Ostend-Vienna-Express
The Ostend-Wien-Express was a 1894 to 1993 between Ostend and Vienna traffic forming luxury train and later international express train . In the opposite direction, the train was known as the Vienna-Ostend-Express . In keeping with Ostend's Flemish name, it was named Oostende-Vienna-Express after the Second World War . With his through coaches for the Orient Express , among others , he was one of the most important train connections between Western Europe and the Balkans.
Luxury train
The Ostend-Wien-Express was introduced by the International Sleeping Car Company on June 1, 1894 and was intended to offer British passengers in particular a direct connection to Southeast Europe. Like all CIWL luxury trains in the period before the First World War , it only ran the first class and consisted exclusively of sleeping and dining cars . It ran daily on the route Ostend - Brussels North - Cologne Central Station - Mainz Central Station - Frankfurt (Main) Central Station - Nuremberg Central Station - Passau - Linz - Vienna West Station . The managing administration was the Belgian state railway SNCB .
From May 1895 the train also ran through coaches to Karlovy Vary in the summer timetable (referred to as the independent "Ostend-Karlsbad-Express" in the CIWL timetable ), and from the end of the year the Ostend-Vienna Express was once a week to Trieste and to Constanța extended where there were boat connections. On these days the train was referred to as the “Ostend-Vienna-Triest-Express” and the “Ostend-Vienna-Constantza-Express” respectively. The contractual partner here was Österreichischer Lloyd , which offered ship services in the direction of the Levante . From 1897 a through car was added to Fiume . In Vienna, all trains were connected to the Orient Express . In the initial phase there were obviously quality deficiencies in the offer: Repeated complaints about a poor offer in the dining car and the negligent staff in its sleeping car were raised.
For the summer timetable in 1900, the Ostend-Wien-Express received through coaches with a direct transition to the Orient-Express for the first time. Both trains ran together daily from Vienna to Budapest , while the Orient Express carried sleeping cars from Paris and Ostend on its days to Constanța and Constantinople . The previously independent Ostend-Triest-Express was not profitable due to weak demand and was therefore discontinued. What remained was a through car that was carried from Vienna in a normal express train of the southern railway company to Trieste. In 1910 the Ostend-Wien-Express received a through car to Bad Kissingen , but this did not prove itself and disappeared from the timetable at the end of the summer timetable in 1910. The train had already received a sleeping car to Munich a year earlier, but it also only ran for one summer. The Bavarian State Railways had repeatedly applied for the unification of the Ostend-Wien- and Orient-Express in Munich at the timetable conferences, but were unsuccessful.
The train had different numbers depending on the country and railway administration. In Belgium it was listed as L 50/51, the Prussian State Railways initially referred to it as L 10/9. From 1898 they took over the numbering L 53/54, which the train had carried since its introduction in Bavaria. In Austria the kk Österreichische Staatsbahnen ran it between Passau and Wels under several changing numbers, most recently as L 410/409 from 1911, from Wels to Vienna as L 8/7 from 1894 to 1914.
It was discontinued during the First World War and was not put back into operation until June 6, 1925. Since 1931, the Ostend-Wien-Express also ran the (old) second carriage class. In the interwar period, the train was sometimes also known as the Ostend-Vienna-Orient-Express. The connection was discontinued during the Second World War .
Express train
From autumn 1947 the train ran again, now carried all three car classes and in Germany the designation FD 51/52. Later it operated under the designation D 224/225. He drove a through car Budapest - Cologne of the Hungarian State Railways (MÁV) - so far west at that time a rarity in times of the Cold War .
In 1993 the train was converted into a EuroNight train and was given the new name "Donauwalzer". This was combined with the D 214/215 (later D 222/223) Amsterdam - Munich . EN 224/225 had through cars to Amsterdam and D 214/215 (D222 / 223) had through cars to Bruxelles / Oostende. This was also interesting for customs, as the trains were a popular smuggling route. In the mid-1990s, the Brussels Midi - Oostende section was closed.
In December 2002, D 222/223 was converted into a CNL train, and EN 224/225 "Donauwalzer" became EN 324/325 "Donauwalzer". With the conversion, the course of the train was also changed. In the Linz - Frankfurt section, the train now drove via Salzburg - Munich .
In December 2003, the EN 324/325 in the Cologne - Bruxelles Midi section was discontinued and the new end point was Düsseldorf . The train pair lost their name. Since then there has been no continuous train connection between Austria and Belgium . In the section Vienna West - Nuremberg it drives combined with EN 490/491 "Hans Albers".
Today the EN 490/491 Hans Albers drives in isolation, the EN 428 Donau-Spree-Kurier / EN 429 Spree-Donau-Kurier drives combined with EN 324/325 between Vienna West and Nuremberg.
Accidents and attacks
On December 6, 1901, the train, which was one and a half hours late, entered Frankfurt Central Station with a failed brake. The cars decoupled fortunately, as the locomotive initially the buffer of the head station ran over and then the opposite wall broke through on the other side of the cross-platform. She came - slightly dented - to stand in the middle of the first and second class restaurant, in the midst of the tables set for breakfast. Nobody was injured because the accident happened at 5 a.m. The intact train was able to continue its journey with a new locomotive. Some of the passengers had not noticed the event at all. The photo of this accident with the locomotive in the dining room became very well known and depicted many times.
On December 29 or 30, 1906, the train ran into a freight train near Kalscheuren because the locomotive driver ran over a signal indicating "stop" due to the fog.
On May 27, 1983, the train derailed in Königsdorf on the Aachen-Cologne railway line , killing seven people and injuring 24 others, some seriously. The cause of the accident was the washout and slipping of soil from the embankment west of the station in the area of the former Königsdorf tunnel . The locomotive and several wagons derailed, after a few hundred meters the locomotive was deflected in the entrance switch of the station and hit a road bridge together with the first wagon. One of the following wagons was bent over in the middle by the force of the impact.
1934 attack
On April 10, 1934, the Ostend Express left between 1:15 and 1:40 (the sources provide different information) in Linz, Austria, in the direction of Wels. Near Oftering, the train derailed between the villages of Niederbachham and Mitterbachham ( 48 ° 13 ′ 18.6 ″ N , 14 ° 8 ′ 23.6 ″ E ) at a speed of about 90 kilometers per hour, the locomotive and the three following mail cars fell down a two-and-a-half meter embankment and pushed into one another. The stoker Ludwig Ranzenberger was killed, 16 postal workers were injured, some seriously. The rest of the train came to a stop on the line.
Two men, the unskilled worker Alois Strigl (* 1894) and the factory worker Josef Scheinecker (* 1897), had removed a 25-meter-long piece of rail and thus triggered the accident. They wanted to derail the train in order to then steal the money bags from the mail wagons, but they did not succeed because of the numerous train attendants and passengers who ran around the scene of the accident. They escaped without prey.
It was not until 1936 that Strigl and Scheinecker were caught in connection with another attack in Kematen an der Krems . A number of other crimes have been proven to them, including several attempted murders and various explosive attacks that they had committed as Nazi partisans. Strigl and Scheinecker were sentenced to death and executed on January 8, 1937 in the Linz Regional Court at the Würgegalgen (see the list of people executed under Austrian law from 1933 to 1938 ).
Cultural reception
The Ostend-Wien-Express has not entered literature or the performing arts to an extent comparable to the Orient Express or the Nord Express . Writers and artists often summarized the train under the general heading of the Orient Express. This is the case, for example, with the novel Orient-Express by Graham Greene (originally: The Orient Express or Stamboul Train ) , written in 1932 , which actually takes place on the Ostend-Vienna-Orient-Express at the time. The accident of 1901 was also often attributed to the Orient Express, which never ran via Frankfurt am Main according to the schedule.
In contrast, Caught on a Train , a British film from 1980 actually plays on the Ostend-Vienna-Express. In Klaus-Peter Walter's Sherlock Holmes Pastiche Sherlock Holmes and the Golem of Prague , Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson traveled from London via Ostend to Vienna in 1912 to clarify a state matter for Holmes' brother Mycroft in Prague and to meet Franz Kafka on the side. The travel times in the novel only roughly correspond to the actual timetable in 1912.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c d e Albert Mühl: International luxury trains . EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1991, p. 77
- ↑ Eisenbahndirektion Mainz (Ed.): Collection of the published official gazettes of July 8, 1899. Volume 3, No. 29. Announcement No. 304, p. 230.
- ^ Official course book for western Germany. Summer timetable 1950. KBS 250.
- ↑ Through car directory for the course book complete edition summer 1974. KBS 250.
- ↑ Mark Meinold: The engine driver of the Prussian State Railway 1880-1914 . Hövelhof 2008. ISBN 978-3-937189-40-6 , p. 129.
- ↑ In part of the literature - incorrectly - it is stated that it was the Orient Express that was involved in the accident. (E.g. Heinz Schomann: Der Frankfurter Hauptbahnhof . Stuttgart 1983. ISBN 3-421-02801-X . p. 161.) But that is not applicable. The Orient Express never ran via Frankfurt am Main .
- ^ Bernhard Püschel: Historical railway catastrophes. A chronicle of accidents from 1840 to 1926 . Freiburg 1977. ISBN 3-88255-838-5 , p. 76.
- ^ Hans-Joachim Ritzau: Disasters of the German railways. 1945-1992, Part I. (Shadows of Railway History - Volume 2) . 3rd edition, Verlag Zeit und Eisenbahn, Pürgen 1996, ISBN 3-921 304-81-4 , p. 267 ff.
- ^ BM.I - Public Safety - Issue 7–8 / 2004. Retrieved April 6, 2017 .
- ↑ Alois Strigl and Josef Scheinecker, the railway bombers (1937) - With photos from the scene of the accident. Retrieved April 6, 2017 .
- ↑ http://www.doew.at/erinnern/fotos-und-dokumente/1934-1938/krachendes-oesterreich/opfer-des-terrors-der-ns-bewegung-in-oesterreich-1933-1938/ludwig-ranzenberger
- ^ Jean-Paul Caracalla: The Orient Express - a "Locomotive littéraire", in: Jürgen Franzke (Ed.): Orient Express - King of Trains. Book accompanying the exhibition of the same name at the DB Museum Nuremberg, November 1998 to April 1999, Komet-Verlag, Frechen 1998, pp. 160–167.
- ↑ screenonline.org.uk: Caught on a Train (1980) , accessed July 18, 2014.
- ^ Klaus-Peter Walter: Sherlock Holmes and the Golem of Prague , Hillesheim 2016. ISBN 978-3-95441-287-7 . P. 64.
- ↑ Arbeiter-Zeitung , No. 59, March 1, 1912, p. 3. http://anno.onb.ac.at/cgi-content/anno?aid=aze&date=19120301&provider=P03&ref=anno-search&seite=14 ( accessed on May 27, 2016).