Węgliniec – Görlitz railway line

		from Wrocław
		from Lubań
	0.387	Węgliniec formerly Kohlfurt
		after Żary
		after Horka
		to Czerwona Woda
	(228.27)	Tschirnebrücke-Rothwasser
	(233.76)	Langenau
	13,980	Pieńsk formerly Penzig (Upper Lusatia)
	(242.36)	Zodel
	16,345	Lasów formerly Lissa (Upper Lusatia)
		Lasów viaduct (approx. 200 m), Kesselbach
	17.5	to Żarka nad Nysą (military railway )
		Jędrzychowice viaduct (150 m), Hennersdorfer Wasser
		Autostrada A4
	22,421	Jędrzychowice formerly Hennersdorf (b Görlitz)
		Connection of the former Görlitz municipal gasworks, today ZEC Zgorzelec
	24,555	Zgorzelec Miasto
	25.125	Zgorzelec Miasto junction
		Connection railway to Abzw Krysin
		Ulica Łużycka, Zgorzelec
		from Wrocław Świebodzki
	26,532 201,433	Zgorzelec formerly Görlitz-Moys

	202.455 251.715	Neisse Viaduct (475 m) border between Germany and Poland
	202.538 251.801	Infrastructure boundary PLK / DB Netz
		Görlitz – Hagenwerder (–Zawidów)
		from (Zawidów–) Hagenwerder
	252,997	Goerlitz
		to Berlin Görlitzer Bf
		to Dresden-Neustadt

The railway line Węgliniec – Görlitz (formerly Kohlfurt – Görlitz) is a double-track main line in Lower Silesia . It forms the connection of the Dresden – Görlitz railway to the electrified main line from Węgliniec (Kohlfurt) via Legnica (Liegnitz) to Wroclaw .

history

Western part of the station building in Węgliniec (Kohlfurt)

View across the track field to the eastern part of the Węgliniec station building (Kohlfurt)

The construction of the railway line through the pine forests of the Görlitzer Heide was based on a compromise that provided for the connection of Görlitz to the main line of the Lower Silesian-Märkische Eisenbahn (NME) . The main route of the NME ran from Berlin via Frankfurt (Oder) and Liegnitz to Breslau, thus bypassing Upper Lusatia , which has been Prussian since 1815 . The plans provided for the branch line to Görlitz to begin again from a branch line of the NME in Kohlfurt. Construction began on July 31, 1845 with the construction of the station building in Kohlfurt. Its shape resembles the former Görlitz or Guben train station. The two front towers rise up on the west side of the train station, which is located on an island between the tracks. With the construction of the railway junction, the rural Kohlfurt also experienced a strong increase in population due to railway employees.

To the west of the Kohlfurt train station, the line branches off in a south-westerly direction and after 14 kilometers reaches the Penzig train station , which until 1865 was the only stop on the route. On November 15, 1846, the construction work reached the Hennersdorf stop , on which all trains ended from that day. Until Hennersdorf only hilly terrain had to be overcome, but in the direction of Görlitz a small river had to be overcome, a breakthrough created and the Neisse valley crossed in front of the Görlitz train station . The construction of the Neisse Viaduct had already begun in 1844 and the breakthrough was achieved through numerous blasting work. A viaduct now also spanned the small river near Hennersdorf . On August 26, 1847 at 6 p.m. the first NME locomotive arrived in Görlitz. The line was officially opened to traffic on September 1, 1847 by an inaugural train, which arrived at the same time as the inauguration train of the Saxon-Silesian Railway from Reichenbach / Upper Lusatia . The opening celebrations took place in the Görlitz Hotel Rheinischer Hof (Bahnhofstrasse / Jakobstrasse, today's cinema).

The line remained single-track until 1860 and only got a second track in the following years. In 1860, the second track was laid over the viaduct. The later Moys station was built as part of the construction of a section of the Silesian Mountain Railway and began operating in 1856. Soon afterwards, the remaining route was also expanded to double-track. The Kohlfurt railway station became more and more important in the following years, from 1865 a branch line from the Silesian Mountain Railway from Lauban joined it , in 1874 the connection to the private Upper Lusatian Railway to Hoyerswerda followed (initially with a separate train station and transition track to the state railway). The station reached its greatest extent with the commissioning of the small railway to Rothwasser on October 21, 1913. The village of Kohlfurt remained an almost pure railway colony in the middle of the heathland.

Up until the First World War, Lissa / Oberlausitz received a train station with a loading track, and Hennersdorf, which, as already mentioned, had meanwhile been the terminus of the line, was again given a provisional stop on June 1, 1846. Hennersdorf station had been canceled after the line had been completed because it was suspected that it would not be needed. But the onset of leisure traffic signaled the desire for a stop. The first "petition to build a massive passenger stop" is dated to 1874. After numerous disputes about the financing of this stop and a rail connection to the municipal timber yard, an agreement was reached between the city and the railway company. The city provided a construction grant of 25,000 marks, left the required terrain regardless of whether it was private or municipal property, and gave the company a residential building for railway officials. In 1904, with the construction of the Görlitz gasworks in Hennersdorf, the train station proved to be too small. An expansion of the station with the establishment of a military airfield in Leopoldshain and the required rail connection of the airfield became even more urgent . However, due to the numerous earthworks required due to the tight financial situation, it was not implemented until 1933. At the same time, Penzig and Moys also received overtaking and siding for freight traffic.

Renovated platforms at Zgorzelec Miasto station with an incoming train from the direction of Węgliniec

In the course of the successive expansion of the electric railway operation in Silesia , the electrification of the approximately 2 km long section from Görlitz-Moys to Görlitz was put into operation on September 1, 1923 together with the Lauban-Görlitz-Moys section that flows into Görlitz-Moys . Together with the Neisse viaduct in Görlitz , the contact line systems were severely damaged in 1945. Electric train operations were not resumed after the end of the war.

On May 7, 1945, the Wehrmacht's demolition squads destroyed both the Neisse viaduct and the Hennersdorf viaduct. Three arches of the Neisse Viaduct and five arches of the Hennersdorfer Viaduct were destroyed. The missing five arches of the Hennersdorf Viaduct were built up again with bricks in the following months under the direction of the Polish State Railways (PKP) . The PKP took over after World War II by the new boundary line to operate on the route between the now renamed Węgliniec Kohlfurt and the eastern part of Görlitz, now Zgorzelec . The statics of the Hennersdorfer Viaduct was permanently disturbed, so that huge rail anchors (pr.15 profile Krupp 1833) span almost all pillars and vaults to secure the structure. The Görlitz-Moys train station became a head-end station due to the blown Neiss Viaduct. With the construction of a connecting curve from Kohlfurt to the Silesian Mountain Railway in 1948, it was possible to bypass the station, as a result of which the station lost its importance. In the same year, a new Zgorzelec Miasto stop was built on the former Hirschberger Chaussee. The construction was necessary to enable trains to stop in Zgorzelec via the new connecting curve in the direction of Zawidów (formerly Seidenberg), Bogatynia (formerly Reichenau) or Lubań (formerly Lauban). Since May 22, 1957, the former branch line of the NME has been double-tracked again along its entire length.

In 1984 the GDR and the People's Republic of Poland agreed on a strategic railway between the Berlin – Görlitz and Zgorzelec – Węgliniec lines as part of the Warsaw Pact . In the event of the destruction of the Neisse Viaduct, it should enable a provisional crossing of the Neisse. The National People's Army (NVA) laid the tracks on the German side from Charlottenhof / Oberlausitz to Ober-Neundorf and the PKP and Polish army from the siding in Jędrzychowice (formerly Hennersdorf) via Penziger Strasse to the banks of the Neisse.

In 2006 and 2007, the line as well as its stations and stops were fundamentally modernized as part of the German-Polish agreement for cooperation in the further development of rail connections from 2003 and upgraded for a maximum speed of 120 km / h. The modernization of the route cost the equivalent of around 44 million euros.

The Polish section is also to be equipped with ETCS Level 2.

electrification

According to information from 2014, it was planned to electrify the Węgliniec – Zgorzelec section by 2017. The construction costs were estimated at 100 million złoty (approx. 22.8 million euros), approximately 70 percent of which will be funded by the EU.

On November 24, 2017, the Polish infrastructure operator PKP PLK signed a contract for the electrification of the 27 km long section from Węgliniec to Zgorzelec. The construction work should be completed in January 2019. The total investment volume is given as around 70 million złoty (approx. 15.9 million euros), of which 33.1 million złoty (approx. 7.5 million euros) is attributable to pure electrification. The measure is 85% co-financed from the EU infrastructure fund "Connecting Europe Facility".

Electric rail operations began on December 15, 2019. A total of 920 catenary masts, 54 transverse structures and two substations were built in Pieńsk and Zgorzelec. The substation in Węgliniec has been modernized.

Train traffic

The first train service with the start of operations consisted of four train pairs daily between Kohlfurt and Görlitz. The travel time in both directions was 52 minutes, which results in an average speed of 28 kilometers per hour for the approximately 25 kilometers. As long as the journey ended in Hennersdorf, the travelers had to go to Görlitz freely, by cart or on foot. Freight traffic only started when the entire length of the route was completed. On Sundays, special trains ran briefly to Hennersdorf for excursion traffic, but these were quickly discontinued. In 1851 the NME also took over the weekly transport for the exchange of prisoners between the prisons in Brieg, Görlitz, Jauer, Ratibor, Sagan and Schweidnitz. In 1852 and 1854, passenger traffic was increased to five, later seven train pairs a day, which now only took three quarters of an hour to travel. In 1885, a pair of express trains was added to the seven pairs of passenger trains, which only require 34 minutes of travel time. The passenger trains only took 6 minutes longer with two stops. The winter timetable 1904/05 indicated the following destinations, which run on the NME branch line: seven passenger trains to Kohlfurt and two D-trains each to Breslau and Lissa (Poznan) . The 1930s represented the high point in the traffic performance of the route. Six express trains, two express trains and fourteen passenger trains now ran on the route book route 134 (Breslau-Liegnitz-Görlitz-Dresden), which had now become the "East-West racetrack" two ended in Penzig. During the war years, however, the transport performance fell again.

Since the PKP built the aforementioned connecting curve in Zgorzelec in 1948, most trains have continued to Bogatynia (formerly Reichenau) and Turoszów (formerly Türchau). In the mid-1960s, ten pairs of trains ran again via Pieńsk to Węgliniec, which were joined by two more 20 years later. The cross-border express train traffic between the People's Republic of Poland and the GDR also picked up again. If in 1957 there was only one pair of trains, in 1987 there were already three pairs of trains, or even five on Fridays.

From 2009 to the end of February 2015, Przewozy Regionalne operated three pairs of regional express trains between Dresden Hbf and Wrocław Główny via Bautzen , Görlitz , Węgliniec and Legnica in cooperation with Deutsche Bahn . Due to limited financial resources in the Lower Silesian Voivodeship, these connections were discontinued. Since then, there has been no regular passenger traffic in the Zgorzelec – Görlitz section.

According to a media report published in Saxony, however, from September 21, 2015, some inner-Polish trains should run beyond Zgorzelec to Görlitz, and a corresponding agreement was therefore reached on September 11, 2015 at a German-Polish rail summit in Potsdam. Polish media, however, saw the timetable change in December 2015 as the earliest possible date for the actual entry of Polish trains into the Görlitz station. On the other hand, the Polish media reported on September 15, 2015 that the Federal Ministry of Transport and Digital Infrastructure responsible in Germany should first confirm the draft of a relevant border works agreement on September 21, 2015. If this border works agreement is approved, it is generally possible that from this point on Polish traction vehicles may enter the Görlitz station. However, the participating infrastructure companies PKP PLK and DB Netz as well as the participating transport companies Koleje Dolnośląskie (KD) and Länderbahn are only able to conclude the necessary contracts (e.g. for the use of the train path and the timetable) on the basis and under the conditions of the approved border management agreement. In addition, a corresponding commissioning of the transport services by the ZVON and the Lower Silesian Voivodeship as the locally responsible regional rail transport authority is required . A spokeswoman for KD was quoted as saying that if the course went well and all formal and deadline requirements were met, it would be possible for KD trains to enter Görlitz station from the timetable change in December 2015. Otherwise, the KD is planning an extension of the domestic Polish transport via Zgorzelec to Görlitz from March 2016.

In fact, with the timetable change in December 2015, through traffic Dresden – Wrocław was resumed. In addition to the up to three daily train pairs of the Dresden-Wrocław-Express, four train pairs of the Polish rail transport company Koleje Dolnośląskie have been running between Jelenia Góra, Görlitz and Węgliniec since the 2015 timetable change .

The Polish railway company Koleje Dolnośląskie operates eight pairs of trains a day between Zgorzelec and Węgliniec, one of which runs from Węgliniec via Bolesławiec and Chojnów to Legnica. In December 2009 PKP discontinued its own direct connections from Zgorzelec to Wroclaw or the Polish capital.

literature

Wilfried Rettig : Görlitz railway junction . 1st edition. Bufe-Fachbuch-Verlag, Egglham 1994, ISBN 3-922138-53-5 .
Bernd Kuhlmann: Railways across the Oder-Neisse border . Ritzau KG - Zeit und Eisenbahn Verlag, Pürgen 2004, ISBN 3-935101-06-6 .

Web links

Commons : Railway Węgliniec – Görlitz - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Description (Polish)
Timetable 1944

Individual evidence

↑ ^a ^b Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 52 .

^ Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 52 f .

^ Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 53 .

^ Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 53 f .

↑ ^a ^b Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 55 .

↑ Modernization of the E30 railway line in the Węgliniec - Zgorzelec and Węgliniec - Bielawa Dolna sections. (No longer available online.) In: plk-inwestycje.pl. Formerly in the original ; Retrieved July 28, 2010 . ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2

^ Poland: ETCS Level 2 for the Zgorzelec - Węgliniec line. In: eurailpress.de. DVV Media Group, June 11, 2018, accessed on January 2, 2020 .

↑ Prognoza na oddziaływania środowisko. (PDF) dla Dokumentu Implementacyjnego do Strategii Rozwoju Transportu do 2020 r. (z perspektywą do 2030 r.). Ministerstwo Infrastruktury i Rozwoju, March 2014, pp. 54, 96 , accessed on July 9, 2014 (Polish).

↑ Jest umowa na elektryfikację linii kolejowej Węgliniec - Zgorzelec. Rynek kolejowy, November 24, 2017, accessed November 27, 2017 (Polish).

↑ Dolnośląskie: PKP podpisały umowę elektryfikację odcinka trasy E-30. onet.pl , November 2017, accessed on November 27, 2017 (Polish).

↑ Kolejarze zelektryfikowali linię Węgliniec – Zgorzelec. In: inzynieria.com. December 13, 2019, accessed January 2, 2020 .

^ Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 56 .

^ Deutsche Bahn AG (Ed.): Press release RE 100 on the road to success: passenger numbers between Dresden and Wroclaw quadrupled since commissioning . 2010.

↑ Zmiany w rozkładzie jazdy pociągów na Dolnym Śląsku. Przewozy Regionalne , February 20, 2015, accessed February 20, 2015 (Polish).

^ Cessation of traffic from Dresden - Görlitz - Wrocław / Breslau on March 1st, 2015. (PDF) ZVON and VVO , February 20, 2015, accessed on February 20, 2015 .

↑ Direct train connection Dresden-Breslau is revived. Sächsische Zeitung, September 11, 2015, accessed on November 23, 2018 .

↑ ^a ^b Kasper Fiszer: Przełomu w sprawie RE do Drezna never ma. No breakthrough in the matter of RE to Dresden. "RK – Rynek Kolejowy" (www.rynek-kolejowy.pl), September 15, 2015, accessed on September 16, 2015 (Polish).

↑ rozklad-pkp.pl: PKP timetable information (in German). Retrieved July 28, 2010 .

[Rettig52-1] Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 52 .

[2] Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 52 f .

[3] Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 53 .

[4] Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 53 f .

[Rettig55-5] Rettig: Görlitz railway junction . 1994, p. 55 .