Railway archeology

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Track remains of the tram route from Krefeld to Moers on Schaltbruchweg in Kapellen
Remnants of the track of the Liebensteiner Bahn rediscovered during construction work at the Bad Liebenstein exit
Remnants of track in Essen-Rüttenscheid that have been prepared as a museum to commemorate the former train station there ( industrial wasteland in the background)

Railway archeology is the search for and documentation of structural remains of disused railway systems , i.e. the routes and tracks including all associated structures. The search specifically for track systems (including those of trams ) is also called track archeology . Railway archeology is primarily pursued as a hobby by railway enthusiasts. It is a sub-area of industrial archeology , but is currently not recognized by archaeologists as an independent archeology category.

background

In the middle of the 20th century, there was a gradual transition from rail, the predominant means of transport at the time, to individual transport . As a result, many railway lines were shut down or even given up completely. The switch from trams to subways, which has been carried out in many cities , has also contributed to the closure of track systems.

Many railway lines are either completely dismantled after their abandonment or, for example - while continuing to use the embankment - converted into cycle paths . However, some are left at least in parts of nature or - if they run in or cross the road space - just overcharged. Railway archeology includes the search for such remains. You are not limited to the tracks , but also include catenary masts , railway embankments, buildings such as train stations and signal boxes and all other components of the former railway system .

method

With newer track remnants, which nowadays z. If, for example, a tram line is switched to underground operation, no major effort is normally required to find the relevant points. If a railway line was abandoned several decades ago, the search is usually more difficult. Old line plans and maps are then important aids. In this context, aerial photos are also gaining in importance, which are now available to a broader public through online offers such as GoogleEarth . Even stretches that were never completed are the subject of the investigation.

If the former course of a disused route is known at least in general, the search for the remains can be started. This is usually done by hiking the route on foot or by bike. In urban areas in particular, the search is often made more difficult by the structural changes that have been made over time.

France

In France there have been private initiatives for a number of years with the aim of covering large parts of the former rail network. The investigations focus on tunnels and bridges in particular.

The French railway network reached its greatest extent in the 1920s and grew to around 63,000 kilometers. In the 1930s, this close-knit railway network showed a deficit in passenger traffic in many parts of the country. When the newly founded SNCF took over the large private railway companies in 1938 and 1939, the first major turning point in the operation of the regular-gauge railway lines occurred. Passenger traffic was discontinued on a route length of 9,020 km. Some of the affected routes still exist today, but have very sporadic traffic. Parts of these lines only exist to serve a few sidings to grain silos or other companies. Most of the infrastructure has been dismantled to only meet the current freight volume. At the same time, the extensive and largely non-nationalized narrow-gauge network shrank at a rapid pace from the mid-1940s and had almost completely disappeared by the early 1960s. This early extinction of a railway network several thousand kilometers long represents a major challenge in railway archeology. Many of the narrow-gauge railways in question were built under simple conditions, often on the edge of existing roads, and after the traffic has ceased, road works and the general expansion of the Road network disappeared. Structures that used to be visible from afar - the dams, embankments or land cuts have visibly disappeared from the surface in the decades that followed. Finding these old routes and following the old lines is therefore a great challenge for railway archaeologists. It is not uncommon for the only remaining and still visible signs of a railway line to be the station buildings that have remained in the town center. Due to a reallocation of the land, through development and incorporation into agricultural areas, it is largely impossible to follow the former course of these lines.

The Association Chemins à Fer launched two particularly comprehensive initiatives to record railway structures. In the years 2008 - 2011, an inventory of all French railway tunnels was made with volunteers, at the end of which more than 2,900 tunnels were recorded and compiled in a database. Since then, this database has been kept up to date with current photos of the current state of the tunnels. However, not all tunnels have photos yet.

This was followed by the continuation of the Association Chemins à Fer in 2018. This is about the recording of all bridges and viaducts. Due to the huge scope (there are an estimated 120,000 bridges and viaducts), the project was reduced to the most important structures. A compilation of all destroyed bridges is now being built, i.e. those that are only damaged and only partially in place or that have been completely removed. Here z. For example, bridges destroyed by wars are not recorded if they have been repaired and rebuilt true to the original.

Another important contribution to recording the French railways is the digital "Atlas des lignes de chemins de fer disparues" (see links below). With the help of old road maps and historical aerial photographs, all railway lines were drawn here and prepared for integration into digital maps. The recording also goes as far as taking into account those lines that were never completed (however, construction has started).

Web links