Railway line Solingen-Wuppertal-Vohwinkel

Ohligs – Vohwinkel

Route number (DB) :

2675 (SG-Ohligs – SG Süd)
2734 (SG Süd – W-Vohwinkel)

Course book section (DB) :

458 (SG-Ohligs – SG Süd)
226e (SG Süd – W-Vohwinkel)

Route length:

22 km

Gauge :

1435 mm ( standard gauge )

Legend

		Main line from Wuppertal Hbf
		Former connecting curve from the northern line
	22.0	Wuppertal-Vohwinkel
		S-Bahn route to Essen
		Wuppertal-Vohwinkel (old)
		last / original route
		Wuppertal-Vohwinkel Gbf
		Main line to Düsseldorf
	16.7	last / original route
	15.4	Solingen-Graefrath
	10.1	Solingen forest
		Turnpike tunnel (109 m)
	8.5	Solingen North
		Schützenstrasse tunnel (40 m, removed in 1897)
		today's route from Remscheid
	6.8	Solingen Mitte (since 2006)
	6.2	Solingen South (1913-2006 Solingen Hbf)
	6.0	Solingen Grünewald (since 2006)
		Weyersberg Tunnel (60 m)
	5.6	Solingen (Weyersberg) (until 1925)
	4.9	Weyersberg (Abzw, 1890 to 1925)
		Main line from (/ to) Opladen
	0.0	Solingen Hbf (until 2006 Solingen-Ohligs)
		Main line to Wuppertal
		S-Bahn route to Düsseldorf

Swell:

The railway Solingen-Ohligs-Wuppertal-Vohwinkel was a roughly 22-kilometer railway line that the Solingen-Ohligs station (since 2006 Solingen Hauptbahnhof ) at the Gruiten-Köln-Deutz railway through the station Solingen South (1897-2006 Solingen main station) with the Wuppertal-Vohwinkel station on the Düsseldorf – Elberfeld line .

The very winding route through the Bergisches Land of the mostly single-track, standard-gauge and non-electrified branch line , which roughly resembles a corkscrew , gave it the popular name of the corkscrew railway .

Today only the section between today's Solingen main station and the new Solingen Mitte station is still in operation as part of the Solingen – Remscheid – Wuppertal line. The section between the Solingen Südpark and the city limits of Haan was converted into a railway cycle path in the course of the Regionale 2006 , which is called the corkscrew route .

Geographical location

The railway line ran in the Rhineland between the cities of Solingen and Vohwinkel (the latter is now a district of Wuppertal ).

It led through the northern foothills of the Bergisches Land east of the Rhine . The height of the route is between about 202 meters in the old Solingen main train station, increases only slightly to 220 meters at the Solingen-Wald train station and then drops again to about 160 meters in Wuppertal-Vohwinkel. Despite the rather small height differences, the railway line had to be carefully laid out in order to avoid further engineering structures for geographical conditions in low mountain ranges, in order to develop the then still independent communities of Wald and Gräfrath as locally as possible.

history

prehistory

The construction of railway lines within the circle Solingen started in the first half of the 19th century, when the Dusseldorf-Elberfeld Railway Company from 1838 to 1841 the railroad Dusseldorf-Elberfeld with the railway station in Vohwinkel built.

On September 25, 1867, the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft opened a branch line on its Gruiten – Köln-Deutz line from the station, which was still called Ohligs -Wald at the time, to the Bergisch-Märkische station on the Weyersberg in a hollow west of the Solingen old town. Due to its location at the deepest point of the valley, this station was difficult to reach for both wagons and travelers, especially in winter when the access roads were damp and slippery.

Furthermore, not only the previously disadvantaged communities in the upper district of Solingen, but also the city of Solingen itself tried to improve the connection to the railway network, which at that time was equivalent to the economic success of a community. In the 1870s the Rheinische Bahngesellschaft planned to build a connecting line from Opladen via Solingen, Wald and Gräfrath to Lüntenbeck . After the nationalization of the railway company on January 1, 1880, these plans came to nothing to the chagrin of the upper district of Solingen. It was only through the tireless protests of the Solingen district administrator Karl Friedrich Melbeck that the Prussian state succeeded in showing the need for a branch line between Solingen and Vohwinkel. The Prussian state parliament approved a total of 2,840,000 marks for the construction of the railway line in 1883.

After extensive planning and discussions about the course and costs, the construction of the railway line itself was marked by various delays. The surveying work continued until the beginning of 1885. Even after that there were still disagreements about the course of the railway between Wald and Solingen. The tunneling under the Solingen old town from Weyersberg to Schlagbaum was brought up , so that the threatened closure of the Weyersberg train station could have been avoided and the overall journey time could have been kept low. The cities of Dorp and Höhscheid resisted the new plans, which without the originally planned southern station would not have had a connection to the railway that was as close as possible. Finally, the railway administration decided against this tunnel project. The final route was only determined at the end of 1885.

First construction phase Wald – Vohwinkel

The original opening date for the Weyersberg-Grünewald and Vohwinkel-Gräfrath sections was January 1, 1887, which was difficult to keep in view of the delays. The acquisition of land for the construction of the route began in February 1886, and the respective cities had to expropriate some of the land required for the construction of the route . Construction work began at the end of April 1886. Due to the uneven terrain, these were more difficult than expected in many places, and dams or cuttings often had to be built.

The construction of the line took place in two construction phases. It started with the route between Wald and Vohwinkel, as the route here was undisputed. Around 900 workers on average were busy with the earthworks, most of them with the simplest tools such as a pickaxe and shovel . The state police acceptance of the first, a total of 8.9 kilometers long section took place on October 29, 1887. In the following days, the first test trains drove before the line on this section was opened on November 15, 1887. The opening of the route was accompanied by great celebrations in Wald and Gräfrath. The Bergische Zeitung reported on the festivities the day after the opening:

“The opening of our Vohwinkel-Wald railway line was a celebration of the most important moments for the communities of Wald and Gräfrath. Flag decorations on the houses and public buildings heralded the happy event. At 8 o'clock in the morning a large number of local citizens went to the festively decorated Wald train station to take part in the festive journey with the first (...) passenger train going to Vohwinkel. A long line of wagons and two locomotives, all adorned with garlands, were necessary to carry the many passengers. (...) The residents stood along the railway line and happily welcomed the pageant. "

- Bergische Zeitung, November 16, 1887, p. 15 ff.

The train station in Vohwinkel
Railway embankment with underpass at Roggenkamp
Underpass over Walder Strasse in Graefrath
The train station in Solingen-Wald

Second construction phase Wald – Solingen-Weyersberg

On the part of the city of Solingen in 1886 they were neither satisfied with the fate of the Weyersberg train station nor with that of the north train station. The latter should be built at a different height than originally planned. These points of contention delayed the second construction phase of the line, which caused considerable displeasure in the uninvolved towns of Gräfrath and Wald. Although the permit for the construction of the remaining stretch was granted in April 1886, construction work did not begin until February 1887. In the area of the cities of Solingen and Dorp, numerous expropriation procedures were necessary for the purpose of purchasing land, which delayed the start of construction ever more.

The construction of the three larger tunnels (under Katternberger Straße, Schützenstraße and at the turnpike ) turned out to be more difficult than expected due to the unruly rock. The 92-meter-long barrier tunnel was not penetrated until December 11, 1887. On Schützenstrasse, the ground subsided in the course of the tunnel construction, the houses above cracked and later had to be demolished.

The opening of the line was initially planned for October 1888, in addition to the delays mentioned above, there were also construction stoppages for months due to the often bad weather during the winter months. The planned date was therefore delayed by around a year and a half. On December 11, 1889, the state police approved the section. Only three months later, on February 12, 1890, the line was finally opened. In contrast to the celebrations two years earlier, however, the euphoria about the opening was now gone. On the day of the opening, the Solingen district intelligence paper simply wrote soberly:

“This is how the“ big ”and long-awaited event of the opening of our Wald-Solingen railway would have taken place. There were of course no major celebrations on the occasion of the opening, but at least they expressed the joy of seeing the new railroad finally opened to traffic. (...) "

- Solinger Kreis-Intellektivenblatt , February 12, 1890, p. 20 f.

Years of operation

The railway line should primarily serve the direct transport of raw materials ( steel and coal ) from the Ruhr area as well as the transport of the finished goods manufactured in Solingen (especially the cutlery ). Before the Müngsten Bridge was built , the route was the only direct connection from Solingen to the economic centers in the Wupper valley. However, the transport of people always played a subordinate role. In addition to the numerous freight trains, some of which only run in sections, up to 13 passenger trains per working day and direction ran on the rather insignificant branch line.

The freight halls in Wald, which have been expanded over the years

With the commissioning of tram traffic in Solingen by the Union-Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft (UEG) on December 30, 1896, the number of people transported on the corkscrew railway fell rapidly. From January 13, 1899, this was mainly due to the fact that the trip to Vohwinkel with the new tram line 3 (today the trolleybus line 683) was cheaper and the journey time was also reduced. Goods traffic on the corkscrew railway was not affected by the falling passenger traffic. On the contrary, the train stations and their adjoining freight halls had to be expanded many times in the early days because they turned out to be too small for the goods being transported. In Wald and at Nordbahnhof, the train stations benefited from their proximity to the adjacent industrial areas, which expanded along with the train stations. At the Nordbahnhof, tram line 5 of the Barmer Bergbahn provided a connection to the Rasspe am Stöcken factory , which was one of the most important customers for goods traffic there and had its own warehouses at the station.

In 1925 the Weyersberg station was closed. After the closure of the adjacent Siegen-Solingen cast steelworks , the last major customer of the freight traffic handled on the Weyersberg, the station and the branch line there could no longer be operated economically. The station building was demolished in 1939.

The 92-meter-long barrier tunnel was extended by 17 meters in a north-easterly direction as part of the expansion of the road crossing above it in 1978. The tunnel that crosses under today's federal highway 224 is the most important engineering structure on the railway line.

Shutdown

Scheduled passenger traffic was discontinued on November 2, 1942 following the decline in passenger numbers. However, in November 1944, after the air raids on Solingen , passenger trains and occasional special trains were still used, as in 1948 on the occasion of the football game Preußen Dellbrück - TSG Vohwinkel 80 .

After more and more customers had canceled freight transport by rail, freight transport was also gradually discontinued. In 1958, the section between Solingen-Wald and Solingen-Gräfrath was closed and the line was thus interrupted. On May 31, 1989, operations between Solingen-Gräfrath and Wuppertal-Vohwinkel were given up, and the line was closed on December 1 of the same year. Finally, on March 31, 1995, with the cessation of freight traffic between Solingen Hbf and Solingen-Wald, the entire line was closed. The last track systems were removed at the end of the 1990s.

The restored, former main station in the Südpark

The former station buildings along the route experienced different fates. The first victim of the line's decline was the reception building of the north station. It was demolished back in 1979. Only the warehouses there were used until the line was closed. Due to years of neglect by the railway, the former main train station was in structural disrepair. The entire, partly overgrown area around the station was called an eyesore in public . As part of the Regionale 2006 , the train station was shut down, the buildings and the surrounding area were renovated and the entire site was converted into the Südpark . The former station building is used as a product design forum and is now a listed building . The particularly dilapidated Graefrath train station was demolished in 2011 after a legal dispute over the protection of monuments between the city of Solingen and the private owner of the building, and the area has been fallow since then. The former Walder train station continues to be used in various ways today. a. a restaurant , the cultural association Waldmeister e. V. , which also offers cultural events there, and houses a firewood center in the warehouses .

Todays use

Corkscrew route

The almost seven kilometer long section between the new Solingen main train station in Ohligs and the newly built Solingen Mitte train station in 2006 is now two-tracked and connected to the Wuppertal-Oberbarmen-Solingen railway line .

As part of the Regionale 2006 (participating cities: Wuppertal, Solingen and Remscheid ), large sections of the former railway line were expanded into a pedestrian and bicycle path , which makes the districts of Solingen on the route better accessible for non-motorized road users. It is planned to connect this to a network of supra-regional cycle paths in North Rhine-Westphalia that is still being expanded. Construction work on the route started in 2003 and was completed in August 2007.

literature

Bernd Franco Hoffmann: Disused railway lines in the Bergisches Land . Sutton-Verlag, Erfurt 2013, ISBN 978-3-95400-147-7 .

Kurt Kaiß, Michael Zimmermann: The Corkscrew Railway - On branch lines from Solingen to Vohwinkel . In: Rheinisch-Bergische Eisenbahngeschichte . Issue 2. Verlag A. Kaiß, Leichlingen 1998, ISBN 3-9806103-0-6 .

Heinz Rosenthal: From the middle of the 19th century to the end of the Second World War . In: Solingen. History of a city . tape 3 . Braun, Duisburg 1975, ISBN 3-87096-126-0 .

Web links

NRWbahnarchiv by André Joost:

Description of route 2675 : Solingen Hbf - Remscheid Hbf
Description of route 2734 : Solingen Hbf (old) - Wuppertal-Vohwinkel

Individual evidence

↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register

↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .

↑ ^a ^b ^c ^d ^e ^f ^g ^h Kurt Kaiß, Michael Zimmermann: The Corkscrew Railway - On branch lines from Solingen to Vohwinkel . In: Rheinisch-Bergische Eisenbahngeschichte . Issue 2. Verlag A. Kaiß, Leichlingen 1998, ISBN 3-9806103-0-6 .

↑ Heinz Rosenthal: From the time from the middle of the 19th century to the end of the Second World War . In: Solingen. History of a city . tape 3 . Braun, Duisburg 1975, ISBN 3-87096-126-0 , p. 101 f .

↑ https://eisenbahn-tunnelportale.de/lb/inhalt/tunnelportale/2734-schlagbaum.html Start of the extension

[1] DB Netze - Infrastructure Register

[2] Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .