Ettlinger Seitenbahn

Ettlingen West – Ettlingen city
Route number (DB) :	9422
Course book section (DB) :	1939 and 1966: 311a 1944: 305a
Route length:	2.27 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Route class :	D4
Power system :	750 volts  =
Power system :	15 kV 16.7 Hz  ~
Maximum slope :	8.35  ‰
Legend from Mannheim 0.000 Ettlingen West (formerly Ettlingen Staatsbahn, Ettlingen Reichsbahn) to Basel 0.120 Parking facility Ettlingen West ( Bft ) 0.388 Diesel road 0.558 Goethestrasse 0.826 Karl-Friedrich-Strasse Former siding from the Elba company 1.158 Schleinkoferstrasse 1.200 from Karlsruhe 1.700 Ettlingen Hereditary Prince / Castle (formerly Ettlingen Hereditary Prince) 2.270 Ettlingen City (formerly Ettlingen Holzhof) to Bad Herrenalb

The Ettlinger Seitenbahn is a 2.27 kilometer long railway line in Baden-Württemberg . The standard-gauge , single-track and electrified branch line has been operated by the Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft (AVG) since April 1, 1957 and connects the Mannheim – Basel railway with the Albtalbahn . It runs along its entire length in the Ettlingen city ​​area and today no longer has any scheduled local rail transport .

history

opening

In the course of the construction of the Baden Main Railway by the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways , Ettlingen received only one peripheral station in 1844 , about three kilometers from the town. Since this could not satisfy the traffic needs in the course of advancing industrialization , Ettlingen finally tried in 1884 to build a branch line . However, the state railway showed no interest in such a side line , which is why the city itself, as the future owner of the private railway, applied for the concession , which was granted by the Grand Duchy of Baden on April 11, 1885 .

The line initially leading from Ettlinger Staatsbahnhof, later the Reichsbahnhof and today's Westbahnhof, to the Hotel Erbprinz was 1.70 kilometers long and was officially inspected on August 6, 1885 . The inauguration was actually planned for August 19, 1885, but had to be postponed because work on the platform hall and platform had not yet been completed . The official opening finally took place on Sunday, August 25, 1885, and the route was regularly used from the following day. On July 15, 1887, the 0.57 kilometer long extension to Ettlingen Holzhof station, today's Ettlingen Stadt station, followed . With the extension, the temporary terminal station Erbprinz was degraded to a stop and now only functions as a station part of the neighboring Ettlingen Stadt station.

The construction costs for the entire route amounted to 112,300 marks, the operations management on the side line was initially taken over by the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways with two locomotives of the Baden class I d . The wet steam tank locomotives had the unusual 1A wheel arrangement and were specially built for use on the Ettlinger line. Initially, 17 pairs of trains ran daily , including both feeder trains to Ettlingen State Station and through trains to Karlsruhe Central Station , the latter in the area of ​​the main line for the account of the State Railroad. Initially, the Ettlinger Seitenbahn only carried people, loads, luggage and dogs.

Supplemented by the Albtalbahn

The route at Ettlinger Schloss , in this area it already runs together with the Albtalbahn

In view of the growing rush hour between Ettlingen and Karlsruhe, an expansion of the train service between the two cities was not possible due to the limited capacities on the Baden main line. Therefore, the West German Railway Company (WeEG) opened the meter gauge Albtalbahn on December 1, 1897 and also took over the Ettlinger Seitenbahn. From December 31, 1898, the WeEG subsidiary Badische Lokal-Eisenbahnen (BLEAG), founded a few weeks earlier, was responsible for both routes . In connection with the construction of the Albtalbahn, the Ettlinger Seitenbahn received a three- rail track and was electrified with 550 volts direct current in 1903, whereby it was operated with single-phase alternating current 8800 volts 25  Hz from August 29, 1911 .

As a result of the direct connection via Rüppurr , the side line, which from January 1, 1932 belonged to the German Railway Operating Company (DEBG) analogously to the Alb Valley Railway , increasingly lost its importance. In the process of gauging the Albtalbahn to standard gauge accounted initially the additional meter gauge track in 1958, on May 21, 1966 ended the regular passenger and the track lost its top line . Independently of this, the Ulmer Eisenbahnfreunde (UEF) began in the 1970s to use the side line with historic steam trains on a few days a year.

Renewed electrification

It was only with the establishment of the Karlsruhe light rail network that the Ettlingen side railway gained in importance again. So that the two-system light rail vehicles of the Albtal-Verkehrs-Gesellschaft used in the region could reach their main workshop in Ettlingen on their own from the start, the line was electrified again with direct current in 1991, the voltage this time being 750 volts. The system separation point for the AC contact line of the Deutsche Bahn AG is located directly at the Ettlingen West train station. As a by-product of the renewed electrification, a Sunday excursion train called the Albtal Express ran from Menzingen via Karlsruhe main station and Ettlingen West to Bad Herrenalb until September 20, 1998 , with two-system cars of the types GT8-100C / 2S and GT8-100D / 2S-M were used.

Today, the line is operated in train detection mode, with both terminus stations being train detection points. The Ettlingen West parking area is controlled by an MCDS electronic interlocking in Ettlingen Stadt.

literature

• Helmut Iffländer, Bavarian Railway Museum (Nördlingen): The Alb Valley Railway : from the tourist train to the modern local transport company . Braun, Munich 1987, ISBN 3-925120-03-3 , pp. 26-31, 55, 89, 96 .

Web links

• The Ettlingen West - Ettlingen Stadt route on www.vergessene-bahnen.de, accessed on February 15, 2020

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Albtalbahn on albert-gieseler.de, accessed on February 19, 2020
2. ↑ bahnstatistik.de
3. ^ Günter König: The electrical operation on the Albtalbahn in narrow gauge . In: Die Museums-Eisenbahn , edition 3/1992, p. 21