Mettlacher tunnel
| Mettlacher tunnel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| use | railroad | |||
| traffic connection | Saar route | |||
| place | Mettlach , Besseringen | |||
| length | 1,196 m | |||
| Number of tubes | 1 | |||
| construction | ||||
| start of building | 1856 | |||
| completion | 1860 | |||
| location | ||||
|
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| Coordinates | ||||
| North portal | 49 ° 28 ′ 45 " N , 6 ° 35 ′ 59" E | |||
| South portal | 49 ° 29 ′ 24 " N , 6 ° 35 ′ 55" E | |||
Map with all coordinates: The Mettlacher Tunnel - also known as the Mettlach-Besseringen Railway Tunnel or Saarschleifen Tunnel - is a railway tunnel between Mettlach and Besseringen in Saarland , Germany . It is the only tunnel on the Saar line and is 44.8 km. It is also the longest railway tunnel in Saarland that is still in operation.
course
The tunnel serves to shorten the already very winding railway line along the Saar in the area of the Saar loop . It runs almost dead straight between Mettlach and Besseringen through the massive rocks of the so-called Wadern layers of the high forest .
Construction
The spur tunnel leads over a length of 400 meters through sandstone and 400 meters through hard rock . It consists of a double-track tube. The distance between the track axes in the tunnel is 3.50 meters. The brick tunnel vault stands on the tunnel floor made of natural rock. A drainage channel (central drainage) runs in the middle of the tunnel between the tracks. The tunnel portals were initially designed elaborately. Today the portals are without special decoration.
history
Construction work on the Mettlacher Tunnel began in 1856 and was completed four years later. On May 26, 1860, the tunnel with the last section of the Saarbrücken - Trier connection from Merzig to Konz went into operation.
Since the tunnel runs in parts through the rock layers of the Lower Dyas , the surrounding rock was drained by the tunnel construction, which lost its cohesion and caused strong mountain pressure . As a result, tunnels collapsed several times. When the Mettlach tunnel was blocked by a collapse for the third time in November 1907, the plans for a line from Waldwiese (Westmark) via Büschfeld to Saarburg (Bz. Trier) became relevant. At that time, Lorraine was part of the German Empire . This is how the Merzig – Bettsdorf railway was created between Merzig via Waldwiese (Westmark) to Diedenhofen .
Towards the end of the Second World War , the tunnel was in the combat zone and was blown up on March 15, 1945 when the German troops withdrew. On August 26, 1946, the tunnel was repaired and traffic from Saarbrücken to Trier was again possible.
In the course of the electrification of the Saar Valley Railway in 1973, the Mettlach Tunnel was also equipped with an overhead contact line .
In 2002 the tunnel was included in a renovation and retrofitting program to implement new safety guidelines from the Federal Railway Authority .
In 2004 - 144 years after the tunnel was built - the drainage canal and the track bed in particular had to be renewed. This required a 1251 m long construction site with a working width for the construction work of only 3.10 m. In preparation for the construction work, the unaffected track was also temporarily closed. First, a support wall weighing around 144 t was put in place, which prevented subsidence on the track used during the subsequent removal of the ballast and the up to 1.80 meter deep excavation. 580 iron girders were used for this wall. 240.6 t of steel plates were then driven into the ground between the iron girders. The corresponding drilling machine was specially made for the Mettlach tunnel. Due to the cramped conditions, the construction of the retaining wall was associated with great effort. Then the 2.5 km of rails and 2000 sleepers were removed. In addition, up to 1,800 m of gravel was removed. The rails were cut into 120-meter-long pieces, transported away individually and stored at the tunnel exit on the Besseringer side. The construction project cost a total of four million euros. Thanks to the single-track operation, train traffic could be maintained, with around 140 hands-on trains passing close by on the neighboring track for ten months, while work was being carried out on the other track.
In 2011 a large-scale exercise by the fire brigade , the technical relief organization , the rescue service , the state police , the federal police and Deutsche Bahn took place at the tunnel . On the night of May 28th to 29th, 2011, around 300 emergency services, around 50 vehicles and a helicopter were deployed.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b c d e Lothar Brill, Webmaster: Line 3230: Railway tunnels and tunnel portals, information from Lothar Brill. In: eisenbahntunnel-portal.de. Retrieved April 17, 2016 .
- ^ W. Hoyer: Substructure. Springer-Verlag, 2013, ISBN 978-3-642-99359-6 , p. 131 ( limited preview in the Google book search).
- ^ Rainer Freyer: Railways (SEB and EdS). In: saar-nostalgie.de. Retrieved April 19, 2016 .
- ↑ Klaus Kruse: Fire and Disaster Protection in Railway Tunnels. In: Fire and disaster control in railway tunnels. February 1, 2002, accessed April 22, 2016 .
- ↑ An arm's length next to the trains - discussion - railways on the Saar and Moselle and in the West Palatinate. (No longer available online.) In: kbs-670.de. April 27, 2004, archived from the original on April 17, 2016 ; Retrieved April 17, 2016 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ↑ Half of the Mettlacher tunnel is an excavation - press release. In: presseservice.pressrelations.de. June 16, 2005, accessed April 17, 2016 .
- ^ Saarbrücker Zeitung: Large exercise in the railway tunnel. In: saarbruecker-zeitung.de. May 28, 2011, accessed April 17, 2016 .
