Zeithain – Elsterwerda railway line

	from Leipzig Hbf
	from Jueterbog
0.00	Zeithain curved triangle junction
	to Dresden-Neustadt
1.04	Zeithain	99 m
2.30	Zeithain Rohrwerk III Werkbf	98 m
6.32	Wülknitz	97 m
9.28	Tiefenau	96 m
10.66	Geißlitz (24 m)
11.1	Flood bridge
12.21	Gröditz (Riesa)	95 m
12.51	Big Röder (11 m)
	State border Saxony / Brandenburg
14.84	Prosen West	94 m
16.56	Toast	93 m
	from Dresden-Friedrichstadt
	Pulsnitz
	Black magpie
20.07	Elsterwerda	93 m
	Connection curve to Elsterwerda-Biehla
	to Berlin

The Zeithain – Elsterwerda line is a double-track, electrified main line in Saxony and Brandenburg , which was originally built and operated by the Leipzig-Dresden Railway Company . It starts at Riesa at the Zeithain triangle and ends in Elsterwerda , where it joins the Dresden – Berlin main line. The route is part of the long-distance route Chemnitz - Berlin .

history

A connection from Riesa to Elsterwerda had already been considered advantageous by various private railway companies - such as the Berlin-Dresden Railway - since 1872 .

The Riesa – Elsterwerda railway line near Kotschka

The Leipzig-Dresden Railway was particularly interested in expanding its route network to the north. In the course of the projected connection from Moldau via Freiberg and Nossen to Riesa, an attractive transport route for Bohemian coal was to be created via its own routes to Prussia.

On August 26, 1874, this project was sealed with a state treaty between Prussia and Saxony. On March 15, 1875, construction of the single route began. It was opened on October 15, 1875.

On January 1, 1876, the Leipzig-Dresden Railway was nationalized. From then on, the line belonged to the network of the Kgl. Saxon State Railways . This later operated the line as a double-track secondary line .

After the Second World War , the second track had to be dismantled as a reparation payment for the Soviet Union.

During the times of the GDR, the traffic flows mainly shifted from north to south. The connection between Karl-Marx-Stadt and Berlin was particularly significant . In this context, the line was expanded to double-track and electrified again in the mid-1980s. Electric train operations began on December 13, 1986. A day later - on December 14, 1986 - the line was elevated to the main line. Long-distance traffic between Berlin and Chemnitz used the Leipzig – Dresden railway for a few kilometers from Zeithain and the Riesa – Chemnitz railway from Riesa until the interregional line IR 34 was discontinued in 2006 .

According to a newspaper report from 2014, the Prösen and Prösen West stops are threatened with closure.

Route

Seen from south to north, the line leaves the Leipzig – Dresden railway line immediately after the junction of the line from Jüterbog in a north-easterly direction and passes under federal highway 169 . It then leads in a straight line past the Zeithain pipe works station, the former storage area of the superstructure of the Deutsche Reichsbahn in Wülknitz and a good 900 meters away past the baroque manor complex with castle chapel in Tiefenau and crosses the Große Röder north of the B 169 before Gröditz . From Gröditz it runs almost parallel to the Elsterwerda-Grödel raft canal through the Röderaue landscape protection area before it meets the route from Dresden near Kotschka . Both lines cross the rivers Pulsnitz and Schwarze Elster together before reaching Elsterwerda train station .

literature

Werner Nüse, Wolfgang Neubauer, Reiner Scheffler, Rainer Müller, Günter Scheiblich, Dieter Weidl, Ramona Geißler, Heike Berthold: The Riesa railway junction . Ed .: Museumsverein Riesa e. V. 2nd edition. Riesa 2007, p. 22 f .

Web links

Commons : Zeithain – Elsterwerda railway line - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

↑ Joint letter: discontinuation of IR line Chemnitz - Berlin ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2

^ Report of the Märkische Allgemeine from July 2, 2014 , accessed on November 29, 2015

[1] Joint letter: discontinuation of IR line Chemnitz - Berlin ( page no longer available , search in web archives )@1@ 2

[2] Report of the Märkische Allgemeine from July 2, 2014 , accessed on November 29, 2015