Braunschweigische Landes-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft
The Braunschweigische Landes-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BLE) was a railway company in the Duchy of Braunschweig .
It was founded on June 27, 1884 by the Frankfurt banking houses Erlanger & Söhne and the Sulzbach brothers with the aim of building and operating railways of minor importance in the Duchy of Braunschweig and the neighboring areas.
The Braunschweigische Landes-Eisenbahn is not identical to the Braunschweigische Staatsbahn and the Braunschweigische Eisenbahngesellschaft , which no longer existed when the BLE was founded.
history
In the two decades since it was founded, standard gauge lines with a total length of 108 kilometers have been built. They served, on the one hand, to connect around fifty commercial businesses and around one hundred warehouses in the Braunschweig area through a circular railway, and, on the other hand, to develop agricultural areas around the royal seat as far as the Harz foreland. In this area, the transport of potash that was mined there also played an important role for the railroad until the 1920s .
The starting point of the Braunschweig – Derneburg railway , the first BLE line, was the Braunschweig Nord train station from July 18, 1886, where the administration and operations center were also located. From here it led south via Braunschweig West (Wilhelmithor) to Hoheweg, where from October 17, 1886 a 4 km long branch line branched off to Wolfenbüttel . The main line turned west and reached Derneburg station on the Hildesheim – Goslar line via Lichtenberg and Osterlinde in the later industrial area of Salzgitter .
In the following years, the Derneburg – Seesen railway from Derneburg - swiveling back south - reached Bockenem on May 27, 1887 , Groß Rhüden on October 1, 1887 and finally on May 1, 1889 the Seesen junction . There was now a break of around a decade before the northern line was built. During this time, short connecting routes - sometimes only for freight traffic - supplemented the existing network: on September 1, 1886 from Braunschweig Westbahnhof to the main train station, as well as on January 1, 1890 in Seesen and on September 20, 1890 in Wolfenbüttel from the respective BLE train station to the state train station .
On November 11, 1901, the route from the North Station via Gliesmarode (West) to Gliesmarode Ost, where the newly opened Braunschweig-Schöninger Railway (BSE) began, was initially put into operation for freight traffic, and from February 15, 1902 also for the Passenger traffic, whereby the trains of the BSE also started and ended at the north station of the BLE in the beginning.
In Gliesmarode the Schuntertalbahn branched off , which established the connection to the Lehrter Bahn . It was in operation from August 31, 1902 to Brunsrode-Flechtorf and from November 1, 1904 to Fallersleben BLE. This end point, like two sections of the route near Derneburg and Bockenem, was not in Brunswick, but in Prussia, where a total of 36 km - one third of the total length - was.
The importance of the railway can also be seen in the number of steam locomotives, which were always around 25, while there was only one benzene railcar. From December 1, 1927, two bus routes supplemented the passenger service.
About ten years later, the independent railway company came to an end. The construction of an extensive industrial area in the Salzgitter area required a fundamental change and expansion of the local rail network. The Reich government wanted to transfer this task to the State Railways. The BLE was incorporated into the Deutsche Reichsbahn on January 1, 1938 , which rebuilt or closed some of the lines.
Vehicle fleet
In 1936 the BLE owned 26 steam locomotives, 2 railcars, 49 passenger cars, 12 baggage cars and 725 freight cars.
| BLE number | DR series | Wheel alignment | annotation |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 ... 28 | 89 7531-7540 | C n2t | Prussian T 3 |
| 7-10 | B n2t | ||
| 3 II , 5 II , 9 II , 29 | 53 7001-7004 | C n2v | Prussian G 4.2 , taken over by the Reichsbahn in 1922 |
| 30th | 92 1081 | D n2t | 1948: Work locomotive AW Paderborn No. 805.80 / 1 |
| 31 | 92 421 | D h2t | |
| 32 and 33 | 91 201-202 | 1'C h2t | ELNA type 5 |
| 34 | 89 7541 | C n2t | Prussian T 3 |
| 35 and 37 | C h2t | Prussian T 8 | |
| 36, 39 to 43 | 91 131-136 | 1'C n2t | Prussian T 9.2 , taken over by the Reichsbahn in 1929/1930 |
| 38 | unoccupied | ||
| 44 | 79 001 II | 1'D1 'h2t | |
| 45 to 49 | 75 601-605 | 1'C1 'h2t | |
| T1 | 137 237 | (1A) (A1) | |
| T2 | 137 238a | 2'2 '+ A1A + 2'2' |
literature
- Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways. Volume 11: Lower Saxony 3 - South of the Mittelland Canal. EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-88255-670-4 .
- Christopher Wulfgramm: The Braunschweigische Landes-Eisenbahn. EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-8446-6409-6 .