Hercules Railway

Hercules Railway
Route length:	11.24 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Power system :	Up to 1920: 550 volts = From 1920: 700 volts  =
Maximum slope :	1: 12.5  ‰
Top speed:	20 km / h
Legend Kirchweg Friedensstrasse Freight depot to the freight yard Main-Weser Railway Hasselweg Nordhäuser path Palm bath Kebabs Luisenhaus Marienweg Full count Henkes Brasselsberg Goßmann At the quarry Basalt quarry New Drusel Old Drusel New Holland Hercules colliery Goat head Long grass Red Stollen mine Krähhahnstrasse Hercules

Railcar at the terminus on Brasselsberg , 1962

The Herkulesbahn was a meterspurige small path in the city of Kassel , the 1902-1966 by railroad railcar the freight and passenger transport the High Habichtswald and the local Hercules statue opened up.

overview

The passenger railcars drove from Kirchweg in the Wehlheiden district over the Kohlenstraße and the then still narrow, paved and steep Druseltalstraße up to the high altitude of the Habichtswald. In particular, they drove through the wooded valley of the Drusel over the district of New Holland, which belongs to the Wilhelmshöhe district (today: Bad Wilhelmshöhe ), and from there along the Hüttenbergstraße up to near the Hercules. Above this road, the former course of the tracks can still be seen from a mostly straight walking and hiking trail. The mountain station was about 400 meters southwest of the Hercules at about 490  m above sea level. NHN ( ⊙ ) near the lowest of today's three parking spaces; The Drusel tributary Sichelbach flowed immediately to the east. From there, passengers could get to Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe and the water features there.

On a branch line, the passenger railcars drove from the Luisenhaus on Druseltalstraße along the Habichtswald or Bergstraße (today Konrad-Adenauer-Straße) to the terminus below the Brasselsberg in the district of the same name . Another branch line ran from New Holland from the goat head over to the High Grass and a third ran between the stop Dönche at the Druseltalstrasse and Palmenbad , Kassel's first indoor swimming pool.

Within the Habichtswald, freight railcars served several siding , which transported the mining material from the Alte Drusel colliery, the Herkules colliery and the Roter Stollen colliery towards Kassel. The greatest slope was 1: 12.5.

history

General

Building of the terminus at Hercules around 1910

At the beginning of the 20th century, brown coal was still mined in various places in the Habichtswald . Transporting the coal, but also the stones from the quarries, was only possible with great effort with horse-drawn vehicles. After the Alte Drusel colliery was greatly expanded in 1898, a funicular was supposed to bring the coal to the Wilhelmshöhe station . The Kassel industrialist Gustav Henkel suggested the construction of an electric railway under his own direction, which was to be fed by his own power station . With his plan, he hoped for better utilization of his power plant, more visitors for his palm bath and more favorable transport connections for the villa colony Mulang in Wilhelmshöhe, in which he also lived.

The Hanoverian railway industry was responsible for the construction of the Herkulesbahn .

Since November 7, 1902, when the police inspection of the goods operation took place, the Herkulesbahn has been transporting lignite from the Druseltal to the Wilhelmshöhe goods station in the Kohlenstraße and via a siding to the Henkel power station and the Palmenbad using specially designed railcars. From 1905 basalt was also transported. Passenger traffic was started on April 27, 1903 from the Palm Bath to Hercules. Initially, three passenger railcars were available. At the Palmenbad there was a connection to the city ​​tram . Shortly after opening, in December 1905, the Herkulesbahn was converted into a stock company. In the years 1912 to 1915 the railway carried about 550,000 people, the highest transport performance in one day was on August 3, 1913 with 10,621 passengers. Between 1920 and 1924, the coal trains ran around the clock.

On January 1, 1927, the Große Kasseler Straßenbahn took over the majority of the shares in the Herkulesbahn, which ended the competitive situation between these two companies. In 1960 both companies were combined and the Herkulesbahn AG was dissolved. After the mining in the Habichtswald after the Second World War (1939-1945) had declined sharply, the freight traffic became unprofitable and in July 1961 stopped; up to then up to 500 tons of cargo were transported daily. The route could then be converted into a tram in accordance with the Tram Construction and Operating Regulations (BOStrab); operation in accordance with the Railway Construction and Operating Regulations for Narrow Gauge Railways (ESBO) was no longer necessary without goods traffic. In addition, the Herkulesbahn was assigned line numbers in connection with the tram network. From then on, line 12 went to Brasselsberg and line 13 to Herkules.

In 1962, the Supervisory Board of Kassel decided transport company (KVG), the successor company of the Great Kassel tram that Herkulesbahn on standard gauge switch tracks and connect to the tramway Druseltal with the likewise standard-gauge tram network to. Corresponding sleepers have already been installed in the upper part of the route to Hercules . 1963 Reflections of were Bundeswehr known the training area of the Dönche after Ehlen to move and Druseltalstrasse than tanks develop appropriate road. According to calculations by the KVG, bus operation was cheaper than re-gauging in this case, and it was recommended to the city administration of Kassel to discontinue operation of the Herkulesbahn with the start of the expansion of Druseltalstraße.

Soon after the shutdown, the dismantling of the line and the buildings and the scrapping of the vehicles, none of which has survived, so that today little reminds of the Hercules Railway. The former route to Brasselsberg is partially preserved as a footpath, and the former route between New Holland and the Hercules terminus can still be seen.

Since it was founded on May 3, 2002, the Friends' Association Neue Herkulesbahn Kassel e. V. for an extension of the existing tram line - today line 4, until March 25, 2018 line 3 - to Herkules. The alignment should largely correspond to that of the former Hercules Railway. Above all, this promises better and at the same time more gentle tourist development of the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. At the end of October 2018, the city council of Kassel decided that a transport concept should be developed for a new construction or reactivation of the Herkulesbahn.

Route network

Route network of the Herkulesbahn

At the beginning, the Herkulesbahn network was 6.5 kilometers long, of which 4.6 kilometers were used for freight traffic and 4.42 kilometers for passenger traffic. In 1909, a 1.4 kilometer extension was opened up to Kirchweg on Wilhelmshöher Allee . However, since the city of Kassel had to give approval for this and feared competition for the city's tram service, the opening was delayed until 1909. From then on, passengers from Kirchweg could reach Hercules in less than half an hour.

In 1911, the range of passenger services was expanded again with the opening of the 1.5-kilometer route to the garden city of Brasselsberg. It was planned and already approved by all authorities to run the route from Kohlenstraße to Karlsaue , but due to the outbreak of the First World War (1914–1918), the plans were not carried out any further. Due to the increased demand for raw materials during the war, more mines were connected to the Herkulesbahn network. A small branch to the Hercules colliery near New Holland was completed in 1916.

In 1917/18 the operators of the Roter Stollen colliery had a section built from the Herkules colliery past the Ziegenkopf with the Roter Stollen colliery to Hohen Gras . This extension was 2.25 kilometers long and was built mainly by prisoners of war . Between 1922 and its shutdown on December 31, 1940, people were also carried on it. After the opening of this section, the network reached its greatest expansion in 1920 at 11.24 kilometers.

Several factors led to the cessation of passenger traffic to the Palmenbad in 1923. On the one hand, the baths were shut down as early as 1918 and the power station taken over by the city that year; on the other hand, the large Kassel tram expanded and a new connection point for the networks in the Druseltal was available. The line was converted to standard gauge and has since served as a connection from the Hercules Railway depot to the main workshop in the Wilhelmshöhe depot of the Great Kassel Tram.

During the Second World War, the Hercules colliery (December 31, 1940) and the Roter Stollen (1941) colliery, and thus the section to the Hohen Gras, were closed. In the early 1950s, it was planned to extend the route from Brasselsberg to the neighboring municipality of Elgershausen (now part of the municipality of Schauenburg ), but this failed.

After the connection from the Luisenhaus to Brasselsberg had already been switched to bus operation on December 1, 1965, on April 11, 1966, shortly after 11 p.m., a railcar drove down from the Herkules valley for the last time. Since the following day, April 12th, Hercules was also connected to the Kirchweg by buses.

Overview of shutdowns

Passenger car (rear) and freight railcar (front) in Druseltalstraße, around 1910

Shutdown	Route section
December 31, 1925	Kassel Palmenbad - Kassel Dönche
December 31, 1940	Hercules colliery - tall grass
December 31, 1940	New Holland - Hercules colliery
November 30, 1965	Kirchweg - Brasselsberg
April 11, 1966	Luisenhaus - Hercules

Fleet

Freight railcars

The freight railcars used on the route were based on designs by Gustav Henkel. On their platform they carried short cross rails on which carts could be placed. This principle made loading in the mines and quarries particularly flexible. The driver's cab was raised in the middle, which gave the driver a better view. Initially, three four-axle freight railcars were available. The stock was increased to seven cars of a similar design by 1923. After the First World War, several corresponding sidecars were purchased.

From 1923, resistance brakes with power recovery were built into the freight railcars, which reduced the power consumption of these vehicles by around a quarter. AEG systems were installed based on the Welsch system. This technology was only used in trams decades later; the Herkulesbahn was a pioneer in this technology.

Passenger railcars

In the first years of passenger transport, the Herkulesbahn was aimed more at day trippers. Initially only three two-axle railcars were available, two of which were designed as open summer cars . The fleet of vehicles was gradually expanded. Later only used railcars and sidecars were purchased, most recently (1960) used post-war vehicles from the Solingen public utility company .

literature

• Gustav Adam Stör: The Hercules Railway in Kassel. Kassel 1982, ISBN 3-7982-0435-7
• Gustav Adam Stör: 50 years of the Herkulesbahn. Kassel 1953
• Wolfgang Kimpel: The Herkulesbahn in Kassel. Kassel 1997
• Gerd Wolff: German small and private railways, Volume 8: Hessen. Freiburg im Breisgau 2004, ISBN 3-88255-667-6
• Dietrich Meier / André Marks: A gem with a steep incline - the Herkulesbahn in Kassel. Published in: Strassenbahn-Magazin - 5/2015 , pp. 50 ff

Web links

• The Herkulesbahn , on kassel-wilhelmshoehe.de
• Förderverein Neue Herkulesbahn Kassel eV , on neue-herkulesbahn.de
• Historical photos - Herkulesbahn , on tram-kassel.de
• Herkulesbahn Kassel: Historical recordings of an old attraction ( HNA ), film (2013), on youtube.com
• Condition of the Herkulesbahn route in 2011 (private site)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s} Die Herkulesbahn , on kassel-wilhelmshoehe.de
2. ↑ Map services of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation ( information )
3. ^ "End station Herkulesbahn, City of Kassel". Historical local dictionary for Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).
4. ^ Letter from the Hanover Railway Industry (La / Ro.) To Colberger Sprudel GmbH , Coburg , Raststrasse  8, dated December 19, 1908, on commons.wikimedia.org
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Herkulesbahn , from kassellexikon , p. 248, on neue-herkulesbahn.de (PDF; 106.2 kB)
6. ^ Förderverein Neue Herkulesbahn Kassel eV , on neue-herkulesbahn.de
7. ↑ Kassel: Herkules Kassel: A traffic concept is developed for the tram - Bad Wilhelmshöhe. In: hna.de. November 1, 2018, accessed November 2, 2018 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} "Opening of the Herkules mountain railway in Kassel, April 27, 1903". Contemporary history in Hessen. In: Landesgeschichtliches Informationssystem Hessen (LAGIS).

This version was added to the list of articles worth reading on January 21, 2006 .