The Rhine (locomotive)

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Concordia (# 69) .. The Rhine (# 205)
Numbering: Serial number 205
Number: 1
Manufacturer: Aktiengesellschaft Maschinenfabrik Carlsruhe
Year of construction (s): 1852
Axis formula : 1B
Gauge : 1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Total wheelbase: 3126 mm
Driving wheel diameter: 1372 mm
Number of cylinders: 2
Cylinder diameter: 406 mm
Piston stroke: 610 mm
Cup length: 4080 mm
Boiler overpressure: 5.48 atm (5.37 bar)

The Rhine is a steam locomotive that has been lying on the bottom of the eponymous river near Germersheim since 1852 . It is considered to be the oldest undestroyed steam locomotive in Germany. It is not known where the locomotive is today. A rescue planned for 2018 did not take place because the locomotive was not found.

Construction and data of the locomotive

The locomotive was built in 1851/52 by Emil Keßler's Aktiengesellschaft Maschinenfabrik Carlsruhe , the client was the Düsseldorf-Elberfelder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . The locomotive was supposed to replace the "RHEIN" locomotive, which was run under road number 2 and was built by John Cockerill in 1838 and had not been in regular service since 1848.

Since there is no data sheet for the Rhine , the research team uses the information from Concordia as an alternative . It was also built by Keßler in 1847 as the first of a series of locomotives for the same client. According to this, the Rhine would be about 6 meters long and weighing about 20 tons if the wheel arrangement 1B and the boiler had a diameter of 99.4 centimeters and a length of a little more than four meters.

history

Sinking and first rescue attempts

After completion, the machine was loaded onto the freighter Stadt Coblentz in order to transport it down the Rhine to its destination Deutz . On February 14, 1852 the ship got caught in a storm near Germersheim . After the freighter had passed the then very narrow, but very deep, Rheinsheim breakthrough, it collided in a section with a considerable current with a machine dam built to protect the district of Mechtersheim . The locomotive overturned and went overboard. At that time, the depth of the Rhine was given as 50 Baden feet (15 meters) for the place of sinking .

A rescue attempt was made in March. For this purpose, chains were placed on the river bed, which were pulled under the rail vehicle by the pulling force of around 100 men on both banks and with the help of the current. After several chains had been laid in this way, the locomotive was lifted using two jack-up ships. Repeatedly it was possible to lift the machine a considerable distance. But this kept slipping out of the chains and sank a little closer to the Baden bank, again to the bottom of the river. In the new location it was now only 30 feet (9 meters) deep; but the current was stronger at this point.

Since it was not possible to lay chains under the locomotive again, they should be attached by divers . However, two divers who had come from England could not descend to the locomotive because of the strong current. Finally, the "Rheinische Assekuranz-Gesellschaft" stopped attempting to rescue the machine and at the end of May 1852 paid the Kessler machine factory the sum insured of 25,000 guilders (this corresponds to around EUR 320,000 today).

As a result, the exact location of the machine was forgotten. An attempt by an entrepreneur in 1925 to locate and lift the locomotive in order to present it at the German Transport Exhibition in Munich was unsuccessful.

Searching for the locomotive again from 1992 to 2018

Since Horst Müller , a locomotive driver from Cochem , became interested in the fate of the locomotive in the 1960s, a research project was started in 1992 in collaboration with the Hessian Railway Museum in Darmstadt-Kranichstein with the aim of locating the machine and possibly recovering it. In addition to Müller, the management group consists of Uwe Breitmeyer and Volker Jenderny from the museum and the geophysicist Bernhard Forkmann from the TU Freiberg .

View over the Rhine near Germersheim , the location of the search in 2018 ( 49 ° 14 ′ 35 ″  N , 8 ° 23 ′ 50 ″  E ) is on the opposite bank on the right edge of the picture

Since the files are poor and the sources were partly contradicting, it was not until the 2010s that the rediscovered original documents and maps of the Speyer Road and River Construction Office, which was closed in 1970, enabled the search for the machine to be intensified. The first echo sounder measurements were made in June 2015, and an object discovered during a search by divers turned out to be a collection of boulders near the shore. New measurements with a ground penetrating radar took place in March 2016. According to the researchers, the locomotive should be located in the area of ​​a groyne a little north of the approach to the Germersheimer Rheinhafen at a water depth of a good two meters under a five-meter-thick layer of gravel . The rescue should take place on October 21, 2018.

The SWR television has the locomotive four consecutive consequences of the series Eisenbahn-Romantik dedicated.

After the gravel was excavated at the designated location in autumn 2018 and the locomotive was not found, the recovery of the locomotive was declared to have failed on October 2, 2018.

See also

literature

  • Uwe Breitmeyer, Bernhard Forkmann, Volker Jenderny, Horst Müller: Locomotive in the Rhine or the locomotive that is awakened from its slumber . Herdam-Verlag, Gernrode 2017, ISBN 978-3-933178-38-1 .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ After the sinking of the locomotive, there were no major changes in the river landscape due to construction work in the area of ​​the accident site, as the straightening of the Rhine in the Germersheim area , which Johann Gottfried Tulla had begun, had already been completed in 1833 (see Elisabethenwörth ).

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Together we lift the locomotive. www.lok-jaeger.de, 2018, accessed on August 3, 2018 .
  2. ↑ Max Sprick: The iron body that lets life's dreams burst . In: sueddeutsche.de . 2018, ISSN  0174-4917 ( sueddeutsche.de [accessed October 2, 2018]).
  3. ↑ a b Christopher Drose: 10 questions and answers about the "Rhein" locomotive. Information on the SWR website , April 17, 2018, accessed on the same day.
  4. ^ Karlsruher Zeitung, February 20 and March 14, 1852; Westricher Zeitung (Kusel), March 2, 1852; Pfälzer Zeitung, March 12, 1852.
  5. ↑ Karlsruher Zeitung, March 23, 1852; Pfälzer Zeitung, March 24, 1852.
  6. ^ Mannheimer Journal, April 1, 1852; Pfälzer Zeitung, April 1, 1852; Karlsruher Zeitung, April 2, 1852.
  7. ↑ This number is intended to give a rough idea of ​​today's value. A southern German Gulden corresponded in 1876 in the demonetization 1 5 / 7 Mark, d. H. 25,000 guilders corresponded to about 43,000 marks. Under the assumption that this value ratio was still approximately true in 1882, the EUR value was determined using the template (currently only applicable from 1882) : inflation and rounded to 1000 EUR; it refers to January 2020.
  8. ↑ Pfälzer Zeitung, May 28, 1852.
  9. ↑ Interactive timeline on the history of the locomotive on the SWR website, accessed on April 14, 2018.
  10. ↑ Christopher Drose: These are the locomotive hunters. Information on the SWR website, April 9, 2018, accessed on April 17, 2018.
  11. ↑ Interview with Müller and Forkmann as part of the Rhineland-Palatinate state show, from minute 5:50, accessed on April 17, 2018.
  12. ↑ a b These programs run on SWR television about the locomotive. Information on the SWR website of April 9, 2018, accessed on April 17, 2018.
  13. ↑ Tim Niendorf: The riddle of the sunken steam locomotive. Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung , August 3, 2018, accessed on September 13, 2018 .
  14. ↑ Search for sunken locomotive in the Rhine failed. www.swr.de, 2018, accessed on October 2, 2018 .