Railway line Wuppertal-Vohwinkel – Essen-Überruhr
The Wuppertal-Vohwinkel – Essen-Überruhr railway line is a good 30 kilometers long, double-track and electrified main line . In the area of the Ruhr Bridge Steele it has only been single-track since 1945. This oldest line still in operation in Germany is also known as the Prince Wilhelm Railway (PWE). It connects the Wuppertal Valley through the Niederbergisches Land with the Ruhr Valley .
Construction of the route
Deilthaler Eisenbahn-Aktiengesellschaft
In 1831 the forerunner line Deilthaler Eisenbahn from Byfang via Hinsbeck (Ruhr) (today Essen-Kupferdreh ) to Kidneyhof (today to Velbert ) through the Deilbachtal was opened, which was built and operated by the Deilthaler Eisenbahn-Aktiengesellschaft .
Prince Wilhelm Railway Company
In 1844 the Deilthaler Eisenbahn-Aktiengesellschaft was renamed the Prinz-Wilhelm-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . On June 21, 1844, the company received the concession for the expansion of its previous line between Kidneyhof and Hinsbeck (Essen-Kupferdreh). The line was converted to standard gauge (1435 millimeters), expanded to Vohwinkel in the south and Überruhr in the north and opened to passenger traffic on December 1, 1847.
Bergisch-Märkische Railway Company
After the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BME for short) had already operated the line on March 27, 1854, it took over the PWE and its line on January 1, 1863.
They built the line in a north-easterly direction to Steele (in the meantime Steele Hbf , today Essen-Steele Ost train station , with a connection to their Witten / Dortmund – Oberhausen / Duisburg railway line opened three years earlier ), and from there along the Ruhr via Dahlhausen ( Ruhr) according to Langendreer BME. The Essen-Überruhr – Bochum-Langendreer railway was opened just five months later on June 1, 1863.
Railway station head station
After the line was opened in 1847, to overcome the incline in a hairpin at the “Bahnhof Kopfstation” in the Siebeneicker Valley, it was necessary to “turn heads”, ie change the direction of travel. The need for this ceased in 1868 when the line was re-routed and the station was closed.
The name head station for the area is still in use today, the former reception building also still exists. It is on Siebeneicker Strasse and is currently privately owned.
Ruhr Valley Railway
On February 1, 1872, the BME opened the first part of its Ruhr Valley Railway , the Düsseldorf-Oberbilk – Essen-Kupferdreh line , and then another part in 1874, the Essen-Überruhr – Hagen-Vorhalle railway (with a connection to the main Elberfeld – Dortmund line ).
Both lines are no longer linked to the Prince Wilhelm Railway, the sections from Essen-Kupferdreh to Essen-Werden and from Essen-Überruhr via Altendorf (now Essen-Burgaltendorf) to Bochum-Dahlhausen have been closed and some of them dismantled.
Todays situation
In the 1970s, work began on expanding the central Ruhr area main line for the Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn . On February 1, 1978, with a new connecting curve (VzG route 2193), a direct connection from Essen-Überruhr to Essen-Steele (then still Essen-Steele West) was created for the first time; at the same time, passenger traffic on the section from Essen-Überruhr to ended Essen-Steele Ost. Like the previous section, the new connecting curve is single-track. The latter is available, but now partially overgrown .
This opened up completely new ways of connecting. Instead of going to Essen-Steele Ost (at that time still Essen-Steele , formerly Steele Hbf ) and further east, the trains from Wuppertal-Vohwinkel were now led to Essen Hauptbahnhof . The section from Essen-Steele Ost to the Bochum-Dahlhausen West junction was taken over by the S 3 S-Bahn line on May 26, 1974.
Since December 15, 2003, this line has also been upgraded for the S-Bahn and electrified along its entire length. The Velbert-Rosenhügel stop was rebuilt and the Velbert-Neviges train station relocated. In addition, the Aprath station, which was closed in 1965, was reopened as the Wülfrath-Aprath stop . Nothing now reminds of the Dornap station, which was also closed in 1965, because the old platforms were also removed during the expansion. These had to give way to the electrification set up on the entire route.
The S-Bahn line S 9 ran every 20 minutes on weekdays and every 30 minutes on weekends, coming from Wuppertal Hauptbahnhof the entire route from Wuppertal-Vohwinkel via Langenberg to Essen-Überruhr and on via the connecting routes 2165 and 2193 to Essen-Steele . From there it continues via Essen main station to Bottrop main station and once an hour via Gelsenkirchen-Buer Nord and Marl to Haltern am See .
The use of the vehicle was always quite uniform in accordance with the operating program. While push- pull trains made up exclusively of the class 212 and Silberlingen ran for two decades , from the beginning of the 1990s, more powerful class 216 diesel locomotives were used instead of the heavily demanded 212 . This lasted until May 1998 and was then replaced by the 218 series. At the same time, Haltern - Bottrop - Essen-Steele Ost, the first section of the S 9 was put into operation, the operating program of the diesel locomotive-hauled trains, now referred to as RB 49, changed so that they only ran hourly north of Essen and to Borken instead of Haltern, between Essen and Bottrop only the more important stations were served. With the end-to-end electrification, the old operating program was restored, the Haltern - Bottrop - Essen - Wuppertal route now forms a single unit and is used continuously by the S 9. First pull trains were out on the line x-carriage , drawn by the series 143 used, a few months later, the Electrical Multiple strengthened the class 420 . Since spring 2009, all traffic has been handled with the 422 series .
In about two years of construction, the route was elevated in the area of the Essen-Kupferdreh station . The platform was opened to traffic on August 6, 2012, and buses were used from time to time during the acute renovation phase of two weeks. The approach ramps to the structure have an incline of 35 per thousand.
Since the cycle change of the S-Bahn Rhein-Ruhr in 2019 , the S 9 only runs the route every 30 minutes. Every hour is rush hour in addition Wupper-lip-Express (RE 49) between Wuppertal and Wesel go. In contrast to the S 9, this only stops at selected stations, thus reducing travel time.
See also
Web links
NRWbahnarchiv by André Joost:
- Description of route 2723 : Wuppertal-Vohwinkel - Essen-Kupferdreh
- Description of the route 2400 : Essen-Kupferdreh - Essen-Überruhr
- Description of the route 2165 : Essen-Überruhr - Abzw Essen-Steele Ost
- Description of the connection route 2193 : Abzw Essen-Steele Ost - Essen-Steele (new 1978)
Further evidence:
- The Prince Wilhelm Railway ( Memento from August 1, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- The route at Bahnen-Wuppertal.de
- Vohwinkel train station 1895
Individual evidence
- ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
- ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
- ↑ Illustrated chronology of the uprising S9 ( memento from February 6, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
- ↑ Radio Essen : S-Bahn summer construction sites ( 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. , accessed on August 23, 2012
- ↑ List of temporary speed restrictions, No. 34 ff, accessed on 23 August 2012
- ↑ Local transport plan VRR
