Nordhausen. Since the completion of the Solling Railway (Ruhr Area– ) Ottbergen –Northeim in 1878, it has been part of the shortest connection between Cologne and Leipzig. It was therefore an important freight route between the Rhineland and Saxony until 1945. In terms of passenger traffic, however, the route never became of major importance, as most express train connections bypassed the Harz Mountains and the continuous east-west passenger traffic on the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Nordbahn and Central-Germany connection via Kassel, Bebra and Erfurt or the Cologne-Mindener Railway via Hamm and Minden and then the Minden-Hanover route was concentrated.

The level crossing at Northeimer Mühlentor, possible location for a nearby stop

Since 1911, the city of Northeim has been negotiating again and again with the respective railway companies to set up a stop at the former mill gate, which would be closer to the pedestrian zone than the train station.

During the Second World War , the route was heavily used. The Mittelbau-Dora concentration camp was set up near Niedersachswerfen, where armaments were manufactured using forced labor. In order to keep civil traffic out of this area, the Helmetalbahn was planned between Osterhagen and Nordhausen , construction of which began in 1944 and in 1945 was a single track on the "Talgleis" shortly before commissioning. The second track, the "mountain track" for the opposite direction, should have crossed under the southern Harz line about two kilometers northeast of the junction of the valley track and then merged from the north into the southern Harz line towards Osterhagen and Northeim. But its construction was no longer started.

The route leads near Ellrich over today's state border Lower Saxony / Thuringia, which was the inner-German border from 1945 to 1990 . Passenger traffic across the border ceased in 1945. It was also used for freight traffic during the GDR era , but its importance decreased significantly after 1945 due to the decline in east-west freight traffic caused by the demarcation of the border.

Since November 12, 1989 it has been used by passenger trains again. However, since it was in great need of renovation - trains could only travel at a maximum of 30 km / h in sections - its existence was in danger in the 1990s and at the beginning of the 2000s. Another problem was that on the Sachsenstein between Bad Sachsa and Walkenried, the tracks had subsided due to flexible subsoil, which is why this section could only be driven at reduced speed and weight. In the meantime, most of the route sections have been rehabilitated and the speed is mostly around 100 km / h.

In Walkenried there was a connection to the meter- gauge narrow - gauge railway Walkenried – Braunlage / Tanne of the Südharz-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (SHE) from 1899 to 1963 and the normal-gauge small railway to Zorge began in Ellrich .

Ticket from Katlenburg to Northeim, 1964

The branch to Bad Lauterberg, the Odertalbahn , was closed on December 12, 2004 for passenger traffic; later the station in Scharzfeld was also closed and replaced with the timetable change on December 11, 2005 by the Bad Lauterberg stop in the Harz - Barbis (approx. 1 km further east), which is a little closer to the city center than the Scharzfeld station, but still just under 4.5 kilometers west of the city center. The former Bad Lauterberg train station is around a kilometer away, while the Bad Lauterberg Kurpark stop, which was demolished in 2015 (traffic here until 1984), is located on the Odertalbahn directly in the village.

Continuous connections with express trains ( Oberhausen –Walkenried, Bielefeld –Odertal) existed until the 1980s. In the first few years after the fall of the Wall , there were express train connections between Halle and Cologne , which were discontinued in 1994, and since then there has been no national passenger traffic on the route.

The continuous freight traffic, which was maintained during the time of the division of Germany, also declined in the years after the fall of the Wall and was finally discontinued in 1994, as continuous freight traffic was now transferred as a result of the double-track expansion and electrification of the Halle-Kasseler Bahn via Eichenberg this route is handled. Since then, there has only been regional freight traffic, which mainly consists of lime loading in Scharzfeld and Niedersachswerfen as well as timber loading in Herzberg and the operation of a tank car repair shop in Woffleben. In recent years there have also been occasional through freight trains operated by private railways , especially when there have been line closures on other routes such as Altenbeken-Kassel , Kassel-Eichenberg or Eichenberg-Halle due to disruptions or construction sites.

Current operation

The south resin distance is by a regional train of the DB Regio North served. Since 2009 there has been an hourly service between Northeim and Nordhausen, from Northeim every two hours to Göttingen and every two hours to Bodenfelde . In Herzberg there is a connection to Osterode am Harz and Braunschweig . From Monday to Friday during rush hour, amplifier trains run between Göttingen, Northeim and Herzberg.

Be used LINT railcars .

future

In the future, the route is to be remotely controlled from an electronic signal box in Göttingen.

As part of the investigation of a Kassel freight railway curve, which serves to improve east-west traffic, the route is named as an expansion alternative. The expansion project and the route search started in 2018 and is part of the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2030 under the project title "ABS Paderborn - Halle (curve Mönchehof - Ihringshausen)" . In response to pressure from regional politicians, Deutsche Bahn announced in March 2019 that the expansion of the Northeim-Nordhausen route would be considered as an alternative to building the curve.

Special

• The platforms of the newly built Bad Lauterberg stop in the Harz – Barbis region are heated with a mixture of solar thermal and geothermal energy to make winter service easier.
• In the village of Zorge , near Walkenried, locomotives and wagons were built by the State Machine Factory in Zorge from 1836 to 1879 .
• From November 12, 1989, special trains started from Herzberg via Walkenried to Ellrich. These were the first railways to cross the inner-German border here after the fall of the Berlin Wall .

literature

• Wolfgang Hecht: From Ellrich to Ottbergen. The last steam locomotives between Harz and Weser. Motorbuch-Verlag Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 978-3-87943-696-5 .
• Michael Reinboth: Forays into the Walkenried railway history. Series of publications by the Association for Local History Walkenried and Surroundings eV 1988
• Manfred Dittman: 150 years ago - locomotives from the Harz Mountains. From locomotive and tender construction in Zorge 1842–1851. Clausthal-Zellerfeld 1992
• Josef Högemann: Railway Altenbeken - Nordhausen. Kenning Verlag, Nordhorn 1994, ISBN 3-927587-35-4 .
• Ulrich Rockelmann (Ed.): The great archive of the railway lines in Germany: Line 357 (1810) Northeim - Nordhausen. Loose-leaf collection. GeraNova Verlag, Munich 2007, ISSN  1614-9181 .
• Michael Reinboth: 150 years of the Northeim - Nordhausen railway line. Issue 48 series of publications by the Association for Local History Walkenried / Bad Sachsa and Environment eV 2019, ISBN 978-3-86948-659-8 .

Web links

Commons : Northeim – Nordhausen railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Initiative for the southern Harz line
• Images of the tunnel portals
• Historical information about a section of the Walkenried / Ellrich railway line at karstwanderweg.de
• Landslide at the east portal of the Himmelreich tunnel at karstwanderweg.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Tettenborn train station on karstwanderweg.de
2. ^ DB AG: ABS Paderborn - Halle - table template . March 20, 2018, p. 63 .
3. ↑ Construction project Paderborn - Halle | Section “Kassel curve” | BauInfoPortal of Deutsche Bahn. Retrieved March 27, 2018 . 
4. ↑ Dossier. Retrieved on March 27, 2018 (German). 
5. ^ District council calls for alternatives to the "Kassel curve" freight train route. March 2, 2019, accessed March 4, 2019 . 
6. ↑ cover of Harzkurier edition of 13 November 1989th

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