Lahn Valley Railway

This article describes the Lahntalbahn on the Koblenz – Limburg – Wetzlar section. For a description of the Cölbe – Bad Laasphe – Erndtebrück route, see Obere Lahntalbahn .

Wetzlar – Koblenz
Route number (DB) :	3030 (Hohenrhein – Oberlahnstein) 3710 (Wetzlar – Koblenz)
Course book section (DB) :	625
Route length:	104 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Route class :	D4
Power system :	Limburg – Eschhofen: 15 kV 16.7 Hz  ~
Top speed:	120 km / h
Dual track :	Koblenz – Niederlahnstein Hohenrhein – Dausenau Nassau (Lahn) –Balduinstein Fachingen – Wetzlar
Legend Left Rhine route from Cologne Moselle route from Trier 103.7 Koblenz Central Station Left Rhine route to Mainz Horchheim Railway Bridge ( Rhine ) Right stretch of the Rhine from Cologne 101.2 Koblenz Horchheimer Bridge ( Abzw ) 99.2 Niederlahnstein Right stretch of the Rhine from Wiesbaden 99.0 Oberlahnstein (original route, until May 30, 1983) Lahn 96.7 Hohenrhein (Abzw) 93.9 Friedrichssegen (formerly connection   to the narrow-gauge rack railway ) 90.1 Never 88.2 Bad Ems West 86.4 Bad Ems 82.8 Dausenau (Hp + Abzw) 79.4 Lahn 78.6 Nassau (Lahn) 76.4 Hollerich Tunnel (319 m) 75.2 Langenau Tunnel (232 m) 74.9 Gelbach 74.6 Obernhofer Tunnel (450 m) 74.4 Lahn 74.2 Obernhof (Lahn) 72.5 Kalkofen tunnel (592 m) 67.9 Laurenburger Tunnel (225 m) 67.3 Laurenburg (Lahn) 61.1 Cramberger Tunnel (732 m) 61.4 Balduinstein 60.6 Lahn 60.5 Daubach tunnel (193 m) 60.0 Kehrberg tunnel (262 m) 58.2 Lahn 58.0 Fachingen (Lahn) 57.7 Fachinger Tunnel (425 m) 55.5 Diezer Tunnel (105 m) 55.8 Diez Aartalbahn to Wiesbaden Ost  reactivation planned 55.2 Freiendiezer Tunnel (65 m) B 54 / B 417 Oberwesterwaldbahn from Altenkirchen State border between Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse State border Hesse-Rhineland-Palatinate State border between Rhineland-Palatinate and Hesse 52.2 Limburg (Lahn) A 3 50.3 SFS Cologne-Rhine / Main 48.9 Eschhofen Main-Lahn-Bahn to Frankfurt 47.4 Ennerich Tunnel (494 m) 46.8 Lahn Kerkerbachbahn from Dehrn (narrow gauge,   three-rail track, today standard gauge) 46.6 Kerkerbach former Kerkerbachbahn to Mengerskirchen 44.6 Runkel 41.7 Villmar 40.9 Villmarer Tunnel (228 m) 38.1 Arfurt (Lahn) Lahn 35.0 Aumenau Aumenau sheepfold (ore loading, until 1918) 31.2 Fürfurt 29.5 Gräveneck Tunnel (127 m) 28.7 Graeveneck 27.6 Schmidtskopf tunnel (223 m) 27.1 Michelsberg Tunnel (433 m) 25.5 Kirschhofen Tunnel (495 m) 24.9 Guntersau Weiltalbahn from Weilmünster 23.8 Gensberg (Abzw) 23.5 Weilburger Tunnel (302 m) Lahn 23.0 Weilburg 20.2 Löhnberg Ulmtalbahn from Beilstein Lindelbachbahn from the Tiefenbach mining area 14.3 Stockhausen (Lahn) Lahn B 49 Ernst Railway from Philippstein (narrow gauge) 10.7 Leun / Braunfels (former Lahnbahnhof) 7.5 Solms formerly Solmsbachtalbahn from Grävenwiesbach 5.5 Albshausen 2.6 Awanst Bundeswehr loading facility Lahn Connection curve to the Dill route dill B 49 Dill run from Siegen 0.0 Wetzlar Dill route to Giessen Swell:

The Lahntalbahn is a railway line that originally ran from Oberlahnstein , today from Niederlahnstein to Wetzlar . It was part of the Kanonenbahn between Wetzlar and Koblenz .

Route description

Regional train in Runkel (August 2003)

Most of the Lahntalbahn hugs the meandering course of the Lahn valley , only a few meters above the water level of the river, and is therefore characterized by numerous bridges and tunnels . It is very scenic. Since the line was never fundamentally modernized until 2015, numerous engineering structures , form signals and accompanying telegraph lines were still preserved on it. In its Hessian section, the route is a cultural monument according to the Hessian Monument Protection Act , on the Rhineland-Palatinate side, the signaling technology was modernized in 2015. The route is operated by the Deutsche Bahn AG as course book route 625 and listed under route number 3710.

history

Duchy of Nassau

Reception building of the station Weilburg , a Every system works by Heinrich Velde

After the Taunus Railway between Frankfurt am Main and Wiesbaden began operating in 1840 , interest arose in developing other parts of the Duchy of Nassau by rail . As early as 1845 there was a first initiative by Frankfurt banks. The Nassau government initially rejected the project because the country had been investing heavily in expanding the Lahn as a waterway since 1844 .

The next interested party was the Belgian railway engineer Frans Splingard in 1849 and in 1850 was also granted a concession for the preparatory work on the railway construction. The prospecting for the route was not carried out by Splingard, but by an engineer Hufnagel from Kassel . The concession was then applied for by a Belgian merchant who was backed by a London bank who also set up a public company to carry out the project. Ultimately, however, the negotiations that had been going on for almost two years failed due to financial issues and the fact that the German small states were involved , because the eastern section of the route had to run on Prussian and Grand-Ducal Hessian territory .

On January 27, 1850, a railway committee was founded in Weilburg , which brought together various local initiatives along the Lahn, but without founding its own railway company. Further applications for concessions were rejected because the Nassau government was meanwhile negotiating with the Nassau Rhein-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft about the project, which had been established for the construction and operation of the Nassau Rheinbahn and whose route led to Niederlahnstein . This also received its first concession on August 24, 1855 and was renamed the Nassauische Rhein- und Lahn-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . The final concession followed on March 31, 1857.

Bad Ems station concourse

A first section of the railway from Oberlahnstein to Bad Ems was opened on July 1, 1858, but shortly afterwards it was buried by a landslide . Since the Nassauische Rhein- und Lahn-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft obviously lacked the will and the necessary capital for the rapid construction of the lines, the Duchy of Nassau withdrew the concession on October 14, 1858, nationalized the railway, and built and operated the line within the framework of the Nassau State Railways . The line as it exists today was essentially designed by the railway engineer Moritz Hilf , opened in sections from 1860 and was completed on January 10, 1863. The total length of the tunnels alone is almost six kilometers.

The architect and Royal Railway and Operations Inspector Heinrich Velde was responsible for the high-rise buildings, the station buildings, the stationkeepers' houses and the tunnel portals . Based on a design by him, numerous standardized station buildings were built along the Lahntalbahn.

Prussia

Limburg railway station 1880 - the station building is on the right edge of the picture.

With the fall of the Duchy of Nassau as an independent state in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866, the line became part of the Prussian State Railways . Shortly before this, a direct connection from Oberlahnstein to Koblenz was established by the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft , for which a Lahn bridge and the Pfaffendorfer bridge over the Rhine were built.

In the German Empire after 1871, the Lahntalbahn from Wetzlar to Koblenz became part of the so-called Kanonenbahn , an extension of the Berlin-Wetzlarer Bahn , a military strategic railway from Berlin to Metz via Wetzlar, Koblenz and Trier . As part of the associated route expansion, the second track was also laid between 1875 and 1880 .

After the Second World War

Limburg station after a bombing raid on December 23, 1944

Between Limburg and Koblenz, however, the Niederlahnstein – Hohenrhein, Dausenau - Nassau and Fachingen - Balduinstein sections were only rebuilt on a single track after the Second World War . The location of the second track can still be seen structurally today on the tunnels and the abutments and pillars of the Lahn bridges.

Before the Hessentag 2005 in Weilburg, the middle platform of the Weilburg train station was renewed and adapted to be handicapped accessible . A makeshift platform built for this occasion was then removed again.

In September 2010, the Leun / Braunfels station was downgraded from the station to a stop , the central platform was removed and a new side platform with a pedestrian overpass was built. This saved the staffing of the stop. At the same time, the platform lighting was renewed at the Solms , Leun / Braunfels and Stockhausen (Lahn) stations.

On February 21, 2010 the association Arbeitsgemeinschaft Mechanische Stellwerke e.V. was founded in Limburg . V. founded in order to prevent the demolition of the historical signal box "Bo", which is worth protecting. The working group has set itself the goal of renovating the signal box and preserving it for posterity in the long term as a monument to the history of the railway in the Lahn valley. The signal box is located at the northern exit of the Balduinstein train station just before the Lahn bridge. The signal box was inaugurated in 1913 and went out of service on September 1, 2003. During the active period, the signal box was constantly manned by a switch attendant. In 1929 a mechanical signal box of the Bruchsal J type was installed. Later, a push button interlocking Dr S2 from Siemens was retrofitted to operate the electrical points. From the decommissioning of the Bo interlocking to the modernization in 2015, the dispatcher in the reception building (Bf) controlled all points and signals at the station.

In the course of the Hessentag 2012 , the Wetzlar train station was completely renovated. The trains of the Lahntalbahn have been departing from new, modernized platforms since the work was completed.

In 2015, the signaling technology on the Rhineland-Palatinate side (section Diez-Niederlahnstein) was comprehensively modernized, the old mechanical and relay interlockings were decommissioned and, including signals and level crossings, were replaced by two new electronic interlockings (ESTW) at Diez train station on August 24, 2015 and at the Nievern stop to secure passengers on the intermediate platform at the same level. At the same time, the platforms, which were often still low, were replaced by new ones at the usual height of 55 centimeters. In the years 2018/2019, extensive work took place on the lower Lahn in order to save the last gatekeeper post in Mielle and the dispatcher at the Nievern stop and henceforth the entire Rhineland-Palatinate part of the Lahn valley railway between Diez and Niederlahnstein from the ESTW in Diez to control.

present

Due to new safety regulations, the cross-section of many tunnels needs to be widened in order to be able to create escape routes next to the tracks. In 2011 and 2012, the Hollricher and Langenau tunnels were therefore initially widened under single-track operations. The work was carried out with a specially developed tunneling portal during ongoing operations, with the tracks in the tunnels pivoted in the middle.

Planning

Unrealized extensions

electrification

The north portal of the Weilburger tunnel

The winding route is unsuitable for higher speeds. The Lahn valley route is one of the few main routes in Germany that is largely not electrified , with the exception of the short section Eschhofen - Limburg (Lahn) , part of the electrified Main-Lahn-Bahn Frankfurt Hbf - Limburg . Since many of the 18 tunnels and several bridges are too low, electrification - planned in the 1970s - would have been very costly. The insufficient clearance profile of the tunnels also prevents the use of double-deck cars .

In a concept presented in 2005 by the regional management association in Central Hesse , the proposal was made to carry out electrification with an induction rail and to make the Lahn valley railway a test vehicle for this system. It would offer the advantage that none of the numerous level crossings would have to be replaced by overpasses or underpasses. On the other hand, such an isolated operation would not be very economical.

Connection to the high-speed line Cologne – Frankfurt

The new Cologne – Groß-Gerau line planned in the 1970s was to be linked to the Lahn Valley Railway via a tower station on the right bank of the Rhine between Limburg and Diez . Even during the planning for the high-speed line Cologne – Frankfurt there were considerations to link this with the Lahn Valley Railway between the Limburg (Lahn) and Eschhofen stations through a common tower station, which failed because of the costs.

Future development

The Albshausen and Stockhausen stations are to be extensively refurbished in the future ^[obsolete] through a funding program from the State of Hesse.

passenger traffic

history

Regional train to Giessen at Balduinstein station (August 1997)

Until the end of the 1970s, there was long-distance traffic on the Lahntalbahn, including a pair of hedge cable trains from Trier (temporarily Luxembourg ) to Westerland (Sylt) . For some timetable periods, the Paris – Trier – Koblenz express train was also extended via the Lahn Valley Railway to Giessen. Very popular with spa guests also had coaches Dortmund - Bad Ems , which was set in the express train Koblenz-Limburg-Frankfurt. The express trains Koblenz – Gießen were extended several times a day via the Vogelsbergbahn to Fulda . A curiosity was the Frankfurt – Cologne express train, which only ran on the Weiltalbahn on working days and only in one direction between Weilburg and Limburg.

For many years, locomotive-hauled trains and multiple units or multiple units shared the traffic on the Lahntalbahn . Trains hauled by locomotives were mainly used in commuter and school traffic and were mainly made up of type E 30 conversion wagons or express train wagons , which were pulled by class 211 diesel locomotives until the 1980s , and later by class 216 . Before 1990, Silberling cars were only seen sporadically.

Regional train to Koblenz at Nassau (Lahn) station (September 1998)

The express trains and some express trains were hauled by class 220 diesel locomotives and formed from the usual DB express train wagons. At the end of the 1980s, brand-new class 628 diesel multiple units were used, which gradually replaced the rail buses and many locomotive-hauled trains. The latter, however, continued to operate until December 2005, initially for many years with class 212 and 216 locomotives, which were gradually replaced by the 215 series from 1998 , which in turn was replaced by the 218 series in December 2002 . The trains were initially mainly made up of express train wagons, later more and more from silver pieces. With the use of the 215 and 218 series, the locomotive-hauled trains were finally converted to push-pull operation, which had only been used very rarely in the Lahn valley until then.

Outside of business and school traffic, the passenger trains were predominantly multiple units . For a long time, the Lahntalbahn was a focus of the accumulator railcars of the ETA 176 and ETA 150 series , which were stationed in Limburg and ran in trains with up to four cars. The Uerdingen rail buses in various designs were also frequently used . However, from 1987 onwards, the vehicles mentioned were quickly replaced by brand-new 628 diesel multiple units, which also replaced some of the locomotive-hauled trains. This should not change significantly by December 2004.

An intermezzo that lasted only a few months was the use of the 611 series equipped with tilting technology from around 1997 on the continuous regional express connections. These multiple units had to be withdrawn and revised several times due to technical difficulties. They were replaced at short notice by locomotive-hauled trains, especially those of the 216 series, sometimes with locomotives at both ends of the train, in order to be able to meet the short turning times in the terminal stations and to reduce delays.

Up until the 2006/2007 timetable change, a Vectus railcar operated daily between Limburg and Gießen. Since the 2006/2007 timetable change, there have been isolated services from Vectus multiple units between Limburg and Gießen: From Monday to Friday, two pairs of regional trains between Limburg and Gießen ran through Vectus in the evening, as well as several trains on the weekend. These trips were used to transport the Vectus vehicles to the DB Regio car wash in Giessen. Since HLB took over the Limburg – Gießen section in December 2011, these journeys have not been made.

From the 2008/2009 timetable change, class 612 railcars with active tilting technology were used in the through Regional Express trains , which reduced the travel time between Limburg and Gießen by around eleven minutes. From the end of October 2009 to December 2010, however, the tilting technology was switched off again due to problems with the drive system, which is why the trains ran 10 to 15 minutes late. Since the timetable change in December 2010, the Regional Express trains have been running again with active tilting technology.

present

With the 2006/2007 timetable change in December 2006 and the associated cost-saving measures in regional traffic, there were significant cuts in the operation of the route in the outskirts of the day. For this reason, an additional rail service with regular buses (line 282) was set up between Limburg and Weilburg. However, the buses travel much longer than the trains. On the eastern section between Wetzlar and Weilburg, a bus on line 125 runs daily (Monday to Saturday) from Weilburg (departure at 3.56 a.m., Saturday 5.26 a.m.) to Wetzlar to enable early connections to Gießen and Frankfurt. In the opposite direction, there is also a daily evening (Monday to Saturday) bus line 125 from Wetzlar (departure 10:27 p.m.) to Weilburg or on Saturdays to Stockhausen.

Since the 2011/2012 timetable change on December 11, 2011, the RB services (Fulda – Alsfeld–) Gießen – Limburg (RB 25) have been operated by the Hessian State Railway (HLB). While railcars are used of the type Alstom Coradia LINT  41 (series 648) and Siemens Desiro Classic (642 series only additional trains Weilburg casting Green Mountain). In addition, the trains of the Lahntalbahn stop again at Dutenhofen station , which previously passed through without stopping. The RB trains mainly run every hour, occasionally every half hour.

Since the 2014/2015 timetable change on December 15, 2014, the RB services between Limburg and Koblenz have been provided as RB 23 under the name Lahn-Eifel-Bahn by DB Regio Südwest (since 2016: DB Regio Mitte), with the journeys mostly over the Koblenz Stadtmitte stop was extended to Andernach and Mayen. Alstom Coradia LINT 27 (series 640) and LINT 41 (series 648) railcars, which were previously used on the Dreiländerbahn, as well as Bombardier Talent (series 643), which also operate as the Lahntalexpress on RE line 25 between Koblenz, are used and casting can be used. The 612 series tilting technology multiple units previously used for RE services disappeared from the Lahntalbahn. In addition, the RE trains will no longer stop in Eschhofen. HLB took over all other services of Vectus for the timetable change in December 2014 (lot 2 of the Europe-wide tender). Are used Stadler GTW 2/6 (series 646) and Alstom Coradia LINT 27 (series 640) and LINT 41 (series 648).

Since the 2015/2016 timetable change on December 13, 2015, additional compressor trains have been offered between Koblenz and Bad Ems.

Since the 2016/2017 timetable change on December 11, 2016, the trains on line RB 25 (Limburg (Lahn) - Gießen) and the subsequent RB 35 (Gießen - Fulda) have been running continuously as RB 45. In addition, a late RB is now running daily again 45 in both directions (departure shortly before 11 p.m., arrival shortly after midnight), which is why the additional rail services with buses (bus lines 125 and 282) have been thinned out or postponed.

Since the 2018/2019 timetable change on December 9, 2018, additional late trains have been running on the RB 45 on Saturday and Sunday nights as well as on public holidays in both directions between Limburg, Weilburg and Gießen or Fulda and Gießen. Also in the morning there are additional early trains (RB 45) and additional rail services (bus line 125) between Weilburg and Wetzlar or Gießen. In addition, the hourly service of the RB 45, which was previously only run in the summer season (May 1 to October 31), has been extended to the entire year on Saturdays, so that the Lahntalbahn operates hourly from Monday to Saturday all year round.

With the 2019/2020 timetable change on December 15, 2019, the year-round hourly service was also introduced on Sundays and public holidays, which means that it is now offered daily.

Train type	Line designation	route	Remarks	Traction vehicle	Railway company
Regional Express	Lahn-Eifel-Bahn (RE 25)	Koblenz  - Limburg  - Weilburg  - Wetzlar  - Giessen	120-minute intervals	Bombardier Talent , Alstom Coradia LINT 27 & 41	DB regional center
Regional train	Lahn-Eifel-Bahn (RB 23)	Mayen East - Andernach  - Koblenz - Nassau  - Bad Ems - Limburg	60-minute intervals, (plus additional trains, two trains from Kaisersesch )
	Lahn Valley Railway (RB 45)	Limburg - Weilburg - Wetzlar - Gießen - Alsfeld - Fulda	60-minute intervals, (plus repeater trains)	Alstom Coradia LINT 41, Stadler GTW 2/6 (isolated)	Hessian state railway

Service orderer and tariffs

Between Wetzlar and Limburg, the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund (RMV) is the client of the transport services and its tariffs also apply, between Diez and Koblenz the client is the Zweckverband Eisenbahn Personenennahverkehr Rheinland-Pfalz Nord (SPNV Nord) , the tariff of the Verkehrsverbund applies Rhine-Moselle (VRM) . The Hessenticket is valid between Wetzlar and Limburg, the Rhineland-Palatinate Ticket and the Rhineland-Palatinate Ticket + Luxembourg between Limburg and Koblenz, the Quer-through-Land-Ticket is valid on the entire Lahn Valley Railway.

Freight transport

history

The removal of mineral resources, especially ore, but also clay , slate , limestone and phosphorite , and the supply of hard coal for the smelting works played a major role in the construction of the line . Connection, field or cable cars led from numerous ore mines to loading points along the route. In the middle of the 20th century, ore mining fell sharply, in 1983 production in the Fortuna mine , the last ore mine, was stopped and in August 1983 the last ore train was running. Since the decline of ore mining in the Lahn valley, freight traffic on the route has been low. After through-going freight traffic gradually came to a standstill in the 1990s, the Löhnberg – Wetzlar section had no freight traffic at all for years. The extensive track systems originally present in many stations were largely dismantled before the turn of the millennium .

The block train traffic that has existed since the 1980s for the transport of clay extracted from the Westerwald to Italy has experienced an opposite development, which has been handled via the Limburg junction since the closure of the Brexbachtalbahn Engers-Siershahn . The clay wagons loaded in the Westerwald are assembled into block trains in Limburg. From there these run continuously to Italy via the Main-Lahn-Bahn . To this end, Limburg train station still has extensive freight facilities.

Weekly tank car train in Balduinstein (July 2003)

With the exception of a brief revival of freight traffic on the entire route through material transports for the construction of the high-speed line Cologne-Rhine / Main at the end of the 1990s, the sparse remaining traffic was finally limited to the Koblenz-Limburg section with a daily service trip to Weilburg and Löhnberg. In 2002, the first locomotives of the 225 series arrived at the Mainz-Bischofsheim depot and the former Gießen depot , making heavy diesel locomotives available again as successors to the 216 class, which was then being withdrawn for goods traffic in Central Hesse. Since then, isolated freight train services have also been recorded on the western section of the Lahntalbahn on some weekdays. After two decades without goods traffic of supraregional importance, a continuous tank wagon block train ran from Neuwied (initially Bad Hönningen ) to Bernburg (Saale) on Tuesdays from summer 2003 to June 2008 via the Lahntal route. Despite all the dismantling measures, the line capacity of around 100 trains a day in each direction, as well as a fundamental renovation of the superstructure carried out in 2004 for 60 million euros, enable heavy locomotives and long trains as well as tilting technology to be used in the long term. The extensive relocation of train formation tasks from the Gießen freight station to Wetzlar since December 2006 has given freight traffic on the Lahntalbahn a new level of importance in the exchange of individual wagons between the Koblenz-Lützel and Wetzlar freight stations . After two weekday freight trains had been running between the two stations since the summer of 2005, the volume rose again significantly in December 2007.

Situation since 2010

Today, non-stop supra-regional and sometimes even international freight trains run on the route again. So drives z. For example, in autumn a block train with sugar from Wabern in Hesse to Antwerp in Belgium runs twice a week across the route. Class 294 locomotives have been used for regional freight train services since 2010 .

Clay is loaded on the Lahntalbahn at Löhnberg station every day from Monday to Friday and is transported there by truck from the pits in the neighboring Westerwald. Besides Limburg, Löhnberg is the only on-the-way station along the entire Lahn Valley Railway that is still served by freight traffic. In August 2016, the tracks and six switches at Albshausen station were renewed and the overgrown bush cut back, but tracks 3 and 4 are still closed with Sh2 discs . The alternative connection point (Awanst) Wetzlar-West (ex BW - and most recently gas loading facility) is currently not being operated because the corresponding infrastructure for gas loading has been dismantled. The whole area is now used as a storage area, but is still operational. There is a head and side ramp as well as a loading street. At the moment, the junction only has the function of a block , which is remote-controlled from the Wf signal box in Wetzlar.

On June 24, 2010, freight traffic on the Kerkerbach Railway was resumed. Every week (Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday) several lime trains run from the Steeden lime works via the Kerkerbach Railway, which meets the Lahntal Railway in the area of ​​the Kerkerbach station, via Weilburg and Wetzlar to BASF in Ludwigshafen am Rhein .

literature

• Bernhard Hager: In the most blessed part of the lovely country. In: Railway history. 17/2006, ISSN  1611-6283 , pp. 24-37.
• Konrad Fuchs: Railway projects and railway construction on the Middle Rhine 1836–1903. In: Nassau Annals. 67: 158-202 (1956).
• Udo Kandler: Diesel company in the Lahn valley - from the eighties to today. Railway picture archive, EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2007, ISBN 978-3-88255-368-0 .
• Udo Kandler: Lahn Valley Railway. Eisenbahn-Journal special edition III / 89, Hermann Merker Verlag, Fürstenfeldbruck 1989. ISSN  0720-051X
• Heinz Schomann: Railway in Hessen. Railway buildings and routes 1839–1939 (= cultural monuments in Hessen - railway in Hessen 2.1). Stuttgart 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1917-6 , p. 276 ff (route 017).
• Joachim Seyferth: The Lahntalbahn ( rail -Photo Volume 7). Schiene Verlag, Wiesbaden 2006, ISBN 3-926669-07-1 .
• August Spieß : The Lahn valley from its origin to its mouth and its immediate surroundings. Published by LJ Kirchberger, Dillenburg 1866.
• Gregor Atzbach: Lahntalbahn, a journey from Giessen to Koblenz. 2014, ISBN 978-94-6254-740-7 .

Web links

Commons : Lahntalbahn  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Railways left and right of the Lahn: Lahntalbahn (private homepage)
• Railways in the Westerwald: Lahntalbahn (private homepage)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ↑ Query of the course book route 625 at Deutsche Bahn.
4. ^ Fuchs, p. 183.
5. ↑ Fuchs, pp. 183-186.
6. ↑ Fuchs, p. 186 ff.
7. ↑ Fuchs, p. 187 f.
8. ^ Fuchs, p. 188.
9. ↑ eisenbahn-tunnelportale.de: Tunnel portals - pictures of the route: 3710 (KBS 625 / KBS 195)
10. ↑ Schomann.
11. ^ Association for the preservation of the historical signal box "Balduinstein-Ost" ( Memento from May 26, 2017 in the Internet Archive )
12. ↑ Lahntalbahn receives two new tunnels . In: Rhein-Zeitung of April 1, 2011, accessed on August 19, 2011.
13. ↑ Pictures of the construction work on the Hollrich tunnel
14. ↑ Pictures of the construction work on the Langenau tunnel
15. ↑ Jürgen Rech: Drilling & Driving. Tunnel renovation in the Lahn valley . In: railway magazine . No. 9/2012 . Alba publication, September 2012, ISSN  0342-1902 , p. 38–39 (report on the tunnel widening while the train is running).
16. ↑ Raimund Berg: Problems of a high-speed railway connection between the Rhine-Ruhr and Rhine-Main conurbations. In: Railway technical review . 25, No. 12, 1976, ISSN  0013-2845 , pp. 738-744.
17. ↑ Million program for 93 train stations. In: HR online. August 10, 2011, archived from the original on August 2, 2012 ; accessed on February 11, 2018 . 
18. ^ Advance notice by the Nassauische Neue Presse (2008): With tilting technology through the Lahntal , article from January 8, 2008, Limburg an der Lahn
19. ↑ Current announcement of the DB Bahn for Hesse ( Memento from November 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
20. ↑ Hess. Landesbahn operates Vogelsberg and Rhön railway lines from 2011; osthessen-news.de of November 29, 2009
21. ^ Rhein-Zeitung of October 26, 2014: 2015 will be a turbulent year for the Lahntalbahn
22. ^ Zweckverband EisenbahnPersonenNahVerkehr Rheinland-Pfalz Nord: Association assembly - 50th meeting ( Memento from September 24, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
23. ↑ Regional train now runs every hour every day. Gießener Anzeiger Verlags GmbH & Co KG, accessed on December 26, 2019 . 
24. ^ Wolfgang Kilian: 150 years of the Lahn Valley Railway. eisenbahn-magazin 6/2012, p. 29.
25. ↑ Is the station waking up again? Mittelhessen.de - Wetzlar region, accessed on August 31, 2016 . 
26. ^ Schaefer Kalk: Relocation of BASF transports from Stromberg to Steeden ( Memento from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ). Eurailpress website, accessed December 3, 2015