Cologne-Minden Railway Company

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Route network of the Cologne-Minden Railway Company
Kme2.png
dark red Trunk line 1845-47
pink Holland route 1854-1856
green Deutz-Giessen Railway 1859-62
blue Hamburg-Venloer Bahn 1870-74
bright red Emschertal Railway 1866-78
yellow Bocholt Railway 1878
orange Herford – Detmold line 1879/80
Sign indicating the route of industrial culture at Essen-Katernberg Süd train station

The Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (previously also written as " Cöln -Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft", short form therefore usually "CME") belonged to the Bergisch-Märkische and the Rheinische among the large railway companies that started operating from the middle of the 19th century. Century opened up the Ruhr area and large parts of today's North Rhine-Westphalia by rail.

founding

The Köln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft was founded in Cologne in 1843 to build a railway line between the Rhineland, which became Prussian in 1815, and the northern German seaports, as well as the Prussian state capital Berlin . From the 1830s onwards, several railway committees in the cities of Düsseldorf , Cologne and Aachen had struggled among themselves and with the Prussian government to find a solution. In the foreground of all efforts was the avoidance of the Dutch Rhine tariffs , which made the import and export of goods considerably more expensive for transport on the Rhine .

Some of the Cologne committee members under David Hansemann and the Aachen committee spoke out in favor of a railway line through Belgium, which had become independent in 1830, to the seaport of Antwerp. They founded the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft in Cologne as early as July 9, 1837 and began building the railway line from Cologne via Aachen to the Belgian border, which went into operation in sections from 1839 to 1843.

The other interested parties saw greater advantages in a connection between the Rhineland and the Weser with a terminal in Minden , in order to use a connection to the seaport of Bremen from there by ship . At the same time, interested parties from the Kingdom of Hanover advertised a rail connection via Hanover , Braunschweig and Magdeburg to Berlin .

The Kingdom of Prussia took over 1/7 of the share capital when the company was founded.

Eduard Kühlwetter was a conductor / director from 1844 to 1889.

Track construction

Main route Cologne – Minden

Main route of the Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft on the Germany 1849 railway map

Long negotiations were held regarding the route between Cologne and Dortmund . Interested parties from the Bergisches Land and from the industrial region in Wuppertal wanted a route through the hill country there. However, this was rejected by the company due to the high costs of the necessary engineering structures. An appraisal by the Aachen merchant and banker David Hansemann tipped the balance to lead the route via Düsseldorf, Duisburg and today's Ruhr area and bypass the Wupper valley. Hansemann had considered the Bergische Trasse to be economically more important, but preferred the other one for reasons of cost.

On December 18, 1843, the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft received the Prussian concession for the route from Deutz via Mülheim am Rhein , Düsseldorf , Duisburg , Oberhausen , Altenessen , Gelsenkirchen , Wanne , Herne and Castrop-Rauxel to Dortmund and on via Hamm , Oelde , Rheda , Bielefeld and Herford to Minden . With this route, the cheaper variant was chosen, which circumnavigated the Bergisches Land to the north.

Elevation profile of the rejected route draft from 1833 over Elberfeld , Barmen , Hagen, Dortmund, Soest, Lippstadt and Bielefeld

The first section Deutz – Düsseldorf was opened on December 20, 1845, the second to Duisburg on February 9, 1846. The following year, Hamm was reached on May 15 via Dortmund, and on October 15, 1847, the entire 263-kilometer route to Minden was initially completed as a single-track route. On the same day, the Hanover – Minden line of the Royal Hanover State Railways went into operation. One of the great railway lines proposed by Friedrich List , for which Friedrich Harkort had also advertised, was thus realized.

Schildescher Viaduct

The viaduct in the Bielefeld district of Schildesche is a remarkable bridge structure along the main line . The original structure was completed in 1847 with two tracks and 28 arches . In 1917, as part of the four-track expansion of the line, a largely identical bridge was placed next to it. After severe damage in the Second World War , passenger traffic was diverted via a bypass route, the so-called “rubber railway”, until 1965.

Connecting tracks

The mining industry, which with its coal transports was soon to dominate the rail traffic at the time, was now looking for a connection to the loading stations on this new route via long connecting railways. In an annual report of the CME from 1872 there is a table of over 100 connecting railways. Some of them are only a few 100 meters long, but most of them are up to 10 kilometers long. Only six connecting lines were owned by the CME. 75 connections were used by locomotives. Over 25 were operated as horse-drawn trams, where the wagons were “driven by human and horse forces from the resp. Owners ”were moved.

Ruhrort – Homberg route

During its almost forty years of existence, the CME largely restricted itself to long-distance transport. She only built shorter connecting or connecting lines in a few cases, e.g. B. 1848 to the ports in Duisburg and (Duisburg-) Ruhrort .

While the new line was being built, the company had contacted the Ruhrort-Crefeld-Kreis Gladbacher Eisenbahngesellschaft about a connection across the Rhine. These discussions led to a contract between the two railway companies on March 29, 1849 to set up a ferry service for railroad cars. The Ruhrort – Homberg ferry began operating on November 12, 1852.

Cologne Cathedral Bridge

Since the beginning of the 1850s, the state was pressured to build a railway bridge over the Rhine in Cologne. In 1847, the City Council of Cologne also turned to King Friedrich Wilhelm IV with the same request , who, through the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Public Works, commissioned the Prussian senior building officer Karl Lentze with the preparation. Since at that time the statics for bridges with the large spans of 100 meters were not yet mastered, the bridge was initially only planned for the passage of individual wagons that were to be pulled by horses. The aim was to avoid having to reload the cargo twice when using the ferries or carts.

During construction from 1855 to 1859, the decision was made to build a double-track bridge with locomotive traffic, which was fitted with a swing bridge on the west bank for interruption in the event of war. This was a requirement of the military, which had to give its approval for all bridge projects. Models were the railway bridges over the Vistula near Dirschau and over the Nogat near Marienburg, both of which went into operation in 1857 for the Prussian Eastern Railway. These were lattice girder bridges with spans of 131 and 101 meters. It was built under the direction of Hermann Lohse , who had already built the railway bridges at Dirschau and Marienburg and who later built the first railway crossing of the Elbe near Hamburg for the company.

Construction began after King Friedrich Wilhelm IV laid the foundation stone on October 3, 1855. It was opened in 1859 as the second railway bridge over the Rhine together with a road bridge built in parallel. The first railway bridge over the Rhine was the German-Swiss Rhine bridge Waldshut – Koblenz , which was completed in the same year and which is still in operation today. However, it only has spans of a maximum of 52 meters.

Holland route

With the "Holland route" from Oberhausen via Wesel and Emmerich to the German / Dutch border near Elten and on to Arnhem (NL), the next 73 kilometers long railway line was built. It was opened in sections from February 15 to October 20, 1856. On the section from Emmerich to the border, the CME left the Dutch "Nederlandse Rhijnspoorweg" (NRS) to operate.

There were delays in route planning in Wesel. Here the military made demands as to how and where the railway line was allowed to pass the Wesel fortress. Forts had to be built on the Lippe Bridge and near Wesel train station .

Deutz-Giessen Railway

To the ore mines in Siegerland, the Cöln-Minden Railway also built the 183-kilometer-long Deutz-Gießen Railway via Betzdorf , Dillenburg and Wetzlar to Gießen with a branch to Siegen from Deutz in 1859/62 . In Giessen, it joined the Hessian railways.

The construction of the line required 26.5 million thalers. Because of the special route conditions, the construction costs were calculated at 1,088,226 thalers per mile, while they were only 782,611 thalers per mile for the main line.

Paris-Hamburg Railway or Hamburg-Venlo Railway

Appelhülsen station on the Hamburg-Venloer Bahn; in ruinous condition since the 1990s, demolished around 2010

At the end of the 1860s, the largest project of the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft came about when Prussia decided to use a German railroad company to provide the rail connection from Paris to Hamburg (so-called "Paris-Hamburg Railroad") on German soil , which was planned by a French railroad company built and operated.

She won the tender for the 550-kilometer route, then called the Hamburg-Venloer Bahn , against her competitor, the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . Investments of 43 million talers were calculated for its construction.

However, the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft reserved the right to connect this new connection, planned from Venlo via Wesel, Münster and Osnabrück to Bremen and Hamburg, to its existing line from Cologne to Minden. Therefore, on January 1, 1870, it began building the new line in Wanne as a branch from its main line. During the Franco-Prussian War , large parts were provisionally put into operation: on January 1, 1870 to Münster, on September 1, 1871 to Osnabrück and on May 15, 1873 to Hemelingen. The line was finally completed on June 1, 1874.

While construction was still in progress, the track in Haltern began to be laid in the direction of Venlo, and Wesel was reached on March 1, 1874. The completion of the last section to Venlo was delayed by December 31, 1874 due to the newly built Rhine bridge near Wesel , at that time the longest railway bridge in Germany. Already at the planning stage, it was argued that no return could be expected from this section. The Venlo – Straelen section was shut down on October 3, 1936 after 62 years at the instigation of the Dutch State Railways. Bit by bit, most of the remaining section from Straelen via Wesel to Haltern was taken out of service and dismantled.

The section from Wanne-Eickel Hbf to Hamburg, on the other hand, is one of the busiest railway lines in Germany and is also known as the " taxiway ".

Emschertal Railway

With the 50 kilometer long Emschertalbahn from Dortmund to Duisburg- Neumühl via Castrop-Rauxel Süd, Herne , Wanne-Eickel , Gelsenkirchen-Bismarck , Essen-Karnap and Oberhausen-Osterfeld Süd, essentially parallel to the Emscher , was built between 1874 and 1878 the CME like the other railway companies in the Ruhr area and also looked for a connection to the local mines and smelters.

Locomotives and wagons

1B freight locomotive of the Cologne-Mindener Railway, built by Hartmann in 1862

Until 1869, the company put 70 Crampton locomotives with a 2'A wheel arrangement into service for passenger train traffic over their consistently long routes. They reached top speeds of up to 112 km / h with a completely smooth run. These machines, often called spinning wheels, only had one drive axle with wheels almost 2 meters in diameter and a very long, low-lying boiler. Some of these machines were later converted into 1B machines (one lead axle, two drive axles) with wheel diameters of only 1525 mm in the company's own central workshop in Dortmund.

From 1871, 1B-coupled machines with wheel diameters of 1981 mm were purchased for the increasingly heavy trains. These machines, known as “burnouts”, had a particularly long wheelbase of 5690 mm and a sagging standing cup. Other passenger locomotives had the 1B wheel arrangement. The 363 freight locomotives had the axle arrangements 1B and C. The tank locomotives had very different axle arrangements.

The 1B-coupled locomotives dominated freight transport. Machines with three driven axes (C) were put into service in small numbers from 1865. The freight cars were painted gray. The passenger cars were two-axle compartment cars.

nationalization

The law to nationalize the Cöln-Mindener Railway was promulgated on December 20, 1879. At that time, the Prussian state already owned 74 percent of the company's share capital. The "Royal Direction of the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn zu Köln" of the Prussian State Railways , which was founded for the administration and management of the railway, took over the management as early as January 1, 1879. On February 23, 1881, this direction became the "Royal Railway Directorate" Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine "renamed.

When it was nationalized, the Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft had 619 locomotives and 17,023 cars. They operated a rail network of 1108 kilometers in length. Of these, 467 kilometers were double-tracked. The purchase price financed by government bonds was 509,326,500 marks. The company was dissolved on January 1, 1886.

See also

literature

  • Bernd Franco Hoffmann: The Cologne-Mindener Railway: Railways through the Rhineland and Ruhr area. Sutton-Verlag, Erfurt 2018, ISBN 3-9540-0972-2 .
  • Annual reports of the Cöln – Mindener Eisenbahn
  • Excerpt from the negotiations of the meeting of the Administration Council held in Cologne on July 26, 1844. - Kölnische Zeitung, Cologne 1844. Digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf
  • Deutsche Reichsbahn: The German Railways in their Development 1835–1935 . Berlin 1935.
  • Karl-Peter Ellerbrock, Marina Schuster (Ed.): 150 Years of Cologne – Minden Railway. Catalog for the series of exhibitions and events of the same name. Klartext, Essen 1997, ISBN 3-88474-560-3 .
  • Wolfgang Klee, Günther Scheingraber: Prussian Railway History , Part 1: 1838–1870 . In: Prussia Report Volume No. 1.1 . Merker, Fürstenfeldbruck 1992, ISBN 3-922404-35-9 .
  • Olaf Nordwig et al .: Holistic renewal of stations and railway lines! The IBA project “Cologne – Minden Railway” . ILS, Dortmund 2000, ISBN 3-8176-1098-X .
  • Rolf Ostendorf: Ruhr area railway junction - The history of the development of the Revierbahnen since 1838 . Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1979, ISBN 3-87943-650-9 .

Web links

Commons : Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Ottmann: Hansemann as a railway politician. In: Bernhard Poll (Ed.): David Hansemann 1790 - 1864 - 1964. IHK Aachen, Aachen 1964, pp. 65–79.
  2. ^ Judith Breuer: The first Prussian railway bridges. In: Book accompanying the exhibition at the East Prussian State Museum Lüneburg in 1988, p. 58

Coordinates: 50 ° 56 '25.3 "  N , 6 ° 58' 27.9"  E