Oldenburg – Leer railway line

Oldenburg (Oldb) Hbf – Leer (East Friesland)
Route number (DB) :	1520
Course book section (DB) :	390
Route length:	55 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Power system :	15 kV 16.7 Hz  ~
Top speed:	120 km / h
Legend from Bremen from Osnabrück from Brake 0.0 Oldenburg (Oldb) central station old route (until 1966) Horse market bridge Rosenstrasse Heiligengeiststrasse Georgstrasse Peterstrasse / Ziegelhofstrasse 0.9 Ziegelhofstrasse 1.2 to Wilhelmshaven 2 Federal motorway 28 3 Logemann ( Awanst ) 3 Oldenburg-Wechloy 3.4 Wechloy 6th Bloh 10.8 Kayhauserfeld e from Edewechterdamm 15.2 Bad Zwischenahn from Westerstede 23.2 Westerstede - Ocholt to Sedelsberg 29.5 Apen 32.2 Augustfehn 39.6 Stickhausen -Velde 42.8 Filsum 47.9 Nortmoor 49.9 City of Leer ( Awanst ) from Emden 55.0 Leer (East Frisia) to Rheine and Groningen Swell:

The Oldenburg – Leer railway line is a 55-kilometer single-track, electrified main line in northwest Lower Saxony . It connects the Emsland Railway near Leer with the city of Oldenburg . It serves traffic from the direction of Hanover and Bremen to the port city of Emden , the Emsland and western East Frisia, including the islands of Borkum , Juist and Norderney, which are important for tourism . Together with the Leer – Groningen railway line , it is also of international importance.

The line was opened on June 15, 1869 by the Grand Ducal Oldenburg State Railroad and electrified in the course of 1992, which made the costly and time-consuming locomotive change unnecessary in Oldenburg for the line to East Friesland.

Service offer

Since the timetable change in December 2013, the connection has again been served by intercity trains every two hours from Leipzig / Berlin and Hanover to Emden and Norddeich . Due to a nine-year contract between the state of Lower Saxony and DB Fernverkehr AG, the offer has been reduced from three to nine train pairs all year round. In the contract, the company undertook to accept all local transport tickets on its trains on the Bremen - Emden - Norddeich route and to use modern double-decker cars , in return the state of Lower Saxony pays compensation. Together with the regional express trains, this results in about an hourly service . Since mid-December 2010, an hourly line of the regional S-Bahn Bremen / Lower Saxony has been offered on the Oldenburg – Bad Zwischenahn section .

The Oldenburg- Wechloy stop was built in the immediate vicinity of the Carl von Ossietzky University . However, it was not taken into account that there was a signal in the platform area; the platform could only be used after the switching technology of the level crossings dependent on this signal had been adapted. That is why the opening planned for December 14, 2014 had to be canceled at short notice without a new date being given. After the signal was moved, the platform went into operation exactly six months later on June 14, 2015.

expansion

The “further need” of the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan envisages a two-pronged expansion for freight traffic in the ports in the long term, but this cannot be foreseen in time.

The long-term goal of the Lower Saxony regional transport company (LNVG) is to improve the connection situation in Leer between the local trains from the direction of Oldenburg and the Emsland route. There are currently waiting times between 45 and 52 minutes. Since the connections in Bremen, Oldenburg and Münster have a higher priority, the shorter changeover can only be achieved by expanding the infrastructure on the Emsland route and the Oldenburg – Leer route.

The long-term goal of the Dutch side is long-distance trains between Groningen and Bremen with a journey time of two hours.

The current Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan for 2030 does not provide for a double-track expansion of the Oldenburg - Leer railway lines. The reasons for this are the lack of an increase in rail freight transport , the lack of a need to expand capacity for long-distance passenger rail transport and the associated insufficient profitability . Critics nevertheless consider the expansion to be sensible, because in Augustfehn station , where the two oncoming RE / IC trains meet , the delay can quickly be transferred to the opposite direction. An expansion of the line and the upgrading of the Rheine – Norddeich Mole railway line for speeds of up to 160 km / h could shorten the journey time to such an extent that there would be an optimal connection at Leer station between the RE15 from Münster and the trains going to Bremen. The travel time from stations on the Emsland route could be reduced by 30 minutes, and in the direction of Münster by as much as 40 minutes.

In February 2019, the states of Lower Saxony and Bremen as well as the province of Groningen agreed on an expansion of the Bremen - Leer - Groningen route costing 128 million euros. This is to take place in two stages and in the second stage (by 2030), among other things, a double-track expansion of the Augustfehn - Velde section is planned.

Reactivation of stations

On May 18, 2015, the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics, Labor and Transport announced that after an internal review in cooperation with the Lower Saxony Regional Transport Company (LNVG), the currently closed station in Apen could be reopened as one of a total of 38 stations in Lower Saxony . In the case of Apen, however, this can only be done in the medium to long term due to the necessary infrastructure measures.

Picture gallery

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  Section at Oldenburg main station

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  New Oldenburg-Wechloy stop, still with a signal in the platform area (2015)

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  Augustfehn station (2005)

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  Section in blank

Web links

Commons : Oldenburg – Leer railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b c} Lower Saxony Ministry for Economy, Labor and Transport: State and future of rail traffic in Lower Saxony. (PDF) (No longer available online.) Lower Saxony State Parliament, September 2, 2008, p. 19 , archived from the original on July 19, 2011 ; Retrieved September 25, 2008 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ https://daten.zvbn.de/ssb/steckbrief.php?hstnr=8004610
3. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
4. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
5. ↑ Press release Lower Saxony Ministry of Transport, In the Intercity at local transport prices to the North Sea
6. ↑ DB does not yet connect the new Oldenburg-Wechloy station to the NordWestBahn network , November 14, 2014.
7. ↑ Perfectly happy in Wechloy ( Memento from June 18, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ LNVG, SPNV-Konzept 2013+, pp. 119–121
9. ↑ Kreiszeitung.de, Dutch people invest millions in the railway line to Bremen
10. ↑ Rail projects that are not part of the Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan 2030. Federal Ministry of Transport, August 6, 2017, accessed on August 6, 2017 . 
11. ^ Agreement on the expansion of Bremen - Leer - Groningen . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International . tape 2019 , no. 4 , p. 173 .
12. ↑ http://www.mw.niedersachsen.de/aktuelles/presseinformationen/neue-bahnhaltpunktee-fuer-niedersachsen--133732.html