Homburg Railway
The 18-kilometer-long railway line from Frankfurt am Main to (Bad) Homburg vor der Höhe in Hesse is known as the Homburg Railway , which was opened in 1860 . Today it is part of the DB route 3611 Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof low - Friedrichsdorf (Taunus) - Friedberg (Hessen) , on it the S-Bahn - line S5 to Friedrichsdorf and the Taunusbahn run .
history
At that time, Homburg tried to establish an efficient transport connection to Frankfurt very early on . To be able to reach Homburg quickly and comfortably was of great economic importance for the spa and bathing establishment as well as the casino . In 1850 a horse-drawn bus line ran every hour from Frankfurt, partly directly via Bonames , partly via Oberursel to Homburg. However, it soon no longer met the needs of travelers. Railway projects failed in 1836, 1845, 1851 and 1856. The reasons were money and small states , as the 18-kilometer stretch that was finally completed touched the territories of four independent states: the Free City of Frankfurt , the Grand Duchy of Hesse ( Darmstadt ) and the Duchy of Nassau and the Landgraviate of Hessen-Homburg . The Duchy of Nassau had concerns because it did not want to encourage competition for its own baths. The Electorate of Hesse-Kassel in particular was opposed to the project, so that the railway could bypass its territory and not reach the Main-Weser Railway in Bockenheim . The vernacular spoke of the "six-country railway" in an exaggerated manner.
When, after tough negotiations, a compromise was found for the route and a financier with the casino, all the states involved granted the concessions to the English railway entrepreneur Sir Samuel Morton Peto by the end of June 1859 and the Homburg Railway Company (HEG) was founded. The construction according to the plans of the well-known railway engineer Edmund Heusinger von Waldegg , however, proceeded very quickly, because the first passenger trains were already running on September 10, 1860. The freight was followed from 6 October 1860. The Homburg Railway used in Frankfurt an extension of the Main-Weser railway station at the Gallusanlage , went on the tracks of the Taunus Railway (not Taunusbahn ) to Rebstockgelände where they on their own route branched off to Rödelheim . The route continued via Weißkirchen and Oberursel to Homburg, where it ended in a terminal station on Louisenstrasse .
When it opened, the Homburg Railway Company had 28 first to third class passenger cars, as well as packing and freight cars and four locomotives with a 1B wheel arrangement. The machines were supplied by Henschel with the serial numbers 46 to 49. In 1870 a similar locomotive with the serial number 290 was procured from Henschel. The number of passenger cars was also increased to 36. Initially, eight pairs of trains ran daily between Frankfurt and Homburg.
Further development
The Prussian annexations after the war of 1866 made things much easier for the Homburg Railway Company. The route now ran its entire length in Prussia - with the exception of a small section at Weißkirchen station . The closure of the casino in Homburg by the Prussian state in 1872 led to a noticeable decrease in the number of passengers. The Cronberger Railway was built from 1873 to 1874 by a private railway company . It used the route of the Homburg Railway and branched off at Rödelheim station to Kronberg . On January 1, 1880, the Homburg Railway Company was sold to Prussia because it could not or did not want to raise the costs for the route changes in connection with the planned new Frankfurt Central Station . Now the connection of the Homburg Railway to the also nationalized Main-Weser-Bahn in the Bockenheim train station (today: Frankfurt (Main) West train station ), which could not be reached in 1860, could be built and put into operation on May 10, 1884. This shortened the route to 15.6 kilometers from Westbahnhof, the old route across the Rebstock site has completely disappeared.
Extension and expansion
In 1895 the Usinger Railway was put into operation from Homburg via Friedrichsdorf to Usingen and a few years later it was extended to Weilburg and Wetzlar to the Lahn Valley Railway . In Homburg, a second terminal station was built on the lower Louisenstrasse at a distance of 200 to 300 meters from the terminus of the Frankfurt line, which was where today's town hall is located: Homburg Neu . Shunting traffic was possible via a connecting track between the two stations, but continuous traffic was not. In Homburg Neu , the trains for the connection to Friedberg , planned as early as 1868 , began, which was built from 1898 and put into operation on July 15, 1901. It branched off in Friedrichsdorf from the branch line to the Hintertaunus .
In 1907 the old train stations were replaced by the new Homburg train station . The bath in Bad Homburg was added in 1912. Between 1907 and 1912, the entire Frankfurt – Homburg – Friedrichsdorf – Friedberg line was expanded to double tracks. This made the connection to Friedberg part of the route (today 3611), the beginning of the Usinger Bahn (3746, today 9374) was withdrawn to Friedrichsdorf.
Connecting curves
On September 1, 1905, the connecting curve built at the imperial request on the Frankfurt Rebstock site was initially only opened for freight traffic and special trains . It branched off south of the Rödelheim train station from the Homburg route in the direction of Höchst and, from 1908, also served passenger traffic , the spa railway, a connection between Wiesbaden , Höchst, Bad Homburg and Bad Nauheim .
Due to the First World War, a branch in the direction of Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof could only be opened on March 15, 1927 and is now used by the Taunusbahn (RB 15) trains, which run through Bad Homburg to Frankfurt during rush hour.
The connecting curve to Höchst was broken off after 1963 when the A 5 was being expanded.
After 1945
After the damage caused by the Second World War was repaired , the route gained its importance in dealing with the flow of commuters to Frankfurt. From 23 May 1954 did pull trains in a rigid half-hourly interval timetable , first pulled or pushed by tender locomotives of class 78 and diesel locomotives of the type V 80 , and later V 100 . The extension to Friedberg, however, was downgraded to a single-track branch line due to war damage and falling profitability .
After electrification was completed on September 26, 1970, the push-pull trains were mostly hauled by class 141 electric locomotives, the forerunners of the class 420 multiple units , which started operating from September 25, 1977 and initially started the S-Bahn service from the main station to Friedrichsdorf. For the S-Bahn traffic, the section Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof low - Frankfurt (Main) West was expanded to four tracks. In Frankfurt (Main) West, a flyover structure including branches to Rödelheim / Friedberg and thus high-altitude platforms above the regional platforms was built for the S-Bahn tracks to the east . Since then, the numbering of route 3611 in Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof has started low and continues via Friedrichsdorf to Friedberg.
Between 1968 and 1978 the newly built underground railcars of the U2 series were pulled by steam locomotives of the DR series 50 via the Homburg Railway to Oberursel, where they were shunted to the A route of the underground network via a track connection. Freight traffic from the A line to the VDM in Heddernheim and the Oberursel engine factory also ran over this track connection . This traffic was discontinued in the course of the underground expansion in 1971 (Oberursel) and on October 27, 1981 (Heddernheim). The track connection was still in place with the points removed until 2011, but was interrupted by a GSM-R transmission mast. There is still a metal mast with a traverse, which should tear down the possibly still raised pantograph of a vehicle leaving the subway area , so that it does not pose a danger due to the higher voltage of the railway overhead line.
When it joined the Frankfurter Verkehrsverbund (FVV), the Taunusbahn was added as a line in 1993, initially only from Friedrichsdorf, then from Bad Homburg and Frankfurt (Main) Hauptbahnhof. Between 2003 and 2006, S-Bahn traffic was converted to the newer 423 series .
future plans
In the future, the U2 trains will end on the so-called Fürstengleis (track 1) in the Bad Homburg station if this line is extended along the existing track from Bad Homburg- Gonzenheim to there. A corresponding project has been in the planning stage since 2007.
The planning approval procedure was originally supposed to begin in June 2010, and the Darmstadt regional council began the consultation procedure in March 2011. The public utilities public transport company Frankfurt planned (as of February 2012) with a start of construction in July 2013, the start-up would then have been scheduled for December, 2015. Apart from the vegetation that has grown up, the Fürstengleis is currently no longer passable due to partially dismantled switches .
In July 2013, the city administration assumed a plan approval by 2015, which could have enabled it to go into operation at the end of 2017. The planning approval decision was issued on January 25, 2016; the pending lawsuits have no suspensive effect. An implementation plan and schedule was not yet known in 2017. In the summer of 2017, the state of Hesse signaled that the costs would be largely shared, but the financing was not yet fully clarified. [outdated]
Tied to the state elections in Hesse in 2018 , a referendum on the U2 extension was carried out in Bad Homburg . This won the approval of the citizens with a majority.
The trains of the planned Regional Tangente West (RTW) will also use a section of the Homburg Railway and should start and end in Bad Homburg.
business
The route is now operated by the S5 ( Frankfurt Süd –Friedrichsdorf) of the S-Bahn Rhein-Main and the line 15 (Taunusbahn) , (Frankfurt–) Bad Homburg – Friedrichsdorf– Usingen - Grävenwiesbach operated by the Hessische Landesbahn GmbH (HLB) - Brandoberndorf, drive on. The S-Bahn lines S3 (Darmstadt – Bad Soden) and S4 (Darmstadt / Langen – Kronberg) continue to use the Homburg Railway section from the City Tunnel to Frankfurt-Rödelheim. The S6 also uses the tracks to Frankfurt Westbahnhof instead of the Main-Weser Railway, which runs parallel to it. The route is integrated into the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV).
Oddities
The Weißkirchen train station was built exactly on the border between Hesse and Nassau , today the boundary between Oberursel and Steinbach , which led to differences several times in the history of the station.
literature
- Railway Atlas Germany - Edition 2005/2006 . Schweers and Wall, Cologne 2005, ISBN 3-89494-134-0 .
- Walter Söhnlein, Gerta Walsh: Clear the way! - Railways in the Taunus 1860 - 1910 - 2010. Societäts Verlag , Frankfurt 2010, ISBN 978-3-7973-1223-5 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Further construction of the subway in Bad Homburg . In: SIGNAL . No. 1 (February / March), 2007, p. 22 ( signalarchiv.de ).
- ↑ Martina Propson-Hauck: From Gonzenheim to the Kaisergleis. In: Frankfurter Rundschau . April 21, 2010, accessed March 23, 2014 .
- ^ RP Darmstadt starts the hearing process ( Memento from October 29, 2013 in the Internet Archive ); the procedure documents are not archived.
- ↑ Presentation of information for citizens Extension of the U2 tram to Bad Homburg station. April 4, 2011, archived from the original on February 10, 2013 ; Retrieved February 9, 2013 .
- ↑ Bad Homburg building project. Stadtwerke Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main, February 2012, archived from the original on March 5, 2012 ; Retrieved February 9, 2013 .
- ↑ 2017 City is waiting for the OK ( page no longer available , search in web archives ) Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Frankfurter Neue Presse from July 15, 2013
- ↑ a b Project sheets for local and long-distance transport as of May 2017. Hessian Ministry for Economic Affairs, Energy, Transport and Regional Development, accessed on December 26, 2017 .
- ^ Bernhard Biener, Bad Homburg: Line U2 to Bad Homburg: cost estimate will be checked again . In: FAZ.NET . August 29, 2017, ISSN 0174-4909 ( faz.net [accessed December 26, 2017]).
- ^ Citizens' decision Bad Homburg 2018. Retrieved on October 28, 2018 .
S-Bahn: Leading article • Line overview • City tunnel Frankfurt (S1 – S6, S8, S9) • City tunnel Offenbach (S1 / S2 / S8 / S9) | S1 West Taunus Railway • East Rodgaubahn | S2 West Main-Lahn-Bahn • East Offenbach-Bieber – Dietzenbach | S3 North Limes Railway • South Main-Neckar Railway | S4 North Kronberger Bahn | S5 North Homburg Railway | S6 North Main-Weser-Bahn | S7 Riedbahn | S8 / S9 West Mainbahn • Frankfurt Airport Loop • East Südmainische S-Bahn
Suburban railways: Königsteiner Bahn (12) | Soden Railway (11) | Taunusbahn (15) | Friedrichsdorf – Friedberg (16) | Ländchesbahn (21) | Niddertal Railway (34) | Horlofftalbahn ( 47 / 48 ) | Hanau Railway (54) | Dreieichbahn (61) | Odenwaldbahn (80/81/82/85/86)
General: List of the railway lines in the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund | Railway traffic in Frankfurt am Main