kk Northern State Railways
The kk Nördliche Staatsbahn (NStB) was the first railway built by the state in the Austrian Empire . It lies in the area of today's Czech Republic .
history
prehistory
Although there were only a few state railways in Europe around 1840, the President of the General Court Chamber , Carl Friedrich von Kübeck, advocated the construction of such railways. On the one hand, this was due to the industrialization of Bohemia and the connection to the North and Baltic Seas ; on the other hand, military reasons played a role, as relations with Prussia were moderate, but the Kingdom of Saxony was an ally.
As early as 1836 the Prague lawyer Max Lichtner received a concession for a railway line from Brno to Prague , but could not raise any money for it. However, this concession prevented the Kaiser-Ferdinands-Nordbahn ( KFNB ) from failing when it applied for its own concession for this route. Since the power in the state did not rest with Emperor Ferdinand I , but with the State Conference , Salomon Rothschild and thus the KFNB friendly Metternich Kübeck to leave the operation of the railways to private individuals.
On December 19, 1841, Kübeck's concept was approved and Hermenegild von Francesconi was appointed general director. Since Francesconi came from the KFNB, he had already worked out plans with him that were very convenient for the Northern Railway, especially the eastern endpoints in Brno and Olomouc . On August 3, 1842, the construction of the Olomouc-Prague line was ordered and began on September 4 of that year.
Construction and opening
Numerous engineering structures were necessary to avoid curves and inclines. The substructure was prepared for two tracks, but only the short section between Prague and Biechowitz was actually double-tracked. The standards of this route were later adopted by the other state railways. In 1843, the Talachini company began building the Brno – Böhmisch Trübau line . The company's austerity measures resulted in poor treatment of workers, resulting in numerous cases of typhus , amoebic dysentery and typhus . In addition, terrain difficulties and the March Revolution delayed completion until 1849. The remaining parts were completed in several stages by 1851.
In 1842, in a treaty between Austria and Saxony, the state border at Niedergrund was established as the place where the railways of the two states would merge . The operation of the line from Bodenbach to the border was leased to the Saxon-Bohemian State Railway , which ultimately lasted until the Sudetenland was incorporated into Germany in October 1938.
- Opening dates
- September 1, 1845 : Olomouc - Prague
- January 1, 1849 : Brno - Bohemian Trübau
- June 1, 1850 : Prague - Lobositz
- October 1, 1850 : Lobositz– Aussig
- April 8, 1851 : Aussig - Bodenbach - state border at Niedergrund
business
There were initially 36 stations on the network, 34 of which were newly built and additional buildings were built at the remaining two (Brno and Olomouc). The company was run by KFNB, with whom an operating contract was concluded on September 1, 1845 . In addition to the financial regulations and the obligation of the Northern Railway to train state railway personnel, this also contained a wagon exchange agreement for freight wagons. However, this passage soon led to disputes, as the northern railway wagons could not be used at will due to the small clearance profile of the state railway. These and other conflicts led the state railway to take over operations on May 1, 1850 . Initially, people drove on the left, but in 1851 they switched to right-hand traffic.
sale
Because of the budget deficit of the state, loans had to be raised abroad. The fact that Rothschild's influence waned after Metternich's flight was exploited by his rivals Georg Simon Sina and Arnstein & Eskeles , who turned to the French Société Générale du Crédit Mobilier and Finance Minister Andreas von Baumgartner proposed the sale of the state railways to the Kaiser . On October 22, 1854, the consortium of Crédit mobilier, Sina and Arnstein was awarded a pre-concession for railways, mines and smelting works, state estates, forests . This soon resulted in the StEG , which acquired the northern and southeastern state railways for only 170 million francs.
See also
- Brno – Česká Třebová railway line (Brno – Trübau)
- Railway line Česká Třebová – Praha (Trübau – Prague)
- Railway line Praha – Děčín (Prague – Bodenbach)
- Railway line Děčín – Dresden-Neustadt (Bodenbach – state border)
- Railway line Česká Třebová – Olomouc (Trübau – Olomouc)
literature
- Johann Stockklausner: Steam operation in old Austria 1837–1918 . Slezak-Verlag, Vienna 1979, ISBN 3-900134-41-3 .
- Herbert Dietrich: The forerunners of the State Railroad Company (StEG) . In: Railway . 2, 1987, ISSN 0013-2756 , pp. 21-24.
