Port and railway operations of the city of Krefeld
The port and railway operations of the city of Krefeld were owned by the city of Krefeld and operated the Krefeld Rhine port and the connected port railway until the end of 2007. Hafen Krefeld GmbH & Co KG has been operating the port and railway infrastructure since 2008 .
The area of the Krefeld harbor
The Krefeld port consists of the following areas:
- The actual Rhine harbor with the harbor basin , turning basin, settlement areas for industry, two urban storage buildings on the peninsula of the Hafenkopf, the Rheingold restaurant with conference facilities, an outdoor terrace, located in the Linn district of Krefeld.
- The older Uerdinger Rheinwerft , continued to the north.
- The Ostwerft, this is a quay that has not been used since 1945
Krefeld port railway
The railway operations in the eastern districts of Krefeld, known as Hafenbahn Krefeld , were originally run by three independent railway companies:
- The "Kleinbahn Krefeld-Rheinhafen", later "Hafen- und Kleinbahn Krefeld", which was renamed the "Städtische Eisenbahn Krefeld" in 1956 and later became Hafen Krefeld GmbH & Co. KG.
- the second company was the freight railway of the “Bahn- u. Terrain AG Krefeld-Süd ”, which came into the possession of the city of Krefeld in 1926 and was under the management of the Krefeld port and small railway from 1931 and continued its operation under the name“ Krefelder Industriebahn ”.
- the third company was the “Uerdinger Werftbahn”, which was integrated in 1929 as a northern continuation of the “Hafen- und Kleinbahn Krefeld”, which was mainly used as a port railway.
The railway operation is used exclusively for goods traffic in the area of the city of Krefeld . While the Krefeld port railway is a non-federally owned railway (NE-Bahnen ) licensed according to the Railway Construction and Operating Regulations (EBO) , the Krefeld industrial railway is licensed as a pure connecting railway according to the regulation on the construction and operation of connecting railways (BOA).
The creation of the Krefeld port railway
The establishment of the Krefeld port railway, which has always been popularly known as the "port railway", emerged from the construction of the Krefeld Rhine port .
With the construction of the port from 1903 to 1905, a separate railway infrastructure company was established . The port railway was used to connect the city of Krefeld, which is far from the Rhine, to shipping and to move goods in the area of the port. The connection to the state railway was realized at the connecting station Krefeld-Linn before the route could be continued to the freight station Krefeld Ost.
The opening of the Krefeld port railway
On November 12, 1905, the first line of the then port and small railway Krefeld was opened from the Krefeld- Linn state train station to the trading port on the Rhine. The second line was the city line from Linn to Krefeld to the Krefeld-Ost station there on September 26, 1906. At the end of 1913, on December 16, the so-called "western branch line" was opened, which initially led to the industrial area at Bruchfeld.
Changes to the track network after 1929
When Krefeld was united with Uerdingen , Fischeln , Gellep-Stratum and other communities to form the Krefeld-Uerdingen district in 1929 , this also had an impact on the track network. After the unification of the two cities Krefeld and Uerdingen in 1929, city district Krefeld-Uerdingen, which is light railway Krefeld-Uerdingen as Eigenbetrieb specified with a length of 52 km.
The technical infrastructure of the Krefeld port railway
When the port railway opened in 1905, the technical center of the port railway was created in the Krefeld-Linn district. The following facilities were set up there:
- Lever interlocking made of half-timbered structure, lava basalt base (demolished in 2020 by Hafen Krefeld GmbH & Co KG)
- Locomotive shed made of reinforced concrete (used by a corrosion protection company)
- Three-track workshop
- Two-story brick administration building
- Pushbutton interlocking
In addition to these operating facilities on today's Carl-Sonnenschein-Straße, other facilities were built that were necessary for the operation of the Krefeld port railway:
- A swing bridge in the harbor basin
- A representative administration building
Description of the individual sections of the Krefeld port railway
The western branch line to the Bruchfeld industrial area
In 1913 the "western branch line" was built to the Bruchfeld industrial area in Krefeld-Linn. It branches off from the Stadtbahn line to the Krefeld-Ost freight station, immediately after it has crossed under the state railway tracks in Linn in a passage.
The city line and the Krefeld-Ost freight yard
In order to avoid the transport of goods over the tracks of the state railway, the city railway Krefeld built its own single-track line. The freight yard Krefeld-Ost became the western end point of the connecting line between Krefeld and Linn.
The Uerdinger Werftbahn
In 1887/88, the then still independent city of Uerdingen carried out the extensive expansion of the Uerdinger Rheinwerft and a connecting line to the Uerdingen freight yard of the state railway was built.
The Rhine port of Krefeld
The Krefeld "Rheinhafen" is a public inland port and is primarily designed as an industrial port , which means that industry is located here that depends on a waterway connection.
Others
The Krefeld Municipal Railway should not be confused with the Krefeld Railway Company, whose history and route network are completely different from each other.
literature
- Lorenz Rüttershoff: The port of Krefeld - history, structure and meaning. Rühl Verlag, Krefeld 1973