Railways in the Sauerland
The construction of railways in the Sauerland began in 1859 with the Ruhr-Sieg route . As a result, parts of today's Märkisches Kreis and the Olpe district were opened up for rail traffic. Railways branching off from this, such as the Finnentrop – Freudenberg railway line (1874) or the Volmetalbahn, enlarged the network. The area of today's Hochsauerlandkreis was reached by the Upper Ruhr Valley Railway . Various state and private branch and small railways were built until the beginning of the First World War and also opened up remote areas. Numerous routes have been closed in the last few decades. With the reactivation of the Brilon Stadt train station and concrete plans for the reactivation of the Neheim-Hüsten-Sundern railway line in 2011, a new development is indicated.
Bergisch-Märkische Railway Company
Despite the plans dating back to 1833, the Sauerland was opened to rail traffic relatively late. The Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BME), founded in 1843, is of decisive importance for this development . In the 19th century, this company was the second largest (nominally private) railway company in the Kingdom of Prussia and beyond in Germany. In around two decades it created the core of the rail network as it still exists in the Sauerland today.
It all started in 1859 with the Ruhr-Sieg line from Hagen, which had been connected to rail traffic since 1848, to Letmathe near Iserlohn .
This railway line, from which the " Iserlohner Bahn " branched off in Letmathe in 1864 to Iserlohn - at that time "one of the most important factory towns in Westphalia" () - reached Altena in the Lennetal further up in 1860. In 1861, the main part of the Ruhr-Sieg route via Werdohl , Plettenberg , Finnentrop and Altenhundem to the end in Siegen was completed from there.
From Finnentrop, the Biggetal was opened up by the Finnentrop – Freudenberg railway in 1874 to Attendorn and in 1875 to the district town of Olpe . From 1880 Rothemühle was the end of this line in the south of the district.
The industrial city of Lüdenscheid was also opened up from Hagen in 1874 by the Volmetalbahn , which first reached Bruges, then in 1880 the former beetown of the Hanseatic League.
In the 1870s, the BME also opened up the north of the Sauerland with the Upper Ruhr Valley Railway . From Schwerte, the rail line ran in 1870 to the district capital Arnsberg with a branch line from Fröndenberg to Menden opened in 1872. The railway trains could travel along the Ruhr in 1871 to the district town of Meschede, in 1872 to Bestwig and in 1873 beyond the mountain range in the Diemeltal down via Marsberg in the direction of Warburg. The last railway line in the Sauerland, which was still planned by the BME, was put into operation in 1882 from Menden to Hemer and continued in 1885 via the newly built Iserlohn Ostbahnhof to Iserlohn.
When the Prussian transport policy was nationalizing the large private railway companies, the BME could no longer remain independent. At the beginning of 1882 it handed over management to the Prussian State Railroad , which also became the owner on January 1, 1886. The lines were now subordinate to the railway administration in Elberfeld .
State branch lines
It all started with the railway branching off the Ruhr-Sieg route in Altenhundem via Schmallenberg to Fredeburg , which was opened to traffic between 1886 and 1889. In the years 1891/92 the Volmetalbahn was extended from Bruges via Meinerzhagen in the direction of Marienheide and Gummersbach .
After a break in railway construction, the Prussian State Railroad consolidated the rail network in the Sauerland in the period from the turn of the century to the First World War with the following cross-connections: In 1900/01, the town of Brilon , seven kilometers away, was connected from the Brilon Wald station in the Hoppecketal and a connection to the Almetalbahn , which led via Büren to Paderborn . 1902–1908 the cross connection followed from Nuttlar on the Upper Ruhr Valley Railway to Winterberg and further into the Hessian Edertal. In 1903 Olpe received a connection to the west via Drolshagen to Bergneustadt. In 1907, the Olpe – Rothemühle line was extended south towards Freudenberg and Betzdorf . In 1910 Iserlohn received a third railway line , namely from Dortmund via Schwerte ; Furthermore, Oberbrugge was connected to Wipperfürth via Halver andschlag, where there was a junction to Radevormwald . In 1911 the Upper Ruhr Valley Railway and the Ruhr-Sieg Line were connected by the line from Wennemen to Finnentrop ; a branch led from Wenholthausen to Fredeburg, where there had been a connection to Altenhundem since 1889 . In 1914 it was possible to travel from Brilon Wald through the Waldeckische Upland to Korbach and from Altenhundem to Birkelbach near Erndtebrück .
In addition, branch lines ran in the Hönnetal from Menden via Balve to Neuenrade ( Hönnetal-Bahn ) since 1912 and from Plettenberg to Herscheid since 1915 . The Meinerzhagen – Krummenerl line was not built until 1927 under the direction of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
Private and small railways
Despite the efforts of the Prussian State Railways to enlarge and standardize their network by acquiring private railway companies, smaller companies had the opportunity to maintain their independence in the years that followed.
Since 1883, the “Warstein-Lippstadter Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft” has led into the mountainous region from the Hamm – Soest – Lippstadt – Paderborn line, which was put into operation by the Prussian State Railways in 1850 parallel to the ancient “ Hellweg ” trade route north of the Sauerland. After the renaming to Westfälische Landes-Eisenbahn AG , the Brilon Stadt – Soest line was added in 1898/99, which crossed the Warsteiner Bahn in Belecke.
The Altenaer Schmalspur-Eisenbahn (KAS) opened two narrow-gauge railroads from the Ruhr-Sieg route to Lüdenscheid in 1887, the "Rahmedetalbahn" from Altena and the "Versetalbahn" from Werdohl, the last of which was not completed until 1905 from Augustenthal. In 1888 the KAS also put the “Hälvertalbahn” Halver – Schalksmühle into operation.
The Prussian Small Railroad Act of 1892, which considerably simplified and made the construction of small trains and trams much cheaper , brought about a further consolidation of the railway network :
The then still independent town of Neheim became a railway junction (station name: Neheim-Hüsten) when the Ruhr-Lippe-Kleinbahnen built a narrow -gauge railway from here to Soest in 1898 with a branch (1908) to the Möhnesee and in 1907 a three-track line parallel to the main line in the Ruhr Valley to Arnsberg Jägerbrücke put into operation. The routes were later switched to standard gauge; the remaining sections today belong to Regionalverkehr Ruhr-Lippe GmbH (RLG). The third small railway line starting from Neheim via Hüsten was opened in 1900 by the West German Railway Company, the Neheim-Hüsten – Sundern small railway to Sundern.
In the east of the Winterberg plateau, the Steinhelle – Medebach small railway from Steinhelle to the town of Medebach ran from 1902 as another narrow-gauge railway . The two hairpin bends with the help of which the height difference of more than 300 m were overcome were remarkable.
The connection of the city of Plettenberg with many industrial companies to the state train station in the Lennetal was taken care of by the meter-gauge Plettenberg tram from 1896 , which in 1902/03 had branch lines into the side valleys; however, the railway was not electrified in later years.
In the town and district of Iserlohn, an extensive network of small electric trams and trams was built between 1901 and 1927, which also touched the towns of Altena, Hemer and Hohenlimburg. The builder and operator was the Westfälische Kleinbahnen AG, which was called Iserlohner Kreisbahn AG from 1942 after the Iserlohn district had taken over more than 50% of the capital .
Up until the First World War there were specific plans to build further routes or route extensions in the Sauerland. There were plans for routes from Sundern-Allendorf-Finnentrop, Garbeck-Allendorf-Finnentrop and Balve-Sanssouci-Allendorf-Sundern-Kückelheim.
Shutdowns
In the years after the currency reform of 1948, both the Deutsche Bundesbahn and the private railway companies began to thin out passenger traffic on the branch lines and finally to replace them with bus lines. Even the freight traffic that still existed in many cases gradually became a victim of the rationalization efforts. More than half of the rail network became redundant and dismantled. Only freight trains still run on only a few routes today. On December 11, 2011, the branch line from Brilon Wald to Brilon was reopened for passenger traffic. From 1981 to 2011, the route to Brilon- Nehden was only used sporadically for freight traffic.
Today there is only one basic network under the direction of DB Regio NRW and Abellio Rail NRW . The fine distribution of public transport in rural areas is largely the responsibility of bus transport.
literature
- Jürgen Kalitzki, Dieter Tröps: People - Trains - Railway Stations , Volume 1: Railways in the Sauerland: the Ruhr-Sieg route with the railway locations Altenhundem, Grevenbrück, Meggen, Kirchhundem and Finnentrop. Lennestadt 1995, ISBN 3-923483-20-1 .
- Christoph Riedel: Railway in the Sauerland, railways between Ruhr and Sieg . 1st edition. GeraMond Verlag GmbH, Munich 1999, ISBN 3-932785-22-3 , p. 159 .
- Machine and Local History Museum Eslohe (Ed.): Departure 1911 - A journey through time by rail in the Sauerland . 1st edition. Machine and Local History Museum Eslohe, 2010.
- Burkhard Wendel: The Hönnetalbahn and its neighboring railways . Ed .: Eisenbahnfreunde Hönnetal e. V./Bundesbahn-Sozialwerkgruppe Eisenbahnfreunde Obere Ruhrtalbahn. 1st edition. Balve / Arnsberg 1987, ISBN 3-89053-020-6 , p. 216 (213 mainly photographic images in the text and on plates).
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Bernd Sangermann: "We're back here". Train goes to Brilon city. The West, December 11, 2011. Retrieved December 14, 2011.
- ↑ Chances for the Röhrtalbahn confirmed. The West, November 30, 2011
- ↑ Wolf-Dieter Grün: The construction of the Ruhr-Sieg line 140 years ago. In: To Bigge, Lenne and Fretter , Finnentrop 2001, issue 13 a. 14 ( Memento of the original from July 19, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 1.7 MB)
- ↑ Baedeker 1846
- ^ Anton Lübke: The dream of the railway and the Allendorf junction. Sunderner Heimatblätter 19: 21-25.
