Volkmarsen – Vellmar-Obervellmar railway line

Volkmarsen-Vellmar-Obervellmar
The Wolf Hagen Station 2008
Route number :	3903
Course book section (DB) :	612
Route length:	36.4 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Dual track :	Ahnatal Casselbreite - Vellmar-Obervellmar
Legend Twist Valley Railway from Korbach 0.0 Volkmarsen RE former Twist Valley Railway to Warburg Erpe , economic road L 3075 4.4 Ehringen RE from Wolfhagen Pommernkaserne 10.8 L 3214 10.9 Wolfhagen RT4 RE Erpetal Bridge ( Erpe ) L 3390 14.9 Senior citizens L 3312 L 3214 19.3 Oberelsungen A 44 22.6 Zierenberg-Rosental 23.6 Zierenberg RE Warmetal Viaduct ( Warm , L 3211) Zierenberg Tunnel (900 m) Zierenberg Tunnel (815.5 m) 28.4 Fürstenwald 31.5 Ahnatal-Weimar RE Rasenallee ( Landesstrasse 3217) 34.1 Ahnatal-Heckershausen 34.8 Ahnatal Casselbreite 36.1 Friedrich-Wilhelms-Nordbahn from Warburg RT1 36.4 Vellmar - Obervellmar RE Friedrich-Wilhelms-Nordbahn to Kassel Harleshausen curve to Kassel RT1 RT4

The Volkmarsen – Vellmar-Obervellmar railway runs from Volkmarsen via Wolfhagen and Zierenberg to Vellmar - Obervellmar , where it meets the Warburg – Kassel railway . It begins in Volkmarsen, where it branches off from the Warburg – Sarnau railway line. In addition to the entire route, almost all railway structures along the route are listed .

history

Train crossing in Zierenberg on June 12, 2002: 628 223 meets the push-pull train pushed by 216 143

In Volkmarsen, after the closure of the Warburg –Volkmarsen sections in 1967 and Korbach –Volkmarsen in 1987, local rail passenger transport ended for around ten years . After the closure of the Warburg – Volkmarsen section, the line to Obervellmar was integrated into the continuous main track of the Volkmarsen station. As a result of the redesign of the Volkmarsen train station, the change in route can only be recognized by the change in route kilometers. After the reactivation of the line to Korbach on October 4, 1998, there was continuous service from Korbach to Kassel , initially with regional trains every hour. On January 1, 2002, the DB subsidiary Kurhessenbahn leased the infrastructure and took over the operation of the local transport and freight trains on the route. Then a concept was introduced with regional express trains Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe - Korbach every two hours and regional trains Kassel Hbf –Korbach. The regional trains ran to Volkmarsen every hour and to Korbach every two hours. Between 2003 and 2008, special trains that could only be used by soldiers ran on Fridays from the Pommernkaserne Wolfhagen over the 5 km long siding to Wolfhagen and on to Kassel and on Sundays in the opposite direction.

The line was extensively renovated from May 28 to December 9, 2006. It was closed to train traffic.

After the renovation of the railway line started forward operation of RegioTram between Wolf Hagen and Kassel main station every hour. The regional trains were tied into the center of Kassel in August 2007. Here are two power railcar type Regio Citadis used which operate in the far rail network with diesel and the Kassel tram network is electrically connected to power supply from the overhead line. The change between the operating modes takes place during the stop at Kassel Hbf train station. Until December 2013, the trains on the RT 4 line ran on the inner-city ring route through Königsstrasse and Königsplatz there . Since December 2013 they have been running through Königsstrasse to Holländische Strasse and turning there. In addition to the RegioTram, regional express trains run between Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe and Korbach every hour, which only stop in Obervellmar, Weimar and Zierenberg as far as Wolfhagen. Class 646 and 628 railcars are used for this.

Expansion from 2010 to 2013

Disused connecting railway to Pommernkaserne (2015)

From 2010 onwards, the railway line between Wolfhagen and Vellmar was expanded so that the RegioTram line RT 4 has been able to run every half hour since December 2013. From August 2010 to August 2011 , the Heckershausen stop was expanded into a double-track crossing station with an island platform , where the regional trains have been crossing since December 2013. From November 2010 to November 2013, the Vellmar-Obervellmar station was expanded to include a third platform track. For this purpose, a new island platform with entrances and a supporting wall with a noise protection structure had to be built. In addition, an approximately 1000 m long section of the line connecting to the station was expanded to double tracks. At the end of this upgraded line, the Ahnatal-Casselbreite stop - initially only single-track - was opened on December 18, 2011 . The level crossing to the southwest of the center of Heckershausen was  replaced by a street underpass on Rasenallee ( Landesstrasse 3217) between May 2011 and August 2012. An additional stub track with platform for the regional trains was laid in Wolfhagen station. The work was originally supposed to be completed by the end of 2012, but construction work was still ongoing in 2013. The half-hourly service to Zierenberg was introduced on December 15, 2013 for the 2013/2014 timetable change . With the new RegioTram concept, the timetable on the route has been completely rebuilt. The RE line has different departure times and the travel time to Korbach has been shortened by ten minutes. In Zierenberg, the line offers short transition times to the RegioTram to Kassel's main train station and downtown Kassel.

New construction: New Zierenberg tunnel (2015 to 2018)

Between the Zierenberg core town and the village of Fürstenwald , which belongs to the municipality of Calden , the railway line ran through the 815.5 m long, single-track Zierenberg tunnel , which was built between 1895 and 1897 . From October 2015 the new Zierenberger Tunnel was built next to this tunnel , which is 900 m long and was put into operation as a replacement for the previous tunnel on October 11, 2018.

Planning

Kurhessenbahn between Volkmarsen and Ehringen

In Wolfhagen, the long turnaround time of the RegioTram of 30 minutes is to be used to extend into Wolfhagen's city center. The trains are to run as a diesel-powered light rail to the Wilhelm Filchner School.

In March 2018, the North Hessian Transport Association and the Kurhessenbahn commissioned an investigation to determine the financial impact and a schedule for a possible electrification of the Obervellmar – Wolfhagen section. As a result, the next generation of RegioTram vehicles could be procured with two-system equipment and a special design with diesel generators specifically for the route to Wolfhagen could be dispensed with. In this case, the Kurhessenbahn is considering the purchase of electric multiple units with accumulators for the RE Kassel – Korbach to bridge the non-electrified section Wolfhagen – Korbach.

The feasibility study shows that electrification of the section can be implemented by 2028/2029, but according to the NVV there is no schedule yet. The costs are between 40 million and 60 million euros. A federal funding program and a prioritization by the state are expected for the end of 2018 ^{[out of date]} .

Service offer

Today the line is operated continuously from Korbach via the Warburg – Sarnau and Volkmarsen – Obervellmar railway lines to Kassel. Local passenger transport from Korbach is carried out every hour by RE trains of the Kurhessenbahn to Kassel-Wilhelmshöhe. The RegioTram line RT 4 offers additional trains from Wolfhagen through Kassel's city center to Holländische Strasse. This runs every hour, from Zierenberg every half hour since December 2013. In Vellmar-Obervellmar there is a connection to the RT 1 from and to Hofgeismar-Hümme .

In March 2016, the Kurhessenbahn won the tender for the diesel network Northwest Hesse and has been operating its previous line network for another 15 years since December 2017. The operation was originally to be converted to used low-floor multiple units of the type Stadler GTW (number: 13) and Siemens Desiro (number: 14). Since the modernization of the class 642 multiple units by the Kassel repair shop was not implemented on time, Kurhessenbahn is currently using class 642 and 646 vehicles from sister companies Erzgebirgsbahn , Westfrankenbahn and Usedomer Bäderbahn . In addition, existing vehicles from the 628 series are still in use. The entire vehicle fleet is to be converted to the 642 series by December 2018.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} New railway overpass in Ahnatal-Heckershausen is being built for 3 million euros ( Memento from January 5, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) from May 26, 2011, on bahn.de
2. ↑ ^{a b} Regiotram connection: construction work to remove the bottleneck in Obervellmar begins. In: hna.de. October 16, 2011, accessed July 24, 2016 . 
3. ↑ Wolfgang Fiegenbaum: Farewell to Rail 2006 - 2016 . Transpress, Stuttgart 2017, ISBN 978-3-613-71539-4 , pp. 151 .
4. ↑ New points are now going into operation. In: hna.de. December 7, 2012, accessed July 24, 2016 . 
5. ↑ see itemization of the length of the new Zierenberg tunnel in the article Zierenberg tunnel
6. ↑ The Zierenberger Tunnel commissioning ceremony. Kurhessenbahn, accessed on December 20, 2018 . 
7. ↑ Local traffic plan North Hessian Transport Association 2013-2018. In: nvv.de. July 2014, p. 328 and 399 , accessed November 12, 2018 . 
8. ↑ NVV commissioned a feasibility study for the electrification of the Obervellmar - Wolfhagen railway line. NVV press release from March 15, 2018. In: tram-kassel.de. March 16, 2018, accessed November 12, 2018 . 
9. ↑ Michaela Pflug: Resident hopes for the electrification of the railway line between Kassel and Wolfhagen in the near future. In: HNA. October 15, 2018, accessed November 12, 2018 . 
10. ↑ Kurhessenbahn (KHB) wins EU-wide tender for transport services in the north-west Hessian network - operations start in December 2017 when the timetable changes, Kurhessenbahn. Kurhessenbahn, March 2016, accessed on July 24, 2016 . 
11. ↑ In the north-west Hesse network of the NVV, the Kurhessenbahn starts with different vehicles than planned - new timetable offer not affected from December 10th - NWL. Zweckverband Nahverkehr Westfalen-Lippe (NWL), accessed on November 12, 2018 . 
12. ↑ Modern low-floor vehicles. DB Kurhessenbahn, accessed on November 12, 2018 . 

literature

• Lutz Münzer: Origin and early days of Prussian secondary branch lines in rural areas - the lines Sarnau - Volkmarsen - Warburg and Volkmarsen - Obervellmar in: Yearbook for Railway History , Issue 29, Karlsruhe 1997 (DGEG)
• Lutz Münzer: Volkmarsen-Obervellmar , printed in the 44th supplementary edition of secondary and narrow-gauge railways in Germany once & now , 2003 (GeraNova)
• State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen (Ed.): Railway in Hessen. Cultural monuments in Hessen. Monument topography Federal Republic of Germany , Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2005, 3 volumes in a slipcase, ISBN 3-8062-1917-6 , especially route number 068 (volume 2.2, p. 778ff)

Web links

• Pictures of the portals of the old Zierenberg tunnel