Reichsbahndirektion Karlsruhe

The Reichsbahndirektion Karlsruhe was an administrative district of the Deutsche Reichsbahn , and successor to the management of the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways .

The area of ​​this Reichsbahndirektion extended, with the exception of the extreme northeast, over the entire state of Baden from the lower Neckar along the Upper and High Rhine to Lake Constance and also included the southern Black Forest .

Significant routes within the management were:

• the Badische Hauptbahn : Mannheim / Heidelberg - Karlsruhe - Offenburg - Freiburg - Basel - ( Switzerland - Italy )
• the continuation along the High Rhine via Schaffhausen (Switzerland) to Singen (Hohentwiel) - Radolfzell (- Friedrichshafen )
• the Baden Black Forest Railway : Offenburg - Villingen - Singen (Hohentwiel) (- Konstanz )
• the routes from Heidelberg to Heilbronn : via Eberbach ( Neckartalbahn ) and via Meckesheim
• the routes from Karlsruhe to Eppingen - (Heilbronn) and to ( Stuttgart ) via Bretten or Pforzheim

Branch lines:

• Narrow gauge line from Mosbach to Mudau ( Odenwaldexpress )

Lake Constance shipping:

• After the transfer of the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways to the Reich, the Railway General Directorate in Karlsruhe continued to supervise the ship operation of the former Grand Ducal Baden Bodenseedampfschiffahrt . From 1930 the Reichsbahn-Maschinenamt Konstanz of the Reichsbahndirektion Karlsruhe is responsible for the Baden Reichsbahnschiffe on Lake Constance.

After the Second World War , Baden , and with it the area of ​​the Reichsbahndirektion Karlsruhe, was divided as a result of the zoning south of Karlsruhe . The northern part of the state up to and including the Karlsruhe district now belonged to the newly formed state of Württemberg-Baden in the US occupation zone , the southern part of the state including the Rastatt district formed the new state of Baden (southern Baden) as part of the French zone . In order to adapt to these political administrative structures, the routes and offices of the Reichsbahndirektion Karlsruhe in Württemberg-Baden (thus also Karlsruhe itself) were transferred to the Reichsbahndirektion Stuttgart , while those in the French-occupied new state of Württemberg-Hohenzollern and in the Bavarian district of Lindau came from the Reichsbahndirektion Stuttgart and Augsburg come under the jurisdiction of the authority now called the Karlsruhe Railway Directorate. The lines on the left bank of the Rhine (in the Palatinate ) were finally handed over to the Mainz Railway Directorate. The overall administration of the railroad divisions in the French zone ("Karlsruhe", Mainz and Saarbrücken or Trier ) was initially combined in the head office of the German railways in the French-occupied zone , and from 1947 in the Association of Southwest German Railways (SWED) in Speyer . After the SWED was dissolved and fully integrated into the Deutsche Bundesbahn in 1952, the boundaries of what was now the Karlsruhe Federal Railway Directorate were moved back to the Stuttgart and Augsburg Federal Railway Directorate in 1953. The Karlsruhe Directorate only regained responsibility in the Palatinate after the Mainz Federal Railway Directorate was dissolved in 1971.

Map:

• Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft: Map of the REICHSBAHNDIREKTION KARLSRUHE district - as of November 1, 1930 .

Web links

• Map of the RBD Karlsruhe issued by the Reich Ministry of Transport, status February 1938
• Railway directorate in Karlsruhe Timetable: Establishments - designations - dissolutions