Voldagsen – Delligsen railway line

	Weserbahn from Hameln
0.0	Voldagsen	125 m
	Weserbahn to Elze
2.3	Lauenstein (Hanover)	138 m
4.7	(Bad) Salzhemmendorf	119 m
	Work of Rheinkalk GmbH
	passable up to here
6.7	Eggersen
8.5	Levedagsen	139 m
10.6	Thust	157 m
13.7	Weenzen	188 m
15.9	Duingen	202 m
18.9	Coppengrave	177 m
20.6	Brunkensen	145 m
21.2	Hohewarte
22.6	Hohenbüchen - Green Plan	175 m
24	Sick route

27.2	Delligsen	123 m

The Kleinbahn Voldagsen – Duingen – Delligsen (VDD) was a single-track , non- electrified branch line in the Weser Uplands between Leine and Weser and owned by the Deutsche Eisenbahn-Betriebsgesellschaft (DEBG).

history

Thüst train station in 1954

On June 16, 1896, the railway construction and operating company Vering & Waechter opened a small railway in the Prussian province of Hanover, which had its starting point at Coppenbrügge in Voldagsen station on the main line Elze-Hameln , which was put into operation in 1875 by the Hanover-Altenbekener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . It initially ran five kilometers in a south-easterly direction to Salzhemmendorf and was continued on July 1, 1897 to Duingen (16 km), which then had 1250 inhabitants. Along the north-eastern edge of the Ith and Hils ridges , the railway reached the Delligsen area with almost 2,000 inhabitants in the Duchy of Braunschweig on July 1, 1901 ; it was now 27 kilometers long.

An extension into the Leinetal to the main line Hanover – Kreiensen did not take place despite the short distance, although it has been discussed and planned since the line existed. At the beginning of the 1930s the route had already been marked out, it was not until 1963 that the project was declared obsolete and the route no longer needed to be kept clear.

In 1899 DEBG replaced the previous owner for the Voldagsen – Duingen line. For legal reasons, this was only possible for the Duingen – Delligsen section in 1902, so the two sections of the route were billed separately for many years.

The railway survived the Second World War largely unscathed. Here, too, there were enormous numbers of passengers to cope with in the post-war period.

In 1949 the first railcar was procured, in 1955 and 1956 the first two diesel locomotives, which were supplemented by two more machines (type LHB S 400 ) in 1963 . The steam locomotive age ended in 1964 with the handover of the last steam locomotive.

As with the Vorwohle-Emmerthaler Eisenbahn , which is also operated by DEBG, administrative costs rose due to the sale of the southern German group railways . In June 1966, the VDD submitted an application for release from the obligation to operate, which was approved by the Lower Saxony Ministry of Economics with effect from May 27, 1967. Scheduled traffic ended on this day, and remaining traffic was handled by May 31. In addition, the DEBG group was dissolved from 1966. The line was converted into a connecting line and the Deutsche Bundesbahn took over operations on June 1, 1967.

The Duingen – Delligsen section was dismantled in 1967/68 and the remaining line was sold to two private companies. The part from Voldagsen to Salzhemmendorf up to km 6.35 went to the company Klöckner Durilit GmbH and the rest to Duingen to the Duingen Glassandwerk Dr. Bock & Co.

In 2001 the connection to the sand pit was closed and the Salzhemmendorf – Duingen route was abandoned. Plans by a museum association based at Duingen station to maintain and reactivate the line to Duingen for museum railway operations could not be implemented in the following years, which led to the closure and finally the dismantling of the Salzhemmendorf – Duingen section in 2014.

passenger traffic

In 1914, six passenger trains ran from Voldagsen every day, two of them to Delligsen and another four to Duingen. In the thirties five steam locomotives, four passenger cars, two baggage cars and 76 freight cars were available. At that time, the railway's own bus service was set up, which ran parallel to the railway and also from Duingen to Alfeld an der Leine, in the southern part of the route traffic was directed towards Alfeld. In 1962, six pairs of trains ran between Voldagsen and Duingen on weekdays and three on Sundays, and two pairs of trains ran between Duingen and Delligsen on weekdays, in the end only one, until passenger traffic ceased there on September 28, 1963. It remained on the Voldagsen – Duingen section until May 30, 1967.

Freight transport

DGEG special trip on the VDD on October 3rd, 2009, here in the lime works near Salzhemmendorf

Freight traffic was primarily about the removal of mineral resources that were extracted from clay, sand, stone and coal mines in the area. Soon the VDD was at the top of all DEBG railways in terms of freight volume. In 1914 300,000 tons were transported. Even after the First World War, the output remained high, even in the weaker years the output hardly fell below 250,000 t. In the 1950s, the lime works gradually closed, but these losses were compensated for by the increased number of existing and new customers. In 1965 358,000 t were transported. In 1966, the lignite mining in Wallensen and thus also the briquette production in Thüste was stopped. A third of the tonnage was lost. This led to the abandonment of goods transport by the VDD at the end of May 1967, which the Deutsche Bundesbahn has continued to do since then. In the course of time, freight traffic continued to decline. After the sand works near Duingen had been serviced until 2001, the Rheinkalk works in Salzhemmendorf was the last remaining freight customer until it was shut down in March 2018, the freight volume was around 250,000 t per year.

Current condition

Duingen station, clubhouse of the VDD small train association

Wagons ready for loading in the Rheinkalk works in Salzhemmendorf

The Hildesheim steam train operating association occasionally travels the Voldagsen – Salzhemmendorf section with the “Historic Reichsbahnzug” from Hameln . In addition, this section was used for freight traffic to the lime works until March 2018. The line speed is approx. 20 km / h and has been completely modernized with the exception of the Salzhemmendorf thoroughfare. The platform in Salzhemmendorf has also been renewed for museum trips.

The section from km 6.35 to Duingen was dismantled in April and May 2014 . In June 2014, the section from Thüste to Salzhemmendorf was also dismantled.

With the decommissioning of the lime works in Salzhemmendorf on March 31, 2018, the last remaining freight customer was lost, so that the Voldagsen-Salzhemmendorf section of the route is now also without traffic and threatened with closure. From a legal point of view, the branch was ultimately just a siding of the lime works. In addition, the number of freight trains had declined in previous years, as the loss of a major customer in 2014 meant that Deutsche Bahn discontinued daily operations and private railways have only operated irregularly since then .

Picture gallery

Railway station in Salzhemmendorf, looking towards Voldagsen
Line near Salzhemmendorf (looking towards Duingen): Up to this point, the line was used for freight traffic until March 2018.
View over the tracks in Weenzen train station

literature

Eberhard Schüler: 90 years of Kleinbahn Voldagsen-Duingen-Delligsen, 1896-1986 . Published by: Dampfzug-Betriebs-Gemeinschaft eV, Hildesheim 1986, ISBN 3-926676-00-0 .
Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways. Volume 11: Lower Saxony 3 - South of the Mittelland Canal . 1st edition. EK-Verlag, 2009, ISBN 978-3-88255-670-4 .
Gerd Wolff: The private railways in the Federal Republic of Germany . Freiburg 1984.
Meinhard Döpner: The Deutsche Eisenbahn-Betriebs-Gesellschaft AG . 1st edition. Lokrundschau-Verlag, Gülzow 2002, ISBN 3-931647-13-7 .

Web links

Commons : Kleinbahn Voldagsen – Delligsen - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ The plant will be closed on Saturday . ( dewezet.de [accessed on November 6, 2018]).

[1] The plant will be closed on Saturday . ( dewezet.de [accessed on November 6, 2018]).