Breslau-Schweidnitz-Freiburg Railway
The Breslau-Schweidnitz-Freiburg Railway Company (BSF) was a railway company in Prussia . It was founded in Wroclaw in 1841 and, until its nationalization in 1884, grew into an important transport company with a rail network of 600 km in length.
history
The starting point for the first route was the Freiburg train station in Breslau, the capital of the Prussian province of Silesia . From October 29, 1843, it was possible to drive from here in a south-westerly direction to the small town of Freiburg in Silesia (58 km) at the foot of the Owl Mountains .
From the intermediate station Königszelt branched off on July 21, 1844 a 10 km long branch line to the important district town of Schweidnitz . The main line did not reach Altwasser station (70 km) in the Waldenburg coal district until March 1, 1853 with a freight track to Wrangelschacht, while the branch line was extended to Reichenbach on November 24, 1855 and to Frankenstein on November 1, 1858 , and thus 50 km included.
Because further construction in the south was made more difficult by the Upper Silesian Railway Company , whose plans the state preferred, the focus was placed on the expansion to the north. From December 16, 1856, a 47 km long branch line ran from Königszelt via Striegau and Jauer to Liegnitz , the seat of a district government. Already on October 1, 1871, the Liegnitz - Raudten - Glogau route was added with a length of almost 130 km , which then followed the Oder downhill to Rothenburg an der Oder . From there, on May 15, 1877, the capital of the Pomerania province, the port city of Stettin on the Baltic Sea, was reached in a few years . This 188 km long line was put into operation on May 1, 1874 to Reppen , on January 2, 1875 to Küstrin-Neustadt and on November 16, 1876 to Königsberg in the Neumark and had crossed three Prussian provinces.
Then there was a longer break in the building activity, until after the establishment of the empire in the 1870s the BSF network of around 145 km in length almost quadrupled when it increased by a further 435 km z. T. grew beyond the borders of the province of Silesia.
The opening of the Breslau - Raudten line (75 km) via Wohlau on August 1, 1874, significantly shortened the route from Breslau to Glogau. The freight line was economically interesting as a coal railway for the transport of coal and as a supply for Swedish ore to Upper Silesia. The completion of the network brought about the difficult construction of the last BSF line from Nieder Salzbrunn in the Waldenburger Bergland via Fellhammer to Halbstadt in Böhmen (33 km), where there was a connection to the route network of the Austro-Hungarian State Railroad Company (StEG) , which was difficult due to the steep gradients . This connection started operating on May 15, 1877.
literature
- Heinz Jochen Kuhnt: Breslau-Schweidnitz-Freiburg Railway Company: Foundation. Planning, construction, opening and initial operation of the railway lines Breslau – Königszelt – Freiburg, Königszelt – Schweidnitz and Königszelt – Liegnitz. Nationalization. In: Groß Rosener series of publications. Local history from Silesian Burgenland No. 22. Altenmedingen 2011.
- Stephan Kaiser: Railway node Königszelt: Contributions to the Silesian traffic history. Haus Oberschlesien Foundation, Ratingen 2014 (publications of the Haus Oberschlesien Foundation, regional history series, 17 - 48 pages, illustrations).
