Ludwig's West Railway
The Ludwigs-Westbahn is a state railway line financed by the Kingdom of Bavaria from Bamberg via Schweinfurt and Würzburg to Aschaffenburg and on to Hanau in the then Kurhessian .
history
In the 1840s it soon became apparent that the inland waterway transport promoted by King Ludwig I of Bavaria with the construction of canals between the Main and Danube was not up to the triumphant advance of the railway . After the king had given up his resistance to a main line of the railway, the parliament passed on March 23, 1846 the law to build the Ludwigs-West-Bahn as the second main line of the Bavarian State Railways .
Operation on the Hanau – Aschaffenburg section was initially run by the Frankfurt-Hanauer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft , and from 1863 it was transferred to the Hessian Ludwigsbahn , which also acquired ownership of the section now in Prussia in 1872 . In 1893 the Hessian Ludwig Railway - and with it its ownership and operating rights - passed to the Prussian State Railways .
Route construction and course
After delays in the revolutionary years around 1848, the line was opened in sections from 1852.
- August 1, 1852 Bamberg – Haßfurt (32.5 km)
- November 3, 1852 Haßfurt– Schweinfurt (24.3 km)
- July 1, 1854 Schweinfurt – Würzburg (43.3 km)
- October 1, 1854 Würzburg – Aschaffenburg – state border near Kahl (105.7 km)
The route follows the main valley from Bamberg following the Ludwig-Süd-Nord-Bahn to Schweinfurt, from Würzburg to Lohr and from Aschaffenburg to Kahl. From Schweinfurt to Würzburg, it leads the Maindreieck abbreviated over easy hill country away from the Main bends. The Würzburg train station was a terminal station within the fortified city until 1869. From Lohr to Aschaffenburg, the railway shortens the Mainviereck and crosses the Spessart in a relatively direct line with a crest tunnel, first following the Aubach valley and after the Schwarzkopf tunnel, the Laufach and Aschaf valleys. At the state border in Kahl, it connects to a line of the Frankfurt-Hanauer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft opened on June 22, 1854 , which operated the section from the border to Aschaffenburg as a leased railway. Bavaria had thus connected the two important trading cities of Leipzig and Frankfurt am Main with railway lines.
Buildings
The route has a tunnel in the Schweinfurt urban area, the bridge over the confluence of the Franconian Saale and the Franconian Sinn in the Main near Gemünden , the Schwarzkopf tunnel and two railway embankments near Hain as part of the Spessart ramp .
Noteworthy is the reception building of the Veitshöchheim train station , a particularly representative complex with a royal pavilion, in direct structural reference to Veitshöchheim Castle, which has been preserved from the original building stock .
expansion
The line was double track planned and traced out, however, up to the slope road section Heigenbrücken - Laufach taken in Spessart initially only single track in operation. The next double-track section was the Rottendorf – Würzburg section after the Fürth – Rottendorf line went into operation in 1865. The remaining sections followed with the second track until the 1890s. The line was electrified in the section Rottendorf – Würzburg 1954, Würzburg – Aschaffenburg 1957, Aschaffenburg – Frankfurt / Darmstadt 1960 and Bamberg – Schweinfurt – Rottendorf 1971.
Today's meaning
Today's Würzburg – Aschaffenburg railway is still one of the most important railway lines in Germany.
The Bamberg – Rottendorf section lost its importance for this connection after a direct line between Würzburg and Nuremberg ( Fürth – Würzburg railway ) went into operation . The Bamberg – Schweinfurt – Würzburg line (with a branch in Waigolshausen via the Werntal Railway in the direction of Gemünden) is also important for freight traffic because of its favorable layout. Schweinfurt – Würzburg, however, lost its long-distance traffic importance for the connection Berlin - Erfurt - Stuttgart (- Rome ) (from 1884 through the Brandleitetunnel ) due to the division of Germany .
By 2028 at the latest, as part of the DB long-distance traffic offensive 2030, the Bamberg – Würzburg section of the route with line 61 Bamberg – Stuttgart – Tübingen is to be integrated into the intercity network.
literature
- Deutsche Reichsbahn: The German railways in their development 1835–1935 . Berlin 1935.
- Wolfgang Klee, Ludwig v. Welser: Bayern Report . Volumes 1–5, Fürstenfeldbruck 1993–1995.
- Eckart Rüsch: The Veitshöchheim train station. In: Yearbook for Railway History. 24 (1992), p. 23ff.
- Bernhard Ücker: 150 years of the railway in Bavaria . Fürstenfeldbruck 1985.
See also
Individual evidence
- ^ Eisenbahndirektion Mainz (Ed.): Collection of the published official gazettes . Born 1897, Announcement No. 48, p. 99.
- ↑ Railway station directory of the Association of German Railway Administrations, as well as the other railways in Europe that are in operation or under construction . (1872). - Newer overview .