Erft Valley Railway
| Euskirchen – Bad Münstereifel | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Train of the Erft Valley Railway in Bad Münstereifel
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| Route number (DB) : | 2634 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course book section (DB) : | 475 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 14 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route class : | D4 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top speed: | 60 km / h | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Dual track : | - | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Erft Valley Railway is a 14 km long, single-track and non-electrified branch line from Euskirchen to Bad Münstereifel . It is used as a continuation of the Voreifelbahn from Bonn ( KBS 475).
Service offer
The Erfttalbahn is served every hour by the Voreifel-Bahn RB 23. All trains are connected to the S 23 to Bonn Hauptbahnhof. In 2005, the Voreifel Railway was the most punctual line in all of North Rhine-Westphalia.
The operation is carried out by the DB Regio NRW . Until December 2013 according to the diesel contract of the VRS, whereby diesel multiple units of the type Bombardier Talent were used in single to double traction for speeds of up to 120 km / h on the Voreifel-Bahn . However, due to the route, all trains are only allowed to travel a maximum of 60 km / h on the Erft Valley Railway. After another tender (Diesel network Cologne), DB Regio NRW has been operating for a further 20 years since December 2013. Alstom Coradia LINT diesel multiple units are used, and traffic was also expanded at the weekend (later closing time).
The tariff of the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Sieg (VRS) applies as well as the NRW tariff beyond the tariff area .
history
The Erft Valley Railway was built in 1890. During the construction of the line, with the exception of the Kreuzweingarten stop, all operating points were designed as train stations. In 1928 the sugar factory stop was also put into operation. Until around the end of the 1980s, goods were also transported in addition to passenger transport. The Bad Münstereifel terminus had a small freight station where express goods were handled, but also other goods such as B. Wood that came from the surrounding forests. In Arloff there was a private siding to a clay processing factory. Later the freight traffic was switched to trucks and the private track dismantled. In Arloff and Stotzheim, grain delivered by farmers from the surrounding towns was loaded from large silos into freight wagons for onward transport. Trucks are also used for these transports today. At the end of the 1980s, the line was threatened with closure due to the decline in freight and passenger traffic. But she could be saved from that.
At the end of the 1990s, the line was completely dismantled on a track without switches. The train stations became stops . In Iversheim, Bundesstraße 51 was used as a bypass road over the former station area. The dispatcher in Euskirchen is the train manager of the route that is used in train control .
The top speed is 60 km / h, in places less due to track damage or dangerous level crossings. The substructure of the route is sometimes quite unstable. With the exception of an approximately two-kilometer section around Kreuzweingarten, the route has never been worked on by a renovation train, but only by hand or with road-rail excavators . Since the modernization in the 1990s, the rails have been on Y-steel sleepers (except for the section of the renovation train around Kreuzweingarten), which are considered to be particularly low-maintenance. The route is owned by DB Netz and is currently only used by vehicles from DB Regio NRW . The timetable does not allow an additional train during the SPNV operating hours, as there are no more alternative options. There are currently no alternate junctions for freight wagons.
Route description
Euskirchen station
The station Euskirchen (km 34.2) is a railway junction on the up Gerolstein largely two-track and up in the course Ehrang single track Eifelbahn Cologne - Euskirchen -Gerolstein- Trier (KBS 474), from Euskirchen the Voreifelbahn (KBS 475) to Bonn and the Erft Valley Railway (KBS 475) branch off to Bad Münstereifel . On the Bördebahn to Düren, which also branches off here , mainly freight traffic takes place , on Sundays and public holidays there is also passenger traffic.
In rail transport which operate regional express -line RE12 Köln-Euskirchen-Gerolstein-Trier ( Eifel-Mosel-Express ) in the daily two-hour intervals, and the line RE22 Köln Euskirchen -Gerolstein ( Eifel-Express , with through binding to Trier as RB 22) every two hours with densities in rush hour traffic. The regional train line RB 24 ( Eifel-Bahn ) also provides a connection on the Cologne – Euskirchen – Kall / Gerolstein route every hour between Cologne and Kall. There is also a connection to Bonn with the S 23 every half hour and the RB 23 to Bad Münstereifel every hour. Local rail passenger transport is carried out by the DB Regio NRW , which uses diesel multiple units of the DB series 620 and 622 in single to double traction for speeds of up to 120 km / h for the Voreifel-Bahn .
Euskirchen sugar factory stop
This stopping point is at the 1.8 mile directly at the level crossing on Bonner Strasse. It was set up on March 21, 1928 for the workers in the nearby sugar factory and is equipped with a bus shelter. With the timetable change in 2002, the sugar factory station became a demand stop .
Euskirchen-Stotzheim stop
The place Stotzheim has a stop at kilometer 4.4 . The stop, located on the northern edge of the village, right next to K 23 (Jupiterstraße), has the third building since the Erft Valley Railway opened in 1890. The original station building was a modest building with an office, goods shed and ticket issuing office and a sleeping cabin in which a station agent and his wife took turns on duty. In 1914, a service and reception building with an attached goods shed was built, adapted to the needs of the times. The official apartment of the station master, who was obliged to reside there, was on the upper floor. On March 5, 1945, the building was bombed and completely destroyed.
The post-war newly built reception building had another service apartment and a goods shed. In the course of the rationalization measures, the Stotzheim station was subordinated to the Bad Münstereifel station in 1982 . When the DB then dissolved this, both were assigned to Euskirchen station. Today the station building is in private hands. The Halstrick paper factory, located directly behind the station, handled its freight traffic via a siding at the station. In the mid-1990s, the tracks and signals were dismantled in the course of the dismantling of the line to simplified train operations. Since then, Stotzheim has only been a stopping point.
Euskirchen-Kreuzweingarten stop
The Euskirchen- Kreuzweingarten stop was set up on October 1, 1890 and was called Weingarten until 1925 , then Kreuzweingarten until 2014 . In the then built reception building a station employee was on duty.
The stop is on the Erft Valley Railway at km 7.0 and is on the edge of Kreuzweingarten, directly below the large cross on the Hardtberg. The Römerkanal hiking trail from Nettersheim to Cologne leads past it. In the immediate vicinity, the Roman aqueduct crossed the Erft on an aqueduct. Since the construction of the line, only the through track has been in Kreuzweingarten ; other track systems were never needed. The station building is now privately owned.
Bad Münstereifel-Arloff stop
In Arloff there has been a station building at kilometer 8.9 since 1890 . The second station building was opened to the public on February 19, 1955, together with a restaurant.
Arloff station was the second largest on the route after Bad Münstereifel station . Until the mid-1960s, Arloff had four tracks for train crossings, plus a siding from Arloffer Thonwerke. That is why the cars from this factory were usually parked in the station. In the mid-1960s, the Arloff station was closed as an office and subordinated first to Bad Münstereifel station, then to Euskirchen. In the 1970s, the Landhandel Strottkötter set up its warehouse directly opposite the reception building on the former Freiladestrasse. Nevertheless, freight traffic continued to decline, which led to the dismantling of the sidings. In 1998 there was a route renovation with the dismantling of the remaining freight tracks, the station building was sold.
The Arloff station was a junction of the Erft Valley Railway with the Eifel line (Mühlheim-Wichterich-Zülpich-Satzvey-Arloff) from the Euskirchener Kreisbahnen until around 1920 . The former service building of the EKB is still behind the former station building of the DB and is privately owned.
Bad Münstereifel-Iversheim stop
Bad Münstereifel- Iversheim is a train station at the kilometer point 11.0. When the Erft Valley Railway was built, Iversheim received a station building and two tracks. Track 2 had a pull-out track at each end. The switch from the direction of Euskirchen and the pull-out tracks were removed in the 1960s and 1970s, so that platform 2 could only be entered from the direction of Bad Münstereifel. Since the two bridges at the Hettner and Greven drilling machine factory were destroyed in the war, Iversheim station was the end of the line from the end of the war until June 2, 1948, which resulted in an enormous volume of traffic. The locomotives from Euskirchen turned their heads here to be able to drive back. The siding to the drilling machine factory remained in place until Hettner went bankrupt in 1970. In the early 1980s, the second track in Iversheim was removed, and in 1993 Iversheim also lost the siding to the Hettner plant.
With the construction of a bypass road from 1990 to 1993, the dilapidated and in the way of the station building was demolished. Today the bypass runs parallel to the stop. The bypass road could only be built when, in the mid-1980s , the Deutsche Bundesbahn decided not to use a non-level crossing of the Kreisstrasse from Wachendorf, which led to the bypass road to be built. The compromise was a combination of traffic lights and level crossing, which prevented a possible backlog on the tracks.
Bad Münstereifel stop
The Bad Münstereifel station was built and put into operation in 1890 at kilometer 13.8; In 1913 the building was given a platform roof. From 1925 the locomotive was always driven back to Euskirchen in the evenings , which made the locomotive shed superfluous and was therefore torn down. At the end of the war, the train service had to be stopped due to severe war damage. The operability of both the station and the line was not restored until June 2, 1948. The station building was rebuilt and modernized twice (1957 and 1968). Nevertheless, seven years later, passenger traffic was discontinued on weekends from Saturday afternoon. On weekdays through coaches were on the way from Münster (Westf) to Bad Münstereifel on an experimental basis . In parallel to the restriction of passenger traffic on the route, there was also a drastic decline in freight traffic. The track system on the site lay fallow for decades. The station lost its independence in 1982 and was subordinated to the Euskirchen station . Ten years later, the technology in the station was converted to a simplified train operation. Nevertheless, wood was still handled in the station until 1993/94. During track renewal work on the Erfttalbahn in 1998 in Bad Münstereifel station, all switches that branched off the main track (track 1), including the track systems of the former freight station, were removed. Today the area has been de-dedicated and built over. In 2000 the DB AG sold the station building to the community. This restored the original condition of the station building. The health resort administration, the office of the Eifel- und Touristikagentur and a bicycle shop in the goods shed have been located there since 2003.
DB class 215 in Bad Münstereifel in May 1990
Bad Münstereifel reception building
S 23 in Bad Münstereifel
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Web links
- Description of route 2634 in the NRWbahnarchiv by André Joost
- www.erfttalbahn.de - private site
- Map / aerial photo of the route
Individual evidence
- ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
- ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
- ↑ The “Voreifel Railway” is the most reliable train. In: General-Anzeiger . March 1, 2005, accessed November 17, 2019 .