Railway line Worms – Grünstadt

Worms – Grünstadt
Route number (DB) :	3566 (Worms – state border) 3423 (state border – Grünstadt)
Course book section (DB) :	at last 274f
Route length:	18 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Mainz from Gundheim von Biblis and von Weinheim 0.0 Worms central station to Monsheim to Ludwigshafen 1.4 Worms suburb 3.4 Worms-Zollhaus (formerly: Zollhaus b Worms) 4.4 Worms-Weinsheim (formerly: Weinsheim) 5.0 Worms-Horchheim (formerly: Horchheim b Worms) 6.0 Wiesoppenheim Federal motorway 61 9.0 Heppenheim (Rheinhess) Eisbach (sulfur bridge) 11.0 Offstein 11.7 former border between Hessen and Bavaria 12.4 Neuoffstein 13.8 Obrigheim - Colgenstein 14.8 Heidesheim (Palatinate) 15.8 Albsheim (ice cream) from Monsheim from Ramsen 18.0 Grünstadt to Neustadt (Weinstrasse) Swell:

The Worms – Grünstadt railway line - also popularly known as Wissegickel , Pfefferdüttche or Offsteiner Schneck - was a branch line that led from Worms in Rhine-Hesse to Grünstadt in Palatinate and is now largely closed. It was built between 1886 and 1900.

The fact that it crossed the territory of two federal states with Hessen and Bavaria at that time meant that the two corresponding parts were operated by different companies. Since all Palatinate railways were nationalized in 1909, the curiosity that followed until 1953 was that the railway line was partly under private and partly state control.

In 1968, now completely under the direction of the then Deutsche Bundesbahn , passenger traffic was discontinued. Freight traffic on the Heppenheim – Worms Zollhaus section came to an end in 1988, and ten years later also between Neuoffstein and Offstein. The line between Neuoffstein and Worms has now been dismantled. Freight traffic to Südzucker's Offstein plant has so far been maintained on the remaining section between Grünstadt and Neuoffstein .

course

The line began in Worms and followed the Mainz – Ludwigshafen line for about a kilometer and a half. The Worms-Vorstadt stop was in this area. Then she turned right and based on the course of the Eisbach . From Neuoffstein, the route is still available. Shortly before it joins the Palatinate Northern Railway , it leaves this river valley again to reach the Grünstadt train station after about two kilometers .

It ran from Worms main train station to Heppenheim (Rheinhessen) train station in what is now the urban area of ​​the independent city of Worms, Offstein is part of the Alzey-Worms district . The remaining section of the route is completely located in the Bad Dürkheim district .

history

SEG route Worms-Offstein

Former Heppenheim station (Rheinhessen)

Former Offstein train station with disused tracks

Efforts were made comparatively early to build a railway line through the lower ice valley towards Grünstadt. Above all, the leather industry based in Worms wanted a main line via Kaiserslautern to Pirmasens, whose shoe industry located there was targeted as a customer. The dense settlement of the area and the extensive agricultural use also spoke in favor of railway construction. Only the affected communities along the river were able to achieve the construction of the planned railway line when they formed a committee in 1884.

After construction had already started, in October 1886 the railway consortium Bank for Trade and Industry - Herrmann Bachstein received the concession for the construction and operation of the line from Worms to Offstein , which was opened on December 12 of the same year. Effective February 11, 1895, the line was incorporated by Bachstein into the newly founded Süddeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft AG (SEG) . On the basis of Article 95 of the Weimar Constitution , the law on the State Treaty on the Transfer of State Railways to the Reich of April 30, 1920, transferred railway supervision from the People's State of Hesse to the German Reich on August 1, 1922 , in fact from the Hessian Ministry of Finance to the Railway Directorate Mainz .

In 1925, the SEG relocated its administration from Offstein station to Horchheim station. In 1939 it used three steam locomotives, one railcar, ten passenger cars, two baggage cars and three freight cars on its section of the Worms-Offsteiner Railway . The engine shed, workshop and management were in Offstein.

Extension of Offstein-Grünstadt by the Nordbahn

As early as 1893, the project was pursued to extend the line into the Palatinate to Grünstadt , although it was not the SEG, but the Palatinate Northern Railway , which opened the section to Grünstadt on September 15, 1900. With the branch line Worms-Offstein, joint traffic with through trains was set up.

After the nationalization of the Palatinate Railways, the western part of the line was transferred to the Royal Bavarian State Railways in 1909 , and to the Deutsche Reichsbahn and its successors in 1920 . In spite of this complicated ownership structure of the entire route from Worms to Grünstadt, community traffic was retained.

In 1910 the name of the station changed from "Neuoffstein id Pfalz" to simply "Neuoffstein".

End of SEG operations

On December 31, 1952, the license for the SEG railway line Worms-Offstein expired, which was forcibly extended in 1936 by the so-called "SEG law" . Since the SEG did not want to continue to operate the deficit route, the state of Rhineland-Palatinate then took over the section, as both passenger and freight traffic were still of great importance on the railway line. The management of the entire route was transferred to the Deutsche Bundesbahn . The latter also became the owner of the entire infrastructure in 1969. From the mid-1970s, the section in Rheinhessen was dismantled.

Passenger traffic was stopped altogether on September 28, 1968. A year earlier, DB had set up a parallel bus line. Freight traffic in the Rheinhessen part came to a standstill between 1969 and 1988, most recently the Worms – Heppenheim section, which was only operated as a station track, on June 1, 1988. The Worms – Offstein line was then dismantled and now partially built over. Freight traffic on the Offstein– Neuoffstein section was discontinued on December 15, 1998 and the section shut down five days later. Only on the Neuoffstein – Grünstadt section is there occasional freight traffic to deliver to Südzucker's Neuoffstein plant ; the rest of the service by DB Cargo was discontinued on December 31, 2001.

The railway line was maintained by Südzucker AG until the end of 2008 . On January 1, 2009, Wincanton Rail took over the route from Südzucker AG. Wincanton Rail operates the freight transport for Südzucker AG, around 10,000 t of granulated sugar are transported over the railway line every year.

business

In freight transport, the railway line was mainly used to transport agricultural products. A large part of the latter was made up of cucumbers and especially sugar beets. Of all the lines that were owned by SEG, the Worms – Grünstadt railway had the highest volume of goods. The importance of passenger transport was mainly due to the Heyl leather works , which were located near the Worms-Vorstadt stop. School traffic also played a major role. In order to cope with the high demand in passenger transport, all stops on the way were equipped with long platforms. There were between six and ten trains per day on the route in each direction. The speed limit was 25 kilometers per hour.

literature

• Gerd Wolff: Deutsche Klein- und Privatbahnen , Volume 1: Rheinland-Pfalz / Saarland, Freiburg 1989, ISBN 3-88255-651-X , pp. 253-256
• Walter Borchmeyer: 40 years of the South German Railway Company , Essen 1935
• Hans Huth: The branch line Worms – Offstein , Worms 2005
• Ralph Häussler, Railways in Worms , Hamm 2003, pp. 134–141

Web links

• "Wissegickel" on amiche.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany 2009/2010 . 7th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2009, ISBN 978-3-89494-139-0 .
3. ↑ ^{a b} Turntable Online Forums :: 04 - Historic Railway :: 25 years ago: last handover in Heppenheim (Rhh.) (5 + 1B). Retrieved January 3, 2019 . 
4. ↑ RGBl. 1922, p. 773.
5. ^ Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz (ed.): Official Gazette of the Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz of August 19, 1922, No. 49. Announcement No. 919, p. 558.
6. ^ Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz (ed.): Official Gazette of the Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz of May 9, 1925, No. 27. Announcement No. 480, p. 306.
7. ↑ Eisenbahndirektion Mainz (Ed.): Official Journal of the Royal Prussian and Grand Ducal Hessian Railway Directorate in Mainz of March 12, 1910, No. 10. Announcement No. 187, pp. 95f (96).
8. ↑ As of December 6, 2008
9. ^ ^{A b} Jochen Glatt: Topic on Saturday: The railway line from Grünstadt to Worms. The last passenger train ran 40 years ago. Lower Eistalbahn was once operationally split in two - Südzucker continues to stick to the route from Grünstadt to the Offstein plant. In: Die Rheinpfalz No. 285, Unterhaardter Rundschau, Saturday, December 6, 2008