Salzwedel – Geestgottberg railway line

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Salzwedel – Geestgottberg
Section of the Salzwedel – Geestgottberg railway line
Route number : 6901
Course book range : 303 (2004)
Route length: 42.7 km
Gauge : 1435 mm ( standard gauge )
   
from Oebisfelde and from Uelzen
Station, station
0.0 Salzwedel
Station without passenger traffic
Salzwedel Gbf
   
to Lüchow
   
to Stendal
   
4.0 Crack
   
7.7 Riebau
   
12.5 Mechau
   
15.9 Binde - Kaulitz
   
18.8 Kladen (near Arendsee / Altm)
   
22.6 Arendsee (Altm) (previously Personenbf)
   
to Stendal
   
25.4 Genzien
   
29.8 Harpe
   
33.0 Great Garz
   
37.4 Rude
   
Aland
   
from Stendal
Stop, stop
42.7 Geestgottberg
Route - straight ahead
to Wittenberge

The Salzwedel – Geestgottberg railway connects the Hanseatic town of Salzwedel in the northwest of the Altmark along the northern border of the Altmark with the town of Geestgottberg near the Brandenburg town of Wittenberge . The route lies entirely in Saxony-Anhalt . It is single-track and not electrified. It has not been used as planned since 2004.

Route description

The line branches off the main Stendal – Uelzen line east of Salzwedel . From there it runs in an easterly, partly also in a northeasterly direction to Geestgottberg. The climatic health resort Arendsee on the lake of the same name is the most important train station on the way. All other stations are named after small towns that are up to a kilometer away from you. In Geestgottberg the line joins the Magdeburg – Wittenberge railway line .

The landscape along the route is flat or slightly wavy. It is dominated by agriculture and leads through some extensive forests. In the eastern section of the route it runs in the flat, water-rich Elbe glacial valley .

history

Harpe Station (2017)

The construction of the Salzwedel – Geestgottberg railway line was laid down by law before the First World War, but the Deutsche Reichsbahn could only complete it after the end of the war . On May 4, 1922, the Salzwedel – Arendsee section was opened. The eastern section to Geestgottberg followed on December 15 of the same year. The passenger trains ran on the Salzwedel – Wittenberge route and stopped at all stations. All stops were built as train stations and had facilities for sending and receiving agricultural goods. The uniform, two-story, pointed-gable reception buildings of all subway stations are striking.

In 1975 the line was served by five pairs of trains a day, with six journeys in one direction. Since the switch to regular service , passenger trains ran every two hours, so that in 1999 eight pairs of trains were on the route every day. Train crossings took place exclusively in Arendsee. The trains were with the 202 series and until 28 September 2003 railcars of series 772 down. It took them about 75 minutes to get to and from Wittenberge. The connection from Salzwedel to Wittenberge was the last in Germany on which the rail buses of this series were used as planned.

Freight traffic ceased on January 1, 1995. The line had a certain importance in freight traffic in the 1960s and 1970s, when trains with unloaded potash wagons were led from the seaports over the Geestgottberg – Salzwedel route to relieve the large north-south routes.

In the discussion about the transport of nuclear waste to the Gorleben nuclear waste storage facility , transport by rail to Arendsee and from there via existing roads to Gorleben was discussed. The main reason was the need to renovate a bridge on the Lüneburg – Dannenberg Ost railway line and the simpler police surveillance of the line when transporting nuclear waste. However, the plans did not materialize.

In the 2001/02 timetable year, 8 pairs of trains ran every day on the route every two hours. On weekdays there was an additional train from Arendsee to Salzwedel for work and school traffic. All pairs of trains were tied through to Wittenberge. Crossed in Arendsee.

In September 2002, the state of Saxony-Anhalt canceled the passenger train services between Salzwedel and Wittenberge due to the low number of passengers: on average, no more than 70 passengers used the railway line per day. After protests, especially by the community of Arendsee, traffic was maintained on weekends in the following two years. In the meantime, a system has been developed in which advance notifications should be used to decide at short notice whether a train or a bus should run.

After this suggestion turned out to be impractical, the remaining train services were also canceled on December 11, 2004. Shortly before, the rail buses were replaced by class 642 diesel multiple units.

Since then, the state bus 200 , operated by the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel mbH (PVGS) passenger transport company, has been operating directly to most of the towns along the route every two hours.

German regional railway

In September 2004 the Deutsche Regionalisenbahn (DRE) leased the line together with its southwestern continuation Salzwedel – Oebisfelde . It was planned to resume passenger rail traffic between Klötze on the Salzwedel – Oebisfelde and Wittenberge “partial sections” during the 2007/08 timetable . The course book noted these plans under the course book number 303. For this, the Salzwedel – Geestgottberg route was given the name “Altmarkbahn”.

In October 2011, the DRE and the Altmarkkreis Salzwedel developed a concept that initially operated the route between Salzwedel and Arendsee using the Schmiedeberger model with diesel railcars . The DRE should provide the infrastructure and the district should carry out the operation, whereby the regionalization funds previously provided by the task authority NASA for the bus replacement traffic should be used again for the railways. In addition, in order to achieve a sustainable number of passengers, it was considered necessary to shift school traffic to rail. It was planned to begin with the expansion or new construction of the stops and the upgrading of the route for 60 km / h from summer 2012. The reactivation of the Arendsee – Geestgottberg section should also be sought later. At the beginning of May 2012, on the recommendation of its economic committee, the district council of the Altmarkkreis rejected the concept almost unanimously for financial and school policy reasons. The district's own bus company PVGS has calculated an additional rail transport requirement of at least 1.1 million euros.

In May 2014, the section between Ritze and Arendsee was used for research purposes by the German Aerospace Center with the two-way measuring vehicle "RailDrive". The aim is to investigate the sensor system and to test new technologies such as the self-sufficient location of rail vehicles.

The DRE has an operating license for the entire route, which is valid until 2024. It only started operations on the Salzwedel – Arendsee section, the rest of the route is not managed.

At the meeting of the Altmark regional assembly on June 12, 2019, it was decided that the rail connection from Oebisfelde via Salzwedel to Geestgottberg should be maintained as a regional development goal. In the original draft it should be omitted.

Web links

Commons : Salzwedel – Geestgottberg railway line  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. Fiegenbaum, W., Klee, W .: Farewell to the Rails - Disused Railway Lines 2000–2005, Stuttgart 2006, p. 52
  2. ibid.
  3. Bodo Habermann: Once upon a time ... In: az-online.de. May 10, 2018, accessed December 7, 2018 .
  4. Christina Bendigs and Antje Mewes: Test drive on the tracks to Arendsee. Volksstimme, October 29, 2011, accessed November 10, 2011 .
  5. Jens Heymann: Inspection trip on the Salzwedel-Wittenberge route: Shortly before Arendsee it was over / district council decides in February. Rail traffic from 2012 at the earliest. Altmark Zeitung, az-online.de, November 11, 2011, accessed on November 13, 2011 .
  6. Lutz Franke: Hobby railway not on the backs of our school children. (No longer available online.) May 10, 2012, formerly in the original ; accessed on March 25, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.lutz-franke.de
  7. Antje Mewes: Economic Committee deals today with the Salzwedel-Arendsee route. Pros and cons of rail transport. Volksstimme, March 20, 2012, accessed April 1, 2012 .
  8. Waltraut Reinke: Letter to the Editor: Finally expect a signal that does not stop. az-online.de, March 29, 2012, accessed April 1, 2012 .
  9. Christian Ziem: Old railway line for testing purposes used. Allgemeine Zeitung, May 20, 2014, accessed on May 23, 2014 .
  10. Railway infrastructure DRE group. German regional railway, March 4, 2014, archived from the original on January 11, 2015 ; accessed on August 22, 2014 .
  11. ^ Antje Mewes: Infrastructure, commitment to rail. Volksstimme , June 14, 2019, accessed on September 14, 2019 .