Witten – Schwelm railway line

Witten – Schwelm

Route number (DB) :

2143 (Witten – Schwelm)
2144 (Witten Höhe – Wengern Ost)

Course book section (DB) :

450.8 (Gevelsberg West – Schwelm)

Route length:

4.6 or 19.7 km

Gauge :

1435 mm ( standard gauge )

Power system :

Witten – Wengern East and
Gevelsberg West – Schwelm:
15 kV 16.7 ~

Top speed:

100 km / h

Dual track :

Witten – Wengern East,
Gevelsberg West – Schwelm

Legend

		Main line from Duisburg / Dortmund
		S-Bahn line from Dortmund
	0.0	Witten Hbf
		Main line to Hagen
	1.4	Ruhr Viaduct (Witten) (716 m)
	1.9	Ruhr Valley Railway from Hattingen (Ruhr)
	2.7	Witten-Höhe ( Strw , formerly Bf, last Hp)
		(Link from 1926)
	4.6	Wengern East
		Ruhr Valley Railway to Hagen
	5.0	Wengern West
	8.4	Albringhausen
	11.2	Silscheder Tunnel (845 m)
		Schee – Silschede railway line

	12.0	Asbeck
		A 1
	13.1	Klosterholz Tunnel (350 m)
	14.5	Stefansbachtal Viaduct (90 m)
		S-Bahn line from Hagen
	15.5	Gevelsberg West
		(formerly parallel route)

		Schwelmer Tunnel (742 m) or Linderhauser Tunnel (945 m)

		formerly Wuppertal Northern Railway
	18.2	Linderhausen (Abzw)
		President Hoeft Tunnel (182/172 m)
		Main line from Hagen
	19.7	Schwelm
		Main line to Wuppertal

Swell:

The Witten – Schwelm railway line (also known as the Elbschetalbahn ) is a railway line in the Ennepe-Ruhr district in the south-east of the Ruhr area, which is now largely closed and only in operation at the end sections .

The 4.6 kilometer long double-track section from Witten Hauptbahnhof to Wengern Ost is now electrified and is only used for freight traffic.

The 17-kilometer single-track section from Witten-Höhe to Schwelm was intended to be part of a relief route from the Ruhr area towards Cologne . It was planned to extend the route beyond Schwelm to the south via Lennep to Cologne, but this did not happen due to the events of the First World War .

history

Work on the line began as early as 1911, and although it ultimately remained just a torso of its original plan, completion dragged on until 1934. On October 4, 1926 , the Deutsche Reichsbahn first opened the section from Witten Hauptbahnhof via Witten-Höhe to Wengern Ost with a connection to the Ruhr Valley Railway from Hattingen to Hagen , which then served for around ten years exclusively for freight traffic around the Elberfeld – Dortmund railway line to relieve.

The economic decline during and after the war was the reason for the long construction period on the main part of the line, with most of the work being completed before 1914. The necessary remaining work was only carried out at the beginning of the 1930s as a job creation measure. The construction costs for the line came to 50 million Reichsmarks .

In the period from 1934 to 1939, a total of 23 passenger trains ran on the route daily, five of which were express trains . There was also a considerable amount of freight traffic .

In the Second World War one used Silscheder tunnel , Klosterholz tunnel , Schwelmer tunnel and Linderhauser tunnel under the code name Buchfink , Goldammer and Meise (the latter refers to a result of the parallel position both the Schwelmer and on the Linderhauser tunnel) as a U-shift for the arms , in which forced laborers had to make weapons .

The operation of the railway was resumed after 1945; however, traffic decreased continuously in the post-war period. As a result, passenger traffic was stopped on November 30, 1979 on the central part of Witten-Höhe via Wengern West and Albringhausen to Gevelsberg West . On January 14, in 1980, that section was closed to all traffic and January 1, 1983 shut down .

The former station building of the Albringhausen train station is privately owned and is used for catering purposes.

Of the Asbeck Halt was opened on May 15, 1934. Due to the construction of the railway and the stop, the number of welfare recipients in Asbeck had decreased from 40 to 10. On October 2, 1960, the occupation of the stop was abandoned and the station building was converted into a residential building.

Route

The route was characterized by some elaborate viaducts and rail tunnels , including the Ruhr viaduct near Witten . Other viaducts are the Elbschetal Viaduct in Wengern and the Stefansbachtal Viaduct in Gevelsberg . Two tunnels about 900 meters long are located near Silschede and north of Schwelm .

From a railway technology point of view, the route was optimally designed:

double-track route ,
low gradients ,
large curve radii ,
large cross-sections of the tunnels ,
Avoidance of level crossings with level crossings ,

show a plan that thought in European dimensions. Nevertheless, the route in its entirety was only fragmentary and never achieved the importance originally intended.

Todays situation

The northern part of the route is now only used for freight traffic , while the southern section through the 945-meter-long Linderhauser tunnel from Gevelsberg to Schwelm for the S-Bahn line S 8 of the S-Bahn Rhein-Ruhr is the connection between the Düsseldorf railway line -Derendorf – Dortmund Süd and the Elberfeld – Dortmund railway line .

planning

It is planned to create a railway cycle path on the disused part . The route leads through a scenic area with two viaducts and two tunnels, of which the 845 m long Silscheder Tunnel will have an extraordinary length for a bicycle tunnel . Because of these buildings, however, the financing of the project has not yet been clarified, as the lighting of the tunnels , for example , would result in considerable costs.

Part of the connection is the section of the Von-Ruhr-zur-Ruhr cycle path that has yet to be expanded . Of these, the section from Witten to Albringhausen was completed in August 2017.

Trivia

When the line was built, the house in which Henriette Davidis worked for a long time had to be demolished . The plate of her stove , on which she had developed many of her cooking recipes , was built into a smaller bridge. The bridge can be found on Henriette-Davidis-Weg in Wengern.