Grensland Express

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The Grensland Express at the exit from Bad Bentheim station ...
... and in Hengelo station
Platform-level connection between Westfalenbahn and Grensland Express
Platform for adjusting the platform height in Bad Bentheim

The Grensland-Express ( Dutch for Grenzland -Express ) was a cross-border railway line in local traffic between Bad Bentheim in Germany and Hengelo in the Netherlands . Its operation was closed on December 8, 2013 due to insufficient passenger numbers. The connection has been served by the continuous RB 61 Bielefeld - Osnabrück - Rheine - Bad Bentheim - Hengelo since December 2017 .

prehistory

Since the Gildehaus station was abandoned in the 1950s, only individual long-distance trains have operated on the cross-border section of the Almelo – Salzbergen railway between Bad Bentheim and Oldenzaal. With the abolition of the customs controls previously carried out at the Bad Bentheim and Oldenzaal stations , these trains no longer stopped in Oldenzaal from 1995, which means that this station lost its direct connection to Bad Bentheim.

Since numerous Dutch people also live on the German side and the residents of the border areas traditionally maintain close relationships with the neighboring country, various sides urged the creation of a local transport connection between Oldenzaal and Bad Bentheim. Proposals were made to continue the trains coming from Zutphen and ending in Oldenzaal to Bad Bentheim or Rheine or to drive from the German side with railcars converted for the Dutch traction current system to Oldenzaal or Hengelo. The establishment of a line between Hengelo or Oldenzaal and Nordhorn (via the line of the Bentheimer Railway to be reactivated in passenger traffic ) was also up for debate. While the first mentioned considerations failed due to technical questions, the reactivation of the rail connection to Nordhorn was rejected for reasons of cost.

In November 2009 it became known that a consortium consisting of Bentheimer Eisenbahn AG and Syntus BV had been commissioned by LNVG and the Dutch authorities, Region Twente and Province Overijssel , to offer local trains between Hengelo and Bad Bentheim for an initial period of three years from the timetable change in December 2010.

business

The line ran every hour every day. The trains only stopped in Oldenzaal, but not in Hengelo Oost. A temporarily planned reactivation of the Gildehaus station or the establishment of new breakpoints was also not implemented. A continuation of this connection beyond the end of the trial period in December 2013 was made dependent on sufficient acceptance, for this purpose a number of passengers of at least 600 per day had to be achieved on the cross-border section. The transport contract also stipulated that if the transport were to be re-ordered, an extension to Nordhorn should also be considered. For this reason, the city of Nordhorn also participated financially in the project and, like the city of Bad Bentheim, was a project partner.

There was a direct connection to the regional train to Bielefeld, in Hengelo there were transfer options to various NS and Syntus lines.

Syntus DM '90 railcars were used for the Grensland Express . The parent vehicle (3436) had a special sticker. Since the railcars are adapted to the Dutch standard platform height of 840 mm, special platforms had to be used on the platforms in Bad Bentheim, which were then 380 mm (now 760 mm), which were significantly lower at that time and which were positioned at the exits when the train arrived Departure had to be removed from the platform edge due to the larger clearance profile of the freight trains passing through this station.

In August 2012, instead of the forecast 600, only 250 passengers used the service between Bad Bentheim and Oldenzaal. By October 2013, the project had cost around six million euros since its inception. Due to the insufficient number of passengers on the cross-border section, the train connection was discontinued for the timetable change in December 2013.

Tariff

In addition to single and return tickets (reduced), the Lower Saxony ticket and the Bahncard were also recognized on the Syntus regional trains . There was an additional ticket for bicycles and dogs. Tickets were sold on the train by the train attendants.

Further development

After the Grensland Express could not meet the expectations placed on it, the resumption of local traffic in the Bad Bentheim – Hengelo section was planned for December 2017. In the new tender for the Teutoburg Forest network , the use of dual-system vehicles was required so that the RB 61 Wiehengebirgs-Bahn line of the Eurobahn from Bielefeld can be extended beyond its previous endpoint Bad Bentheim to Hengelo. With the elimination of the change in Bad Bentheim and the continuous connection to Rheine, Osnabrück and Bielefeld, those responsible are hoping for significantly more passengers than with the Grensland Express, which commuted isolated between Bad Bentheim and Hengelo. Instead of 300 passengers, 750 should use the local trains every day in this section.

At the end of November 2017, Keolis announced that traffic between Bad Bentheim and Hengelo should start on January 14, 2018. According to Keolis, the delayed approval of the dual-system railcars is the reason for this postponement. In fact, operations began on February 26, 2018.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Trein Hengelo - Bad Bentheim: drukker, maar nog lang niet vol genoeg. De Twentsche Courant - Tubantia, accessed September 2, 2011 (Dutch).
  2. ↑ Platform information at Bad Bentheim station. DB Station & Service AG, accessed on September 19, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Frauke Schulte-Sutrum: Has the train left? In: gn-online.de. February 8, 2013, accessed December 30, 2018 .
  4. ↑ Grensland Express gaat van het spoor. In: Tubantia. February 6, 2013, accessed February 7, 2013 (Dutch).
  5. ↑ Sebastian Hamel: The days of the yellow "buffalo" are numbered. In: gn-online.de. October 11, 2013, accessed December 30, 2018 .
  6. ↑ Regulations for German tickets ( memento of October 30, 2012 in the Internet Archive ) on grenslandexpress.de
  7. ↑ http://www.asm-muenster.de/front_content.php?idcat=63&idart=588lang=1 Arbeitsgemeinschaft Eisenbahnverkehr Münsterland on reactivation
  8. ↑ http://ted.europa.eu/udl?uri=TED:NOTICE:150932-2014:TEXT:DE:HTML&src=0 Entry in the European Official Journal for the Teutoburg Forest Network
  9. ↑ http://www.gn-online.de/Nachrichten/Neue-Zugverbindungen-nach-Holland-ab-2016-62250.html Newspaper article of the Grafschafter Nachrichten