Ebeltoft – Trustrup railway line
| Ebeltoft – Trustrup | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Locomotive No. 1 on delivery
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| Route length: | 23 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Ebeltoft – Trustrup railway was a Danish branch line on the Jutland peninsula . It was operated by the private railway company Ebeltoft – Trustrup – Jernbane (ETJ) and was in operation from 1901 to 1968.
Route and operation
The line branched off from the state railway in Trustrup and ran over a length of 22.5 kilometers to Ebeltoft . It was opened on March 26, 1901 and brought Ebeltoft the long-awaited connection to the railway network. The port of Ebeltoft was only connected about a year later. There were no larger engineering structures.
For the ETJ, two butt-ending tracks with a separate platform were laid in Trustrup at the state railway station. There was also a small storage hall. In Ebeltoft, at the other end of the line, a locomotive shed with a workshop was built. There were short turntables at both ends of the route .
In Denmark, the term private railway denotes a railway line that, although not owned by DSB, is predominantly owned by the state. The ETJ was a stock corporation in which the state is said to have held 50% and the neighboring municipalities to 41%. Only 9% of the shares are said to have been in free float. The total investment volume amounted to 1,016,612 Danish kroner and was used up through the sale of shares and stakes in the neighboring communities. A respectable profit was made every year until around 1920, after which the earnings situation was rather changeable. The number of employees was initially around 25, from the 1930s until the end of the company only around 15.
Initially, three pairs of trains were driven daily. Freight traffic took place on a large scale; in the first year alone, the railway already carried 10,000 tons. The cargo was mainly lime and gravel, as there were gravel pits in Balle and Rosmus along the way. Because of the poorly developed roads in this area, the railway was welcomed by the neighboring industrial companies. In addition, coal, animal feed, fertilizer, grain and wood were transported.
Since savings were made in the construction of the line and cheap material was used, more than 70% of the sleepers had to be replaced by 1923.
From 1924, in consultation with the DSB, an evening train could run to Grenaa and back.
vehicles
The ordered vehicles could not be delivered on time, so locomotives had to be borrowed for the opening. It was not until a few months later that Maschinenfabrik A / S Vulcan in Maribo delivered three steam locomotives with a 1B wheel arrangement. Locomotive No. 1 was in operation until 1957 and was sold for a scrap price of 5,100 kroner. In 1925 a triangle railcar was bought, so that for the first time it was operated by one person and an additional evening train could be added to the timetable. In 1931, the Folketing passed a law under which private railways could receive state aid for modernization. Ebeltoft-Trustrup-Jernbane received 375,000 crowns, which were invested in another steam locomotive and two railcars.
In 1933, the purchase of 50 new freight cars overstrained the railway company's financial resources. The wrong business decision had to be compensated for by reducing the wages of all employees by five percent. 34 of the recently acquired freight cars were sold. In 1934 the company was close to bankruptcy . The number of passengers fell while freight traffic increased slightly.
After the war, only used vehicles were purchased, mainly motor coaches from the companies Triangel and Scandia , which were 20 years or older at the time of purchase. In 1950 another diesel locomotive and in 1952 a railcar were bought.
From World War II to closure
During the German occupation of Denmark from 1940, two motor vehicles were equipped with wood gas generators due to a lack of fuel . The construction of a military airfield by the occupying forces in Tirstrup from 1943 (today Aarhus Airport ) temporarily brought so much freight traffic to the railway that additional locomotives had to be borrowed from DSB. Starting in 1944, Gravlev began to lay a siding to the airfield. It was supposed to have a length of a little more than half a kilometer, but was no longer completed and dismantled after the war without ever going into operation.
After the war, the competition from bus routes and private car traffic became increasingly noticeable. With the beginning of motorization, the number of passengers continued to fall. Only the freight traffic justified the continued operation of the route. In 1957 the last steam locomotives were shut down. From then on, passenger traffic was only carried out with railcars, goods traffic with diesel locomotives.
When goods traffic decreased sharply from 1962, the end was in sight. In the last two years of operation, the annual accounts ended with a loss of about 300,000 crowns. At an extraordinary general assembly on January 26, 1967, the closure was decided and completed on March 31, 1968.
The route today
Hardly anything can be seen of the route. The tracks and sleepers have been completely removed everywhere. The once large, imposing station building in Ebeltoft at the lower end of Jernbanegade was demolished. A large parking lot, an information office for tourists and a post office were built in place of the train station and the tracks. The post office is now closed again.
The remaining station buildings along the route have been sold and are used as residential buildings. An approximately eight-kilometer stretch of the route from the eastern exit of Ebeltoft to Gravlev has now been prepared as a cycle and footpath ( Natursti Ebeltoft – Gravlev ).
Web links
- Ebeltoft - Trustrup Jernbane at jernbanen.dk (Danish)
- Ebeltoft – Trustrup Jernbane. (No longer available online.) In: toptop.dk. Archived from the original on March 3, 2016 ; Retrieved September 17, 2017 (Danish).
- Bent Klim Johansen: ETJ - Ebeltoft Trustrup Jernbane. www.8570.dk/lokalhistorie/trustrup, accessed on June 5, 2016 (Danish).