Halberstadt-Blankenburg Railway
The Halberstadt-Blankenburger Eisenbahn AG , abbreviated to HBE, was a railway company founded in 1870 that built and operated various railways in the Blankenburg area . The company was expropriated on September 1, 1946 and taken over by the Deutsche Reichsbahn on April 1, 1949 . In the course of its existence, the HBE achieved pioneering achievements by building the Harz cog railway and using animal-class friction locomotives on the steep section.
History of the HBE
History and foundation of the HBE
The first efforts to connect Blankenburg to the railway network via Halberstadt were made as early as 1843. The Cologne bank JL Eltzbacher & Co. initiated the construction of the railway. From 1865 onwards, this bank had acquired the mines, blast furnaces and ironworks previously owned by the state , including also the Hüttenroder field with rich iron ore deposits. The Harzer Werke was founded in 1870 to bundle these activities . The company began with the construction of the ore-level railway and the iron and steel works in Blankenburg , where a railway connection was necessary to transport the products. The bank director Jacob Eltzbacher supported the existing activities and so the statute of the company was approved by the state on April 16, 1870. The share capital was 800,000 marks.
Construction of the route network and development by 1918
The construction of the "main line" Halberstadt - Blankenburg began in June 1870, but the outbreak of the Franco-German War delayed the opening until April 1, 1873. Operation began with two support-tender locomotives. Two years later the branch line to the blast furnace plant was completed, and in 1877 the main line, which opened as the main line , was converted into a secondary line.
In order to reduce the economic dependency on the blast furnace plant, at the instigation of operations director Albert Schneider, the planning of the Blankenburg – Tanne railway was tackled in 1881 , which was built from 1884 with the support of the state of Braunschweig. On October 15, 1886, the end point Tanne was reached, where from 1899 there was a connection to the meter-gauge line of the Südharz-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft .
On September 19, 1880, the line from Langenstein to Derenburg to the sugar factory was opened, the extension to Minsleben followed in 1907. In the same year, the lines from Blankenburg to Quedlinburg with a branch line to Thale (Bodetal) and the branch line of the Rübelandbahn from Wechsel to Drei -Annen-Hohne to connect to the Harzquer and Brocken Railway.
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Because of the difficult situation in the iron industry, the economic situation was unsatisfactory in the first few years, until 1880 no or only very little dividends were paid. The construction of the branch lines increased profitability considerably, in 1891 the dividend was 5.5 percent.
In 1910, after several years of trial operation, the automatic suction air brake , the Hardy system, was introduced, which on the one hand increased the tensile loads and on the other hand increased the cruising speed.
Development until 1945
The years after the First World War were also characterized by the difficult economic and political situation at HBE. In 1919 passenger traffic on the Derenburg – Minsleben route came to a standstill and was no longer started. Freight traffic continued for a few years until the line was dismantled in 1934.
The focus of further rationalization was the Rübelandbahn, on which, under General Director Otto Steinhoff, in 1920 the animal class locomotives ordered as early as 1917 began to replace cogwheel operation. In 1927, the passenger traffic was partially converted to lightweight railcars and in 1931 a new route with a lower incline was put into operation in the area around Rübeland . Further plans such as the lifting of the Michaelstein hairpin by re-routing over Wienrode were not implemented.
In 1921 a subsidiary, the Blankenburger Eisenbahn -bedarf- und Maschinenfabrik GmbH, was founded. The Lorraine Group Bergbau AG took over 40% of the share capital of HBE, which it sold on to Allgemeine Lokalbahn- und Kraftwerke AG as early as 1925 . In 1922 the HBE joined the Deutsche Wagenverband and discontinued its freight wagons on the Deutsche Reichsbahn . On December 5, 1925, the Harz motor vehicle lines of Ostharzbahnen GmbH were founded together with the Anhaltische Landes-Eisenbahngemeinschaft . A year later, the railway asked for a concession for a cable car from Thale (Bode) train station to Hexentanzplatz , but this was rejected because it was designated a nature reserve. In 1932 this project finally failed.
Development up to the takeover by the Deutsche Reichsbahn
The HBE routes were spared major destruction and dismantling during World War II, so that operations from Blankenburg to Halberstadt, Quedlinburg, Thale and Königshütte could be resumed with two pairs of trains per weekday as early as June 1945.
On September 1, 1946, the HBE was expropriated in favor of the Province of Saxony and placed under its administration. On December 15, 1946, the company was transferred to the newly founded Sächsische Provinzbahnen GmbH; an objection to the expropriation was unsuccessful. On April 1, 1949, the HBE was taken over by the Deutsche Reichsbahn .
Development of the route network after the end of the HBE
The Harz Railway, now known as the Rübelandbahn and shortened to the Blankenburg - Königshütte section, has been expanded and electrified. Today the passenger traffic on the Rübelandbahn is stopped, the section Blankenburg - Elbingerode is still served by the rock works in the freight traffic.
The "main line" Halberstadt – Blankenburg is still in operation today and is used by Veolia Verkehr . The other lines were closed in the years after 1968 and are now largely dismantled.
stretch
- Halberstadt – Blankenburg
- Blankenburg – Quedlinburg
- Thale North – Thale Bodetal
- Blankenburg (Harz) fir
- Elbingerode – Drei-Annen-Hohne
- Langenstein – Minsleben
Locomotive park
The lines built at the beginning had only slight inclines of 10 ‰, so that initially the light two-axle locomotives with three-axle support tenders of the Behne-Kool design were sufficient. Similar locomotives were also used by the neighboring state railways. In 1881 and 1883 a three-axle design with a tender was procured from Hanomag , Krauss and Borsig . The rack-and-pinion locomotives for mixed operation had a C1 'wheel arrangement. A total of eleven locomotives were procured from 1883 to 1907. By 1894, three C-coupled machines were added for friction operation, which, like the rack-and-pinion locomotives , were supplied by the Esslingen machine works . The locomotives were mostly named after the surrounding cities and landscapes (e.g. LANGENSTEIN, RUEBELAND, ZIEGENKOPF ). The following machines for the lowland routes corresponded to the designs of the state railroad or were acquired second-hand from them. Were employed G 3 , T 3 , T 7 , T 9 3 , T 12 , T 16 1 . The last cogwheel locomotive to be delivered was a D-coupled tender locomotive in 1914.
In 1917 new 1'E1 'locomotives were ordered to replace the rack-and-pinion locomotives. The machines delivered in 1920 were named after "strong" animals ( MAMMUT, ELCH, WISENT, BÜFFEL ) and served the Prussian State Railways as the basis for the development of the 95 series . In 1927 three 1'D1 'were procured from Hanomag, followed in 1929 by three 1'C1' of similar design from the same manufacturer. As far as possible, components were used that were interchangeable with those of the standard locomotives of the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
On July 7, 1927, the first benzene railcar HBE T 1 was put into operation, which, due to its planned use on the Harz Railway, had a lightweight construction and was equipped with steering axles and a special braking system. This car could be used very successfully, which is why in 1934 another two-axle, diesel-mechanical motor car HBE T 2 was purchased from the Dessau Waggon Factory . The first diesel-hydraulic railcar was the four-axle HBE T 3 , which was supplied by MAN in 1938 and reached 70 km / h on the flatland routes and 40 km / h on the Harz Railway. Followers of the Wismar wagon factory supplemented these railcars in the following years. In 1940 a two-axle railcar was purchased from the same manufacturer.
The locomotive park became increasingly depleted in the course of the Second World War. In 1943 the HBE received the 95 043 on loan from the Reichsbahn , in 1944 another locomotive of the 95 series and finally the 96 002 at the end of the year in order to be able to maintain the railway operations. The 95 019 followed in 1948. The 96 002 was withdrawn in 1949. The machines of the "animal class" went into the inventory of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. After the takeover by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1950, a total of eleven class 95 locomotives were based in Blankenburg. Of the steam locomotives used on the Rübelandbahn, only 95 6676 ( MAMMUT ) has survived, which is located in a locomotive shed in Rübeland.
The locomotives were based in Blankenburg, where a still existing depot with turntable and a 20-hour roundhouse was built in 1907.
Lore
The tradition of the Halberstadt-Blankenburg Railway Company is in the Dessau department of the Saxony-Anhalt State Archives .
Web links
literature
- Werner Steinke: The Halberstadt-Blankenburg Railway. Berlin 1982, ISBN 3-87094-200-2
- Gerhard Zieglgänsberger, Hans Röper, Werner Steinke: Harz Railway Districts. transpress, 1992, ISBN 3-344-70738-8
Web links
- Early documents and newspaper articles on the Halberstadt-Blankenburg Railway in the 20th Century press kit of the ZBW - Leibniz Information Center for Economics .