Wuppertal-Oberbarmen – Opladen railway line

Wuppertal-Oberbarmen-Opladen
Route number (DB) :	2700
Course book section (DB) :	228a, 229a, lastly 411
Route length:	41.3 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Top speed:	70 km / h
Legend Main line from Wuppertal Hbf 0.0 Wuppertal-Oberbarmen 172  m former route to the left of the Wupper Wupper Main line to Hagen Hbf to Wuppertal-Langerfeld Gbf Rauenthaler Tunnel (256/265 m) or Langerfeld Tunnel (239 m) 1.5 Wuppertal-Rauenthal Wupper Wuppertal Railway to Remscheid-Lennep 7.0 Wuppertal-Ronsdorf 295  m former connection Ronsdorf-Müngstener Railway 8.5 Großhülsberg ( Awanst ) 9.4 Remscheid- Lüttringhausen Awanst 9.9 Remscheid-Lüttringhausen 314  m A 1 13.0 Remscheid-Lennep 335  m Route to Remscheid Hbf Wuppertal Railway to W-Rauenthal via W-Beyenburg 14.3 Klöckner Silesia ( Anst ) 14.3 Volksbank Remscheid (Schürmann) (Anst) 17.3 Bergisch Born (until 1909: Born) 340  m Wippertal Railway to Marienheide 21.2 Wermelskirchen 312  m 22.5 Wermelskirchen West 24.5 Tente 270  m 26.1 Under road 27.8 Hilgen 229  m 29.3 Burscheid Dünweg 213.5  m 31.2 Burscheid 195  m 31.8 Burscheid town hall 188  m 33.0 Pattscheid Schmitz & Schulte (Anst) 34.0 Kuckenberg 158  m 35.8 Pattscheid 131  m 36.5 Pattscheid (old bf) 37.4 reason 110  m 38.2 Bergisch Neukirchen 97  m Main line from Solingen-Ohligs 41.3 Opladen 61  m Main line to Cologne-Deutz Swell:

The Wuppertal-Oberbarmen-Opladen railway is one of the Märkischen Bergisch Railway Company built railway line in Bergisch Land in North Rhine-Westphalia , of Wuppertal via Remscheid-Lennep , Bergisch Born and Wermelskirchen by Opladen led.

Of the original route, only the section between Wuppertal-Oberbarmen and Remscheid-Lennep as part of the Wuppertal-Oberbarmen – Solingen railway is still in operation today . This is classified as a main line , has two tracks and is not electrified.

The section from Remscheid-Lennep to Opladen was also called the Balkan Express because of the route through sparsely populated areas and the mountainous, winding route; traffic on this section ceased in 1994. The route ran between Lennep and Burscheid parallel to federal highway 51 and from Burscheid to Opladen parallel to the former federal highway 232 . Between Lennep (335 meters above sea level) and Opladen (61 meters above sea level) it overcame the gradient from the height of the Bergisches Land into the Rhine Valley.

history

The approval for the construction and operation of the line was granted to the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BME), which was taken over by the Prussian State Railways on January 1, 1882.

In 1868 Lennep was connected to the Elberfeld – Dortmund railway in Wuppertal-Oberbarmen, which had already been opened in 1849 . The BME opened the railway line from Rittershausen (today Oberbarmen) via Lennep to Remscheid this year .

The other, initially single-track line from Lennep to Wermelskirchen was opened for passenger services on May 15, 1876 and to Opladen on October 15, 1881. Freight trains were already running in the two weeks before the opening of passenger services to Opladen. At first there were only stops in Born, Wermelskirchen, Hilgen, Burscheid and from November 15, 1881 also in Pattscheid. Other stops were made between 1900 and 1910. When the Federal Railroad introduced the Uerdingen rail buses for passenger transport in the early 1950s , it built a few additional stops that were only served by these rail buses.

A national connection was planned from Wuppertal via Lennep and Opladen to Cologne. The line was equipped with a second track by April 28, 1910. Since the expansion, the line has no longer had level crossings at the same level. The establishment of express train connections between Lennep and Opladen to Cologne, as requested by the neighboring municipalities and interest groups such as the Chamber of Commerce in Lennep, never happened. The desired full line status was never achieved either, so that the line was one of the few double-track branch lines.

At the end of the war the route was interrupted because numerous bridges were destroyed after Allied bombing and demolitions by the Wehrmacht . Freight traffic was resumed in August 1945 and passenger traffic only resumed in October 1945 due to a lack of coal. Since then, the line was no longer consistently double-track and from 1958 onwards, it was dismantled as a whole from Bergisch Born to Opladen, but converted into a main line to increase the line capacity: the line's top speed was increased from 50 km / h to 80 km / h.

In May 1983 the German Federal Railroad stopped passenger services between Wermelskirchen and Hilgen . In 1991 the section between Opladen and Hilgen was shut down after a storm-related failure of the line telephone connection. In 1997 the Lennep - Wermelskirchen section followed.

Use as a footpath and bike path

Start of the foot and bike path in Lennep, between the tracks and the tents; View towards Wermelskirchen

The route has been converted since 2010 with funds from the NRW Alleenradwege funding program and contributions from the cities of Remscheid, Wermelskirchen and Burscheid to form the “ Panorama-Radweg Balkantrasse ”, a combined pedestrian and cycle path. It is 29.3 kilometers long, 22.8 kilometers of which are on the railway line. In Wermelskirchen, pedestrians and cyclists are guided along inner-city streets because the federal highway 51 has been using the route since 2005 , in Burscheid you have to avoid the former underpass under Jahnstraße, which has been filled in. A bridge will be bypassed in Hilgen, but this will be included in the routing after it has been demolished and rebuilt. The section from Remscheid-Lennep to Burscheid-Kuckenberg was opened on April 22, 2012, the section from Kuckenberg to Opladen followed on May 29, 2014.

The Association of Friends and Patrons of Balkantrasse Leverkusen e. V. was founded because the city of Leverkusen was unable to raise the contribution required by the state.

meaning

During the two world wars and up until the Cold War, the railway line was of strategic importance as a bypassing the line from Hagen via Wuppertal to Cologne. The existing head ramps in the Burscheid station were used for loading military transports, and after the Second World War they were also used for the removal of Allied vehicles .

After its two-track expansion without level crossings, it was an ideal test route for the locomotives and railcars maintained in the main workshop of the Prussian State Railroad, which later became the Bundesbahn repair shop, in Opladen . In the 1970s, due to the maintenance of the electric locomotives at the Opladen plant, there was even talk of electrifying the line and integrating it into a Cologne / Wuppertal / Düsseldorf S-Bahn network. The central signal box in Opladen was prepared for this case, but the implementation did not take place.

Eisenbahnfreunde Remscheid wrote about the importance of the line since the construction of the Müngstener Bridge on the Wuppertal-Oberbarmen-Solingen line, which was completed in 1897 : “In the following decades, the new connection from Remscheid via Solingen to Cologne overtook the 'Balkan Express'. Even the new, simply created breakpoints (...) could not stop this tendency. "

business

In the first few years four pairs of trains ran a day, in Born you had to change trains to Wermelskirchen. Even after the continuous traffic from Remscheid to Opladen began on October 15, 1881, there were still four pairs of trains, the last one running to Deutz and back in the evening . The travel time for the 28 kilometers from Lennep to Opladen averaged 76 minutes. Some trains ran as mixed trains with passenger and goods transport and needed much longer because of the loading times.

Because of the gradient between Opladen and Burscheid, freight trains in particular often had to be carried in double or even triple traction or were pushed by an additional locomotive.

In 1893 there were already nine pairs of trains, in 1907 16 with additional trains on Sundays. The journey time was now between 45 and 68 minutes. They were locomotive-hauled wagon trains. From 1909, the railway between Lennep and Wermelskirchen started using the first accumulator railcars . In 1914, 54 passenger train journeys and 23 freight train services were counted per day, some of them only as short delivery journeys or only on certain days. Several trains began in Remscheid, but most of them in Lennep.

The First World War and the Great Depression of 1929 brought a decline in traffic. In 1939 there were 17 pairs of passenger trains. After several months of war-related interruption in 1945, operations were resumed with difficulties. In 1949 11 pairs of passenger trains ran.

The use of Uerdingen rail buses from 1952 brought an innovation with the opening of further stops. From then on, wagon trains only ran one to three pairs of trains a day. The main areas of transport were the morning, lunchtime and evening hours with their school and commuter traffic. In 1955 there were 36 trains daily. In 1962, the rail buses from Opladen to Lennep took 52 to 57 minutes, and in the opposite direction 41 to 46 minutes.

Competing bus lines running parallel to the rails from Radevormwald and Remscheid via Wermelskirchen and Burscheid to Opladen and even directly to Cologne have existed since the 1930s, some of which the railway itself even participated in. There were only sporadic trains to Cologne.

The decline of the line was particularly noticeable in the 1970s: on Saturdays, a class 211 or 212 locomotive drove with only one n-car in passenger transport. From 1984 accumulator railcars of the series 515 took over the passenger traffic on the remaining section from Opladen to Hilgen in branch line operation.

Operating points

Route from Wermelskirchen to Born (above), Wippertalbahn (right), 2011 (converted to a footpath and bike path in 2012)

Remscheid-Lennep train station

→ Main article : Remscheid-Lennep train station

Lennep train station (from 1952 Remscheid-Lennep ) was inaugurated on September 1, 1868 on the route from Rittershausen to Remscheid. The trains in the direction of Hückeswagen and Wermelskirchen (from May 15, 1876) used the end platforms 36–38 with the associated turntable.

Bergisch Born train station

The station, called Born until 1909 , had operational importance as a branch of the Wippertalbahn . Here passengers changed from and to Hückeswagen (later Wipperfürth - Marienheide) or Wermelskirchen - Opladen. The traffic volume was initially underestimated by the railway administration, so that from 1881 to 1910 constant extensions of the buildings and the track plan were necessary.

Ticket issuance and goods handling were closed in 1968, and the empty reception building was demolished in 1971.

Wermelskirchen train station

The Wermelskirchen train station was initially built too small. The first station building was provisional and had previously served as a train station in Kettwig. A two-story station building was built in 1886. More tracks were soon built, new platforms were laid out and lengthened, and with the two-lane construction came the underpass and roofing of the intermediate platform in 1910.

In front of the station was a stop for the meter-gauge Wermelskirchener-Burger Railway from its opening in 1890 until it was closed in 1930 .

The reception building is still standing and is in commercial use. The station area is now owned by the city. According to a report from May 2009, part of the site was to give way to the construction of a new food discount store.

Tente stop

After several requests from the citizens of Tente and the surrounding area, the Wermelskirchen-Tente passenger stop was put into operation on July 1, 1900 . The Elberfeld Railway Directorate had obliged the city of Wermelskirchen to provide the site for the stop free of charge and to assume the installation costs. In December 1910, an underpass and a building with a waiting room, ticket sales and baggage handling were built, after the tickets had been sold in a private house up until then. The station building was renewed towards the end of the 1920s. However, the desired goods handling was never set up.

In the summer of 1969, the train station served as the backdrop in the film When sweetly the moonlight sleeps on the hills .

Hilgen station

The small Hilgen train station also began as a provisional facility and was equipped with a two-story reception building, a covered intermediate platform and underpass in 1910. Until 1975 there was a siding to the Hilgener steam brickworks . From 1983 to 1991 Hilgen was the end and turning point for the 515 railcars from Opladen. After 1985 the central platform was removed and in 1988 general cargo loading was stopped. Today the goods shed is used, among other things, by a drinks market, and vintage car meetings take place on the street side of the ramp at regular intervals. At the station itself there are still signs for the station restaurant, the building is largely used for private purposes.

Burscheid station

The station was located a little to the east of the actual city center of Burscheid , which had had city rights since 1856, taking into account the operation of two brickworks and possible further industrial settlements (from 1943 Goetzewerke ) . In the course of the double-track expansion of the line, the station building was redesigned and expanded in 1909/10, a central platform with an underpass and two signal boxes were built. The loading road was extended in 1936 and received a second head ramp. With the gradual loss of importance and the discontinuation of continuous train traffic from 1978, the track plan was gradually simplified, signal boxes and platform roofing were dismantled and the counters for tickets, express goods and luggage were closed. The reception building on the site, which was at times littered with rubbish, was demolished in October 2010 after local politicians' suggestions for conversion were rejected. A youth center is to be built on the site.

Kuckenberg stop

In Kuckenberg there was a stopping point at the instigation of the citizenship since July 1, 1900. The railway obliged the city of Burscheid to provide land free of charge, to take over the installation costs and to operate the stopping point. The city granted the concession to an inn nearby and commissioned them to sell tickets. Kuckenberg was a popular stopping point, also as a starting point for hikes. In 1909 45,900 tickets were sold here. The railway therefore released the city of Burscheid from its obligations in 1910 and built a new waiting building and a platform underpass as part of the double-track expansion, but refused to set up baggage and general cargo handling.

Entrance building of the former Pattscheid train station

Pattscheid station

On November 15, 1881, near the village of Oberölbach, the first Pattscheid stop was opened for passenger traffic. In 1897 this was relocated 800 meters further to the east because the increase in traffic required another crossing point for trains that met each other and this was not possible at the old location for topographical reasons. The special feature of the new station, now with a freight station, was that the two continuous main tracks were arranged with a height difference of five meters and connected by a pedestrian tunnel. The upper track could only be reached via an incline, which was not without problems with heavy trains. After the single-track dismantling of the line in 1958, it was converted into a stump track that could only be approached from the direction of Burscheid. It served as a loading platform for local companies until 1966 .

From 1910 to the mid-1930s there was a cable car from Pattscheid train station to Roderbirken, which was used to supply the mental hospital there with building materials, coal and food.

Bergisch Neukirchen stop

This stop was opened on October 10, 1903. The reason for this were complaints from residents about the location of the Pattscheid train station. The place was previously called Neukirchen, was only renamed with the construction of the stop in Bergisch Neukirchen and is now a district of Leverkusen . All passenger trains on the route stopped at the stop. When the second track went into operation, the Bergisch Neukirchen stop received a second platform with an underpass. The second platform is still there today, but the underpass no longer exists.

About one kilometer after Bergisch Neukirchen in the direction of Opladen, a double-track works connection of 347 meters in length branched off south in the direction of Neucronenberg in the Wiembachtal to the J. I. Tillmanns & Söhne screw factory. Because of the difference in altitude, the last part of the goods was transported by cable car. The construction of a hoist for railway wagons was even considered. When the Opladen – Lützenkirchen small railway opened on April 9, 1914 , the factory could be reached more cheaply via a siding from this direction, and the connection from Bergisch Neukirchen was abandoned on April 11, 1914.

Entrance building in Opladen (1867–1965)

Track 6/7: end of the line in Opladen (2003)

Opladen station

→ Main article : Opladen railway station

Connections to Cologne Central Station , Solingen-Ohligs and Düsseldorf Central Station were reached at Opladen station . The passenger trains from the direction of Lennep ran on track I ö (= east) or track XXIII ö, which ended at a turntable , and had to cross the Gruiten – Köln-Deutz railway line .

Since the station renovation in 1909/10, the newly built platform III with tracks 6 and 7 has been available for the route. The platform roof has now been torn down.

During the Second World War, the station was badly devastated by Allied bombing. Only the station building was not hit, but was replaced by a new one in 1968.

Additional stops after the Second World War

From 1952, further demand stops were set up between Wermelskirchen and Opladen , initially only for rail buses:

• Wermelskirchen West on the Drosselweg development area, opened on June 1, 1958
• Unterstrasse , opened in May 1952
• Burscheid Dünweg , opened in May 1952 near the Kotten district, is particularly important for school traffic
• Burscheid Town Hall , opened in May 1952 and at times very popular due to its proximity to the city center
• Grund , opened on May 23, 1954 to serve the residents of Grund, Atzlenbach and Hüscheid.

Vehicle use

The operation usually took place from the Remscheid-Lennep depot .

Locomotives G 3 (1881 to approx. 1920 in freight traffic) T 7 (1881 to approx. 1920 before passenger trains) Prussian T 9 / Class 91 (approx. 1900 to approx. 1920 before passenger trains) Prussian T 12 / class 74 (approx. 1920 to approx. 1955 before passenger trains) Prussian T 18 / Class 78 (before about 1952 before passenger trains) Prussian T 14.1 / Class 93.5 (in front of passenger and freight trains) Prussian P 8 / Class 38 (in front of passenger trains, Bw Opladen) Class 86 (in front of passenger trains) G 5.4 (in freight transport, Bw Opladen) G 7.2 (in freight transport, Bw Opladen) Prussian G 8 / Class 55.16 (in freight traffic, also in front of passenger trains, Bw Opladen) Prussian G 10 / Class 57 (in freight traffic, also in front of passenger trains, Bw Opladen) Class 50 (up to approx. 1962 before freight and passenger trains, Bw Opladen) Series V 60 (from 1968: 260/261) (from approx. 1960 in freight traffic) Series V 90 (from 1968: 290) (from approx. 1960 in freight traffic) Class V 100 (from 1968: 211/212) (from approx. 1960 before freight and passenger trains) Köf III (from 1968: 332/333) (handovers)

Railcar Prussian A2 ( Wittfeld accumulator railcar ) (1909–1926) DB class VT 95 (Uerdingen rail bus, from 1968: 795) (1952–1978) DB class VT 98 (Uerdingen rail bus, from 1968: 798) (1952–1980) DB class ETA 150 (from 1968: 515) (1983–1991) dare Conversion car Rail bus sidecar VB 192 and VB 98 (from 1968: 995 and 998) n-car

literature

• Eisenbahnfreunde Remscheid e. V .: Railways in Remscheid. Martina Galunder-Verlag, Nümbrecht 2005, ISBN 3-89909-060-8 .
• Kurt Kaiß: The Balkan Express . The railway connection Remscheid-Lennep - Opladen. Self-published, Leichlingen 2000, ISBN 3-9806103-2-2 ( Rheinisch-Bergische Eisenbahngeschichte 3).
• Axel Johanßen: From the embankment to the parking lot. Railway impressions yesterday and today from the Rhineland. Martina Galunder-Verlag, Nümbrecht 2007, ISBN 978-3-89909-080-2 .
• Eisenbahnfreunde Remscheid e. V .: Railways in the Bergisches Land. A photo documentation. Martina Galunder-Verlag, Nümbrecht 2006, ISBN 3-89909-070-5 .
• Bernd Franco Hoffmann: Disused railway lines in the Bergisches Land. Sutton-Verlag, Erfurt April 2013, ISBN 978-3-95400-147-7 .
• Bernd Franco Hoffmann: The Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn. Through the valleys of Wupper, Ruhr and Volme ; Sutton-Verlag, Erfurt, 2015, ISBN 978-3954005802

Web links

• Description of route 2700 in the NRWbahnarchiv by André Joost
• Photos of the Opladen – Wermelskirchen – Lennep route today
• Friends and supporters of the Balkantrasse Leverkusen
• Exact description of the footpath and bike path
• Video of a ride on today's cycle path "Balkantrasse"
• How the years go by (1): Return to the “Balkan Terrace”

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ↑ Kurt Kaiß: The Balkan Express: The railway connection Remscheid-Lennep - Opladen , Leichlingen 2000. ISBN 3-9806103-2-2 , 23.25
4. ↑ Martin Krauss: Development of the Railway Infrastructure, in: Bahn-Report 2/1999, S. 4–7, here: S. 6.
5. ↑ Balkan Cycle Path opened
6. ↑ bahntrassenradeln.de , accessed on May 26, 2014.
7. ↑ [1] , accessed on May 26, 2014.
8. ↑ Kurt Kaiß: The Balkan Express: The railway connection Remscheid-Lennep - Opladen , Leichlingen 2000. ISBN 3-9806103-2-2 , 93.89
9. ^ Eisenbahnfreunde Remscheid eV: Railways in the Bergisches Land - a photo documentation , p. 82.
10. ↑ Kurt Kaiß: The Balkan Express: The railway connection Remscheid-Lennep - Opladen , Leichlingen 2000. ISBN 3-9806103-2-2 , 30.82-94
11. ↑ Official course books summer 1962, winter 1977/78
12. ↑ Andreas Dressel: With 440 volts through Ruhrpott and Rhineland , turntable, special issue 15.
13. ↑ Information on the operating locations can be found at: Kurt Kaiß: The Balkan Express: The Remscheid-Lennep - Opladen Railway Link , Leichlingen 2000. ISBN 3-9806103-2-2 , 31-81
14. ^ Railways in Remscheid , p. 62.
15. ↑ Michael Albrecht: Aldi wants to expand at the train station , article in Remscheider General-Anzeiger, accessed on March 22, 2010
16. ^ Online turntable: Residual goods traffic and special trains to Wermelskirchen, ex KBS 411 , accessed on April 17, 2010
17. ↑ http://www.michael-baggeler.de/?p=293
18. ↑ The last hour strikes the train station ( Memento from November 7, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
19. ↑ http://www.competitionline.de/wettbewerbe/11796  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
20. ^ Rolf Müller, Upladhin - Opladen. Stadtchronik , Opladen 1974, 318; Kurt Kaiß: The Balkan Express: The Railway Connection Remscheid-Lennep - Opladen , Leichlingen 2000. ISBN 3-9806103-2-2 , 85.86.88
21. ↑ Kurt Kaiß: The Balkan Express: The railway connection Remscheid Lennep - Opladen , Leichlingen 2000, ISBN 3-9806103-2-2 , 94 f.