Ochtrup – Rheine railway line

Ochtrup-Rheine
Route number (DB) :	2020
Course book range :	last 224f
Route length:	22 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Enschede -0.3 Ochtrup to Steinfurt 2.0 Langenhorst 4.7 Welbergen 9.3 Competition 11.5 Maxhafen 14.4 Neuenkirchen (Kr Steinfurt) 18.7 Wadelheim Stretch of Spelle Emsland route from Salzbergen 21.6 Rheine to Osnabrück to Munster to Steinfurt Swell:

The Ochtrup – Rheine railway was a single-track , non-electrified branch line in the northern Münsterland between Rheine and Ochtrup .

history

The route was opened in 1905.

• At Rheine station there was a connection to the Löhne – Rheine , Emsland , Tecklenburger Nordbahn and Duisburg – Quakenbrück lines .
• In Ochtrup it was linked to the Münster – Enschede railway line .

Shutdown

Passenger traffic on the railway was stopped on September 28, 1969. At the same time, freight traffic between Langenhorst and Wettringen was terminated and this section of the route was closed. For further freight traffic, the suspension came in two steps: first on September 29, 1984 the section between Ochtrup and Langenhorst, on December 30, 1988 the eastern section from Wettringen to Rheine. At the time, the gravel works in Neuenkirchen / Offlum were still being transported with road scooters .

Railway cycle path

As early as 1978 it was decided to convert the section between Ochtrup and Wettringen into a cycle path . In the 1990s, the measure was completed on the entire route, but mostly with a water-bound cover . The section from Rheine to Wettringen has been completely paved since 2017. The cross-free section from the former train station in Neuenkirchen to Offlumer See is equipped with lights .

course

Ground cut on Thieberg, 1 km before Neuenkirchen train station (Kr Steinfurt)

Seen from Rheine, the railway line takes the following course: Together with the line to Quakenbrück , it leaves the station in a north-westerly direction. Both run several hundred meters directly next to each other, then they run in exactly opposite directions: The railway line to Quakenbrück swings to the northeast and runs straight to Freren, which is more than 20 km away .

Former train station Neuenkirchen (Kr Steinfurt) (today private property)

Cycle path in Neuenkirchen on the former embankment

The course of the Ochtrup route is more winding. First, it describes an elongated bow to the station of the peasantry Wadelheim , are available from the only remnants. To reach the next station, the train has to cross the Thieberg in several turns . On the other side is the municipality of Neuenkirchen.

Bike path on Lake Offlumer on the former embankment

From there the route leads past the Offlumer See , which arose from a gravel pit on the Münsterländer gravel sand train , to Maxhafen . Maxhafen was the end point of the Max-Clemens Canal , which in the meantime had silted up, and which formed part of the traffic connection between Westphalia and the German North Sea coast and the Netherlands before the Münster – Rheine railway was built.

Next stop is Wettringen. The last section from Wettringen via Welbergen and Langenhorst to Ochtrup was dismantled shortly after the shutdown. When the tracks were still there, they met the Münster – Enschede railway in Ochtrup . This gave the Rheine-Ochtrup line a connection to the Dutch border, so that through trains could run from Rheine to the Dutch city of Enschede .

meaning

From an economic point of view, this railway line was always of far less importance than most of the other railway lines starting from Rheine. Because between the cities of Rheine and Ochtrup there are only a few small communities and farmers. Also, at no time have there been any supra-regional transport policy requirements that justified the construction of the route. It was all the more astonishing that the Prussian Landtag at the beginning of 1902 unanimously approved the Ochtrup – Rheine railway bill without any lengthy debates.

A clever deception had aroused exaggerated economic expectations of the railway project among the MPs. The main beneficiaries of this project were the communities of Neuenkirchen and Wettringen, which provided their citizens with convenient travel connections to neighboring cities. In addition, the local textile companies finally got a rail connection to the supraregional transport routes after they were left empty-handed during the construction of the Münster – Rheine railway line.

At that time, various Münsterland cities and municipalities tried in vain to implement a detour via Burgsteinfurt instead of a direct connection between Münster and Rheine. A railway line from Rheine to Dorsten was built in 1879 and Neuenkirchen received the Neuenkirchen Land railway station in 1892 , 4 km south of the town center. Wettringen was only marginally touched by this connection and did not have a train station. So this place had to wait until October 12th, 1905: On this day the only 22 km long railway line was opened.

literature

• In September / October 1975 the Münstersche Zeitung devoted a four-part series of articles to the history of the Rheine – Ochtrup railway line. Professor Dr. In it, Herbert Evers reports, among other things, about the difficulties the Prussian Railway had in acquiring land for the new line:

“ Already in the months of April / May of 1902, land surveying teams roamed the north of the community. Tape had to be identified for shafts, dams, bridges and train stations. The route should be parallel to the old Rheine - Neuenkirchen highway. The hustle and bustle of the surveyors and the resolutions of the state parliament were not hidden from the farmers in Neuenkirchen. And as soon as something concrete became apparent, the railway first had to deal with Westphalian thick-headed people. I am somewhat in doubt if at this point I am to raise the Song of Songs about the Westphalian loyalty to the soil. May it all be true. The farmer has never and nowhere gladly given away the field. But I would add: until the price was right on everyone's side. Here, too, they sold their land to the Prussian Railways as dearly as possible. And that they were still irritating, that soon became apparent. At first they resisted any land tax. After a long struggle, they finally agreed in principle to the construction of the railway. The second stage of this peasant sales strategy was first about price. This was set at 500,000 marks. A proud price at the turn of the century. That was too irritating for the state authorities. They set up an examination commission to investigate the reasons for the excessively high prices. Eventually they agreed on 300,000 marks. That was a lot, and many a farmer received a good sum of the best money. "

The behavior of the farmers, who at least outwardly resisted the railway with hands and feet for a long time, stood in strange contrast to the attitude of some Wettringer and Neuenkirchen community representatives, without whose persistent efforts the line would probably not have been built. The Münstersche Zeitung reports in the above series of articles:

“ Anyone who follows the story of how Wettringen came to be connected to the railway line has to realize that a trick accelerated the matter quite a bit. As the local researcher Wilhelm Brockpähler confirms in the Wettringer Heimatbuch, the main earnings belong to the Wettringer bailiff Wilhelm Tenholt (1891–1918). A tunnel was drilled in the 'Rothenberg' and it was found that iron ore was located inside the mountain. They were declared to be minable and the iron ore was now to be transported to the smelting furnaces by rail. The officials of Wettringen and Ochtrup had to report to the government how high the daily yield of ores was, which the planned ore mines 'Germany' and 'Westfalia' would mine. It wasn't petty, the representatives of 'Westfalia' in Rothenberge, reindeer Franz Cruse in Wettringen and businessman Christian Kerstiens in Münster, calculated 50 to 100 double loads of Eisenstein per day. Since one was pricked up. The municipal council of Wettringen decided on February 19, 1902 to acquire the land for the Ochtrup - Rheine railway in their municipality on the condition that the district contributed a third of the real estate acquisition costs. 13 hectares of land were purchased in Wettringen; the community paid approx. 36,000 marks, and the circle contributed 15,000 marks. Soon a 30-man crew from the contractor Schulte ter Hardt from Bottrop appeared and began to expand the route. It is reported that, especially in the section Wettringen - Neuenkirchen, it was very difficult to get through the hilly terrain in the 'Sandbülten'. The line was approved on October 12, 1905, and the line was ceremoniously opened on Saturday, October 14, 1905. At around 1 a.m., the first festively decorated passenger train with invited guests, officials from the Münster Railway Directorate, representatives of the district and the participating communities drove in the first two cars, behind them were 'a lot of people'. "

• The history of railway construction is presented somewhat differently in Robert Wehmschulte's home book.

In the book: "Our Village - A Little Local Lore" by Robert Wehmschulte; Neuenkirchen, May 1972, p. 35. So it says:

“ Negotiations with the owners generally went smoothly. About 40 to 90 pfennigs, an average of 60 pfennigs, were paid for the square meter. On August 10, 1903, the Schulte ter Hardt company from Bottrop began with the earthworks. Mostly foreign workers set to work to level out the unevenness of the terrain. Huge amounts of earth had to be dug up in order to lead the shaft through the Thieberg. The earth was driven by a field train to Wolterings and Hilbers meadows, where the station was to be built. Around 400,000 cubic meters of earth had to be poured in to build the station alone. "

And further:

“ I was very happy about this run. How necessary it was, especially for freight traffic, is evident from the fact that in the period from October 15, 1905 to April 1, 1906, 45,000 marks were collected in freight costs at Neuenkirchen station alone. "

Further literature

• Stefanie Dankbar, Gudrun Schröder: (Not) a connection for betting competitions. Van de Berg, Enschede 1992, ISBN 90-70986-86-8 . (The contribution was made as part of the German History Schoolchildren's Competition for the Federal President's Prize)

Web links

• Description of the 2020 route in the NRWbahnarchiv by André Joost
• The Rheine - Ochtrup railway line
• Achim Bartoschek: Railroad cycling - details.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany 2007/2008 . 6th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2007, ISBN 978-3-89494-136-9 .