Boxteler Bahn

Boxtel-Büderich
Boxteler Bahn
Route length:	93 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
State (D):	North Rhine-Westphalia
Province (NL):	Noord-Brabant , Limburg
Legend Line from Utrecht, Line from Breda 0.0 Boxtel Route to Eindhoven A2 Dommel 4.2 Liempde 6.1 Olland 10.1 Schijndel 13.1 Eerde Zuid-Willemsvaart Port railway Veghel loading point 17.4 Veghel 23.4 Uden 30.1 Zeeland 35.2 Mill 41.1 Haps A73 43.7 Kruispunt Bend route Venlo-Nijmegen from Nijmegen 46.1 Oeffelt Meuse 48.9 Gennep 52.7 40.2 The Netherlands / Germany border 38.0 Hassum 34.5 Asperden B9 Niers from Kleve 30.4 Goch to Cologne Niers 26.7 Nod Niers 26.3 Kalbeck 24.7 Buckholt 22.5 Uedem (formerly Prussian Uedem) 19.7 Uedemerfeld 18.0 Uedemerbruch 15.3 Labbeck 10.2 Xanten West (formerly Xanten NBDS) Moers – Kleve route B57 4.2 Birten 2.3 Menzelen - Ginderich former route from Venlo 0.0 Anst Büderich (formerly Bf; connection Solvay ) Route to Wesel

The Boxteler Bahn was founded on May 28, 1869 by Dutch and German shareholders in Rotterdam under the name “Noord-Brabantsch-Duitsche Spoorweg-Maatschappij” (NBDS) as a private railway company. It later moved its seat to the North Limburg municipality of Gennep . The Netherlands and Prussia granted it the concession to operate a nearly 100-kilometer-long railway line from Boxtel in the Dutch province of Noord-Brabant via Schijndel , Veghel , Gennep, Goch , Xanten and Büderich to Wesel (German concession from January 14, 1873).

Track construction

NBDS shares

Former NBDS station Asperden 2001

Former Uedemerfeld stop (replica)

With great financial and structural efforts, the company was able to open its first 62-kilometer single-track section from Boxtel to Goch on July 15, 1873. The remaining 30 kilometers of the 92.7 kilometer long railway line via Xanten to Büderich went into operation on July 1, 1878. In Goch, a large reception building was built in an island location in 1878 together with the Rheinische Eisenbahn as a community station. On the last eight kilometers from Büderich to Wesel , which were owned by the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn , NBDS used the 1,950 meter long Rhine bridge near Wesel together with it . It was built from 1872 to 1874 during the construction of the Wesel - Venlo line by the Cöln-Mindener Bahn. Another important structure on the NBDS line was the 300-meter-long, single-track bridge over the Meuse in Gennep, the Netherlands.

Together with the Prussian State Railways , the Dutch "Staatsspoorwegen" (SS) and the "Reederei Zeeland" (ferry service Vlissingen - England), the international rail post line from overseas and England from Vlissingen to Hamburg and Berlin was established on May 15, 1881, with continuation to Scandinavia and Russia . Despite temporary difficulties with the state spoor routes , this resulted in lucrative travel with through coaches on the NBDS railway line.

In order to ensure the lively use in tourist traffic, among other things by crowned heads, at the beginning of the 20th century the through coaches were replaced by international trains via the NBDS to Hamburg, Berlin and southern Germany . In 1908, NBDS was the first Dutch railway company to purchase heavy 2C-coupled locomotives for these heavy trains, which were called "Blue Brabanters" because of their blue paintwork. The machines led the trains with wagons from several railway companies in Germany beyond Wesel to Münster and Oberhausen . From 1897 on these trains also ran dining cars and from 1904 sleeping cars of the International Sleeping Car Company ( CIWL ), Brussels (Compagnie Internationale des Wagons-Lits et des Grands Express Européenns). At the same time, due to the increasing train density, the NBDS had to double-track the Boxtel - Goch section by 1912.

In order to stimulate its low freight traffic , the NBDS introduced the so-called broken traffic as early as 1882, by using its own ships to transport oilseeds from Rotterdam to its own canal port in Veghel and from there by trains to the margarine works in Goch. In the opposite direction, it mainly transported coal from the Ruhr by rail to Veghel and, after reloading, by ship to Rotterdam.

In 1912, the NBDS built the narrow-gauge 63-kilometer “Maas-Buurtspoorweg” (MBS) along the Maas on the state road from Nijmegen via Gennep to Venlo . It was opened on May 31, 1913 and served as a local railway until 1944 for local passenger and freight traffic.

End of the NBDS

Constant financial difficulties due to high debts and insufficient equity , high distance investments and rising personnel costs led to a loose cooperation between NBDS and the state spoor routes as early as 1913. The collapse of international traffic in World War I and after the war led to the merger with the state spoorways in 1919. In 1921 bankruptcy was opened for the remaining assets of the company .

Takeover of the railway line

The Deutsche Reichsbahn and the Staatsspoorwegen (SS) took over the railway line on July 1, 1925 and continued to operate it in their respective countries as branch lines .

The railway bridge at Gennep fell into the hands of the Wehrmacht on May 10, 1940, about two hours before the start of the attack on the Netherlands by a ruse by a raiding party of the Brandenburg special unit : two Dutchmen in Dutch uniforms pretended to have eight German Wehrmacht soldiers arrested. Nonsensical orders from a Dutch sergeant named Lute (subordinates begged him to blow up the bridge) contributed significantly to the fact that shortly afterwards an armored train of the Wehrmacht hit the west bank of the Maas and beyond the Peel-Raam position shortly after the bridge was occupied could drive. The armored train fired at some casemates south of the route from behind and later drove back towards Germany, the first car derailed and the second wedged. On the evening of May 10th, heavy fighting took place near Mill , mainly led by the German 456 Infantry Regiment.

Cessation of operations

In Germany

In the course of Operation Market Garden , this bridge was blown up by German troops on September 18, 1944. The destruction at the end of the Second World War only allowed rail traffic on some sections of the route. Continuous operation in Germany was no longer possible after the Wesel Rhine Bridge was blown up by German troops on March 10, 1945 and the railway line between Uedemerfeld and Xanten West was partially destroyed . Canadian pioneers removed the remaining rails and then used the former railway line for the supply route from Uedem to Xanten. On the two short sections to the west and east of Goch to Hassum and Uedem , passenger traffic was shut down in 1949 and 1963, respectively. With the cessation of freight traffic in 1966 and 1967, rail traffic in Germany on the former NBDS line ceased. A monument to the Boxteler Bahn was erected on Klevische Allee near Kalbeck Castle.

In the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, too, rail traffic was only partially resumed after the war. In 1950 the passenger traffic between Boxtel and Uden , the only section on which passenger traffic still took place, was stopped. From 1971 onwards, goods traffic was gradually ceased: in 1971 the route between Mill and Gennep was closed, in 1978 traffic between Uden and Mill was discontinued and in 1983 that between Veghel and Uden. The last section of the former NBDS line from Boxtel to Veghel operated in freight traffic was closed in 2004.

future

A reactivation of the Boxtel - Schijndel - Veghel - Uden route as a "Lightrail" (with trains ' s-Hertogenbosch - Boxtel - Uden) is currently being examined. If the line were to be reopened, it would be only the third railway line in the Netherlands since World War II to reopen for passenger traffic. In both countries, only a few buildings and their traces in the landscape are reminiscent of the remaining sections of the Boxteler Bahn, called “Duits Lijntje” in the Netherlands.

Locomotives and wagons

Blauer Brabanter No. 32 in Gennep around 1908

Until the beginning of the 20th century, NBDS obtained its mainline locomotives from England from Beyer, Peacock & Co. , Manchester, and from the Hohenzollern locomotive factory in Düsseldorf. The 1B-coupled outer frame machines corresponded to the English / Dutch type of that time. C-coupled locomotives were obtained from Hohenzollern, Düsseldorf, for freight traffic.

Only the eight blue express tractors (Blue Brabanters), six from Beyer, Peacock, two from Hohenzollern, with their 2C-coupled running gear and inner cylinders, acquired from 1908 onwards, were a new type for the Netherlands. They became a model for a similar type of superheated steam used by the SS .

For local traffic, the NBDS had a large number of two-axle compartment cars. For the international express trains that she is transporting in transit, she only provided the luggage vans.

Since primarily oilseeds were transported in freight transport , the proportion of closed two-axle freight wagons predominated. NBDS had a number of its own and private refrigerated trucks specially set up for margarine transport in Germany .

Passenger volume

• 1877: 189,560 travelers
• 1887: 312,882 travelers
• 1897: 486,524 travelers
• 1907: 803,916 travelers
• 1913: 876,213 travelers

literature

• Hans-Paul Höpfner: Railways. Your story on the Lower Rhine . Mercator, Duisburg 1986, ISBN 3-87463-132-X .
• Vincent Freriks, Hans Schlieper: De Noord-Brabantsch-Duitsche Spoorweg-Maatschappij, de Vlissinger Postroute . Uquilair, Rosmalen 2008 ISBN 978-90-71513-65-7 (in Dutch)
• Michael Lehmann: The “Blue Brabant”. The history of the Boxteler Bahn . Guntlisbergen, Uedem 1998 ISBN 3-9802229-4-2
• Hans Schlieper, Vincent Freriks: The Boxteler Bahn. The North Brabant German Railway Company and the International Vlissinger Postal Route. German Society for Railway History, DGEG, Werl 2014 ISBN 978-3-937189-79-6
• Andreas Waldera: Out and about on the Boxteler Bahn-Radweg . BoD , Norderstedt 2012 ISBN 978-3-8482-0580-6

Web links

Commons : Boxteler Bahn  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Wikisource: Agreement between the German Empire and the Netherlands regarding the construction of a railway from Boxtel via Gennep to Cleve and Wesel. August 18, 1871.  - Sources and full texts

Wikisource: Amendment to the agreement between the German Empire and the Netherlands regarding the construction of a railway from Boxtel via Gennep to Cleve and Wesel. Dated November 13, 1874.  - Sources and full texts

• To the railway, private homepage (bilingual D, NL selectable)
• Website about the Boxteler Bahn
• Duits lijntje (Dutch)
• Description of route 2515 : Büderich ↔ Hassum
• Rijksdienst voor het Cultureel Erfgoed: Waterlopen

Individual evidence

1. ↑ [1] ; Het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden in de Tweede Wereldoorlog (Volume 3), page 75
2. ↑ see Wolfgang Sawodny: Die Panzerzüge des Deutschen Reiches 1899-1945 , ISBN 3882556781
3. ↑ http://www.zuidfront-holland1940.nl/index.php?page=maaslinie www.zuidfront-holland1940.nl
4. ^ Monument in the Google aerial photo