Hamburg-Altona connecting railway

Hamburg-Altona connecting railway
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Long-distance railway
Route number (DB) :	6100 (HH-Altona - HH Rothenburgsort) 1291 (HH Ericus - HH Rothenburgsort) 1245 (HH Berliner Bf - HH Rothenburgsort)
Course book section (DB) :	137.1
Power system :	15 kV 16.7 Hz  ~
Train
Route number (DB) :	1240 (HH-Altona - HH Hauptbahnhof) 1241 (HH Hauptbahnhof - HH-Poppenbüttel)
Course book section (DB) :	101.11, 101.21, 101.31
Route length:	1240: 06.228 km 1241: 11.208 km
Power system :	Power rail , 1200 V  =
Legend Hamburg-Altona quay Altona railway station (old) City-S-Bahn from the main train station 293,157 005,898 Hamburg-Altona 6.083 formerly Altona Harbor Railway 6.249 0.889 0.982 292.866 S-Bahn line to Blankenese 291,400 S-Bahn to Pinneberg Long-distance railway from / to Pinneberg 291.075 S-Bahn from Pinneberg Kaltenkirchen train station 291.503 000,000 Hamburg Rainweg ( Abzw ) 290.910 290.926 Holstenstrasse ( Hp + Abzw ) 290.597 Star bridge ( B 4 ) Hamburg shoulder blade former branch line from the cattle market / Gbf 289.810 289.716 Hamburg Sternschanze Hamburg Sternschanze (1903-1912) 289.090 000,000 Hamburg Sternschanze Üst 288.114 288.153 Hamburg dam gate 287,495 287,528 Overlength 33 m 287,428 287,461 Lombard Bridge ( Alster ) City-S-Bahn from Altona 286.670 0.000 286.663 000.180 Hamburg Central Station ( Keilbahnhof ) Klosterthor train station (former connecting railway) Berlin train station (former connecting railway) Oberbaumbrücke (old route) Hanover station Oberhafenbrücke (today's route) Abstellbf Hbf (formerly Lippeltstraße) Central channel Lübeck train station Hamburg Ericus (Abzw) Main line to Hamburg-Harburg Hamburg Ericus Awanst Freight route from Maschen Hamburg-Hammerbrook Oberhafenkanal / Bille (old route) (today's route of the Berlin route) 1.485 Berlin Gate Üst Hamburg Anckelmannsplatz Bille Hamburg-Rothenburgsort Ro (Abzw) Hamburg-Rothenburgsort (S-Bahn) Hamburg-Rothenburgsort Rop (Abzw) Freight route to Hamburg-Billwerder Main line to Berlin S-Bahn line to Bergedorf Südstormarnsche Kreisbahn Bille 2,894 Landwehr 4.057 Hamburg Hasselbrook Horn ( abzw ) Route to Lübeck S-Bahn to Ahrensburg (planned) Hamburg-Barmbek rectifier plant 4,788 Wandsbeker Chaussee 5.448 Eilbek 5.711 Friedrichsberg 6.450 Osterbek Canal 7.212 Hamburg-Barmbek (S-Bahn) 7,280 7,273 Extra length 7 m 7.740 Underground line U3 8.060 ( Flyover structure ) Gbf Hamburg-Barmbek 8,690 Alte Wöhr (former city park) 9,551 Rübenkamp Freight bypass 11,201 Hamburg-Ohlsdorf (S-Bahn) Transfer track of the elevated railway 11,573 S-Bahn route to the airport Alstertalbahn to Poppenbüttel former route to Ochsenzoll Swell:

The Hamburg-Altonaer connecting line (also: connecting line for short ) is a railway line in Hamburg . Today it connects the routes from the north and west of the Hanseatic city as well as the Altona train station with Hamburg's main train station and the connecting rail routes to the south and east. The route, initially designed as a freight railway, is now one of the busiest in Germany. Pure freight traffic, on the other hand, has been routed across a large area on the Hamburg freight bypass north and east around the city center since 1902 .

history

The first connecting track

As early as 1842, Hamburg had a railway connection with the Hamburg-Bergedorfer Railway , which became the Berlin Railway in 1846 . Two years later, Altona / Elbe also received a route with the Kiel Railway . However, there was initially no connection with one another, so that the goods had to be reloaded several times in order to get from one place to another, which was time-consuming and costly. A single-track connecting railway should help.

The route was led by the Altona-Kieler Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (AKE) from the Altona station to the city limits on the shoulder blade in the road surface and from the Hamburg Senate over the city's looped ramparts to the Klosterthor station. The AKE took over the operation and initially paid 50,000 marks in rent to the Senate. To cross the Alster , a Jochbrücke was first built, which was replaced by a new one in 1868, the Lombard Bridge .

Hamburg 1880 with a connecting railway, without Altona station

• September 30, 1865 : Altona - shoulder blade
• July 16, 1866 : Shoulder blade - Klosterthor

It quickly became apparent that the connecting railway was doing its job. 30 years later it was already at its capacity limit and had to be expanded.

The line not only initially connected the Altona and Klosterthor stations with each other, but coming from Klosterthor west of Holstenstrasse or at the latest the Rainweg branch it also connects it directly and bypassing the Altona station with the Altona-Kiel line , like city maps of Altona and Hamburg at least 1882 show.

Track guides in Altona

The line leading from Hamburg branched off at the level of the Holstenbrauerei first in a line leading directly to the first train station along the then customs border between Altona and Ottensen , the street of today's Haubachstraße (at that time Herderstraße), on the one hand and on the other hand a section leading further west, which in turn on What was then Rainweg branched out into a track called a “shortcut track” directly in the direction of Kiel and a track called a “freight train” that ended at what was then the Ottensen freight yard .

The later routing dispensed with the tracks along the customs border and instead expanded the "freight railway" past the storage sheds in addition to the main line to the east-facing platforms of the new station from 1894. Around 1895, the junction on Rainweg (today's Harkortstraße) was extended by another junction, which led in an arc initially further west and then south to the five western platforms of the new station. The new Altona depot was built in the area between these track branches . At the level of Holstenstrasse / Kieler Strasse, the route crossed the former AKN railway line .

Expansion and extension of the route

On December 30, 1898, Prussia , the City of Hamburg and the Lübeck-Büchener Railway decided to convert and expand the connecting line as follows:

• New construction of a main train station, which replaced the previous terminal stations in Lübecker , Berliner and Hannoverscher as well as the Klosterthor train station and combined the incoming lines.
• Raising the tracks to remove all level crossings . In addition, a second pair of tracks for suburban trains was set up to the north.
• Extending the suburban tracks of the connecting railway on the route of the Lübeck Railway to Hasselbrook.

As a first measure, the widening of the Lombard Bridge around the northern pair of tracks for the suburban trains in 1901/02 was completed.

During the rest of the construction work, a further expansion was agreed on December 12, 1904 with the "Ohlsdorf Contract":

• The extension of the connecting line, which was under construction, should now lead via Barmbek to Ohlsdorf . Goods handling systems were also to be built at both of the stations mentioned.
• The entire light rail (Blankenese – Altona – Hauptbahnhof – Ohlsdorf) should be electrified.

Location of the former Hamburg train stations with new track layout from 1906

The contract partners were the Prussian State Railways as the operator of the line, after the system had already been tested in the Berlin area through extensive trials, which the operator ultimately opted for: Overhead line with 6.3 kV 25 Hz alternating current was used on the Niederschöneweide-Johannisthal-Spindlersfeld route been.

On December 5, 1906, the work was completed. The urban and suburban railway started operating the line to Ohlsdorf, one day before the new Hamburg Central Station went into operation , which could already be viewed from the inside two days earlier. About a year later, the entire urban and suburban railway was finally operated electrically, making the Hamburg Stadtbahn the first electrically operated suburban railway in Germany.

Conversion to direct current and expansion of the S-Bahn

S-Bahn multiple unit (1927 to 1955) for catenary with 6.3 kV 25 Hz alternating current

AC operation lasted into the 1930s and there were hardly any disruptions in operation. In the meantime, however, a direct current-operated rapid transit network, the Berlin S-Bahn, has been set up in Berlin . Since direct current technology was more advanced than alternating current technology at that time, and the vehicles in Hamburg had to be replaced anyway, it was decided to switch to direct current operation with power rails . Even before the decision was made, the urban and suburban railway was given the name “S-Bahn” from 1934, four years after Berlin had taken this step.

Unlike in Berlin (800 volts), the voltage was set at 1200 volts, which was the highest permissible voltage level in busbar operation with direct voltage. At higher voltages, the burn-off from separating sparks would have been uneconomically high. It was also decided to use a side-coated busbar instead of a busbar coated from below, which was a clear advantage for switches, as the busbar did not need to be interrupted here. In 1940 the first new trains ran with the power rail system, but due to the war, the conversion could not be completed until 1955, until then the operation had taken place in parallel.

From the 1960s onwards, there was continuous expansion into an S-Bahn network. Although the connecting line had good passenger numbers as the central section, it still affected the city center only in the northern area. A new central tunnel was planned to open up the inner city area with more than 300,000 jobs. For the old trunk line, this meant some renovation work, since the new, City-S-Bahn, called the City-S-Bahn , which unthreads from the trunk line at the main train station, should meet it again from the south at Altona station. As a result, the entire Altona station building was demolished and rebuilt as a functional new building with an integrated department store (Kaufhof). The reason for the new building was the fear that the old station building could give way during the work to build the tunnel. A four-track tunnel station was built for the S-Bahn with a sweeping system connected to it to the south .

After the construction of the City-S-Bahn , the S-Bahn traffic was split between the main station and Altona. The S1 , S2 and S3 lines operate in the tunnel today and the S11 , S21 and S31 lines on the old trunk line .

Route kilometers

While the other S-Bahn lines running parallel to long-distance trains have their own kilometers, the S-Bahn on the connecting line has always kept that of the Berlin Railway. Since the opening of the City-S-Bahn to Diebsteich on May 31, 1981, the city-S-Bahn (DB route 1270) has continued to use kilometers from Altona. At route kilometers 6.249 of the City-S-Bahn, the kilometrage of the Blankeneser Bahn (VzG route 1224) begins with route kilometers 0.889 . After a further 93 meters, the Blankeneser Bahn and the connecting line split. This is where the official route measurement of the connecting railway begins at route kilometers 292.866 (switch no. 751 at route kilometers 0.982 of the Blankeneser Bahn). The kilometrage is that of the Berlin-Hamburg railway and is therefore counted backwards in the direction of the main station.

A few meters west of the main train station, the route measurement of the connecting train (VzG route 1240) ends at route kilometers 286.670 and that of the light rail (VzG route 1241) begins with route kilometers 0.000. The Stadtbahn ends in Ohlsdorf, but changes to the Alstertalbahn under the same route number 1241 , which continues the kilometering of the Stadtbahn. The new airport S-Bahn (VzG line 1239), which branches off at route kilometers 11.573 , continues the current kilometer allocation.

Congested railroad

On November 11, 2019, the route between the main train station and the “Rainweg branch” (former name of the bridged “Harkortstraße” located at this point) was declared a congested rail route.

Considerations for expansion

At the beginning of 2020, the federal government became aware of plans to build a S-Bahn tunnel along the connecting line as part of the Germany cycle . This means that the S-Bahn tracks of the connecting line, including S-Bahn tracks 3 and 4 in the main station, could be used for long-distance and regional traffic. It should be examined to what extent this idea can be realistically implemented. The tunnel is to begin east of the main train station and use a new route to reach Diebsteich train station . Connection points are planned at Stephansplatz , Schlump and Berliner Tor . A first rough cost estimate was based on 650 million euros in 2020, 75 percent of the costs are to be borne by the federal government. In the coalition negotiations concluded at the end of May 2020, the ruling parties of the Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, the SPD and the Greens, agreed on the construction of the tunnel.

Train stations

The connecting line between Altona and the main train station is the central section of the so-called main line of Hamburg's electric light rail .

• 

  The first Altona train station in 1844

• 

  As of 1890, seen from the south. The semicircular portal leads to a turntable in front of the train station

• 

  The building that was expanded to the north from 1891 (photo view) is now Altona's town hall

• 

  The new main station building from 1898

• 

  The coat of arms emblems of Hamburg and Prussia on the reception building of the Sternschanze train station are reminiscent of the developers of the connecting railway.

The connecting railway with the first Sternschanze station from 1866

Sternschanze station in 1903

Hamburg Dammtor station in 1898

Klosterthor train station, in the background on the right the Berlin train station with the two towers

Hamburg-Klosterthor train station, view from the south

Hamburg Central Station around 1906

Berliner Tor station in 1910, in the background the transition to the Lübeck Railway

Landwehr station until around 1973

Hasselbrook train station around 1910

• Altona (old train station) : The first Altona train station was the one end point of the route. Between 1893 and 1898 it was replaced by a new building 400 m further north, as expansion was impossible due to the dense development. After the station was abandoned, the building was extended by a north wing, and the Altona town hall has been located here ever since
• Altona : The new Altona train station (until 1938: Altona Hauptbahnhof) was opened in 1898. It was initially an eight-track station, and after the construction of the suburban railway, a ten-track station. The reception building was initially in the neo-Gothic style, followed by a simple new building in 1979, which was renovated again in 2002.
• Holstenstraße : The Holstenstraße stop was created in 1893 as a replacement for the former shoulder blade stop. With the elevation of the route, he received one platform each for long-distance and suburban traffic. He also had a hall and a reception building for each platform. However, they were destroyedby the effects of the Second World War , only the S-Bahn hall was replaced by a platform roof in 1990, the long-distance platform was demolished in 1970.
• Shoulder blade : The shoulder blade stop was located directly on the former city limits between Hamburg and Altona, it was shut down in 1893 and the Holstenstraße station was built to replace it.
• Sternschanze : The Sternschanze station has been at its current location since 1906 and has a sweeping track to the west of the S-Bahn platform. The entrance building of the once magnificent hall building is still there. A station with this name has existed since the line opened in 1866, but the new buildings were laid out further to the west when it was raised. The former station building still exists north of the route.
• Dammtor : The Dammtor stop is the smallest long-distance traffic stop in Hamburg. The station building, which was extensively restored in the mid-1980s, is a listed building.
• Central Station : The Hamburg Central Station was built until 1906 as a replacement for the three terminal stations - Lübeck , Berliner and Hannoverscher - in the east of the city. The main hall - without the continuous side extensions and the northern front facade - is the largest self-supporting hall in Europe with a width of 73 meters and a length of 150 meters. Hamburg Central Station is the busiest station in Germany. In 1983, a neighboring underground platform was built for the S-Bahn to better distribute the lines.
• Klosterthor : The Klosterthor station was the terminus of the connecting line until the new main station was completed. From here there was a connecting curve to the Berlin railway. Later, another connecting track to the Hanover station and the Hamburg port railway was built, which passed on the street directly in front of the portal of the Berlin station. The track system of the Klosterthor station was expanded after the construction of the new central train station for the railway post office of the main post office Hühnerposten, which was built immediately to the south.

The actual connecting line ends at Klosterthor station. From 1902 to 1906 the tram tracks were extended , which run parallel to the Vogelfluglinie as far as Hasselbrook and branch off there in the direction of Ohlsdorf.

• Lippeltstrasse : The Lippeltstrasse station was built between 1903 and 1906, i.e. during the renovation work, as the provisional terminus of the Berlin railway, but only for trains from Bergedorf and Büchen . The long-distance trains from Berlin still ran into the Klosterthorbahnhof via the old route; But that was also over in 1906.
• Berliner Tor : The Berliner Tor station was built with the extension to Ohlsdorf in 1906. Today, it is one of the largest transfer points in the Hamburg rapid transit network, as the Berlin railway branches off here in addition to the connecting railway and the transition to other underground lines (U2, U3, U4) exists. The S-Bahn station is on two levels, the lower one serving the trains to and from Hasselbrook, the upper one serving the trains to Bergedorf.
• Landwehr : The Landwehr stop was opened with the extension to Ohlsdorf in 1906, it was given a neo-baroque reception building that wasdamagedin World War II and only partially rebuilt. The building was finally demolished in the 1970s. The platform is on the bridge and the four-track embankment.
• Hasselbrook : The Hasselbrook station is now the branching station between the Stadtbahn and the Vogelfluglinie and was opened to traffic in 1907. The regional platform is located south of the platform for the S-Bahn.
• Wandsbeker Chaussee : The stop was opened in 1906 and is located in the cut south of the street of the same name. Since 1962 there has also been an option to change to the U1 subway line .
• Friedrichsberg : The stop is in the Dulsberg district and was also opened in 1906. The platform is on a railway embankment with an entrance on the south side. Photo from 1906

• Barmbek : The Barmbe station c k (former notation) is transfer point between the U-line U3 of Hamburger high web ( ring line and Walddörfer web ) and the S-train lines S1 and S11. The suburban station, like the entire line between the main station and Ohlsdorf, was opened on December 5, 1906, the elevated station followed on February 15, 1912. In 1918, the station was expanded so that it now has six platform tracks. The reason was the unthreading of the Walddörferbahn. To the north-west of the station there is a sweeping system for the S-Bahn and a workshop for the U-Bahn.
• Alte Wöhr : The Alte Wöhr stop was opened in 1931 under the name Alte Wöhr Stadtpark and renamed Stadtpark on April 1, 1938 . It was given its current name in 1969 to avoid confusion with the Stadtpark underground station (now Saarlandstraße) of the HHA . The platform is located on an embankment east of the freight bypass with access to the eponymous road at its southern end.
• Rübenkamp : The Rübenkamp stop was added to the route in 1913 to develop the then new hospital in Barmbek, and later also for the residential areas in Barmbek-Nord. The railway line lies in a cut here, and there are entrances at both ends of the platform. To the west of the railway line, behind an allotment garden, is the City Nord office district, built in the 1960s
• Ohlsdorf : Ohlsdorf was the end point of the tram that went into operation in 1906. Since 1914 it has been possible to change from the S-Bahn to the U-Bahn ( Langenhorner Bahn , today U1). In 1918 the Alstertalbahn from Poppenbüttel also ended here, which was incorporated into the urban and suburban railway system in 1924. In 1940, the Ohlsdorf – Poppenbüttel section was the firstsection of the Hamburg S-Bahn to be electrifiedwith direct current . The platforms of the U-Bahn and S-Bahn are on a wide embankment. Almost the northern two-thirds of the S-Bahn platform with the two platform tracks were covered by a platform hall until the end of the 1970s, and there are two more tracks on both sides. The exit to Alsterdorfer Straße on the south side of the platform has been out of service and dismantled for decades. To the south-east of the station is the Ohlsdorf S-Bahn works , which (in addition to the Elbgaustraße and Poppenbüttel works) is responsible for the maintenance, repair and maintenance of all direct current multiple units of the Hamburg S-Bahn.

The S-Bahn connection between Ohlsdorf station and Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel Airport has been in operation since December 11, 2008 .

business

The S-Bahn lines S11 (Blankenese – Ohlsdorf), S21 (Elbgaustraße – Aumühle) and S31 (Altona – Neugraben) run on the two northern tracks of the connecting railway .

The two southern tracks are used by long-distance and regional trains. Numerous trains to the south do not only run from Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, but are tied through to Altona station. After the electronic interlocking of the Altona train station initially caused difficulties due to the dense occupancy of the terminus, long-running express trains, especially intercity trains, were led north via the connecting curve directly from the main station from the connecting line, often after an intermediate stop in Dammtor. The travel time savings achieved by saving the stop in Altona were retained.

The freight traffic, for which the line was originally designed, is only conducted in the late evening hours in north-south traffic via the connecting railway, otherwise via the single-track freight bypass railway , which is located further to the northeast .

literature

• Andreas Janikowski, Jörg Ott: Germany's S-Bahn. History, technology, operations . transpress, Stuttgart 2002, ISBN 3-613-71195-8 .
• Hermann Hoyer, Dierk Lawrenz, Benno Wiesmüller: Hamburg Central Station . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2006, ISBN 3-88255-721-4 .

Web links

• Image: Altmannbrücke with signal box, tram and historic S-Bahn train
• Connecting track
• hamburger-bahnhoefe.de
• Dammtor-Bahnhof 1875, lithograph by Wilhelm Heuer
• City map from 1903

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ^ Wolfgang Klee: Railways in Hamburg . EJ special issue 5/97, ISBN 3-89610-020-3 , p. 16f.
4. ^ Map of Port de Hamburg from 1882.
5. ↑ ^{a b} see map Altona 1888. ( Memento from July 31, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
6. ↑ ^{a b} for the street names see map of Hamburg 1901. ( Memento from April 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
7. ↑ see map Hamburg 1895 ( Memento from April 12, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
8. ↑ Overloaded railways 2019. In: fahrweg.dbnetze.com. DB Netz AG, November 2019, accessed on December 8, 2019 . 
9. ^ Schleswig-Holstein / Hamburg . In: Bahn-Report . March 2020, ISSN  0178-4528 , p. 30 f .
10. ↑ Jürgen Lorenz: ramp-up after corona easing . In: Railway courier . No. 7 , July 2020, ISSN  0170-5288 , p. 44 f .
11. ^ Pischek, Borchers, Heimann: The Hamburg S-Bahn. With direct current through the Hanseatic city . Geramond, Munich 2002. Page 34.
12. ↑ Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (ed.): Official Gazette of the Reichsbahndirektion Mainz of April 14, 1938, No. 19. Announcement No. 262, p. 110.
13. ^ S-Bahn Hamburg, Ohlsdorf plant.