Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine
The Imperial General Directorate of the Railways in Alsace-Lorraine was an authority in the German Empire from 1871 to 1918. Its tasks were the expansion, administration and operation of the railways in the realm of Alsace-Lorraine . It emerged after France ceded Lorraine and Alsace to the German Empire as a result of the Franco-Prussian War . The local railways of the private Compagnie des chemins de fer de l'Est (Society of the French Eastern Railways) - a total of 740 kilometers of routes (841 kilometers according to other information) - were formally purchased by France and then sold again to the German Empire. The purchase price of 260 million marks was offset against the compensation for war costs .
Legal situation
The direct administration of the Alsace-Lorraine railways by the Reich was based on the provisions of Additional Article 1, § 1 of the Peace of Frankfurt . In this, the empire entered into the rights of the French state in relation to the railways. A transfer of authority to the Reichsland did not take place. Neither the law on the constitution and administration of 1879 nor the constitution of Alsace-Lorraine from 1911 provided competences for the regional committee or the parliament of the realm of Alsace-Lorraine .
The Imperial General Directorate of the Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine had its seat in Strasbourg and was initially directly subordinate to the Imperial Chancellor . In 1878, however, it was subordinated to the Reich Office for the administration of the railways in Alsace-Lorraine , which was newly established in Berlin .
business
The general management administered six operational directorate districts, each of which had its headquarters in Mulhouse , Colmar , Strasbourg I and II, Sarreguemines and Metz . There was also a seventh district based in Luxembourg , which was responsible for the management of the Luxembourg Wilhelms-Eisenbahn .
In the early days, the vehicles had almost exclusively been withdrawn from German railways, as the French troops had taken almost all of the rolling stock with them on their retreat. Later, replicas were made mainly based on Prussian models. The list of locomotives in Alsace-Lorraine 1871–1938 provides an overview of the locomotives .
The operation was carried out in principle according to the regulations of the Prussian State Railways . So the signals were on the right and on multi-track lines people drove right.
Since the French Eastern Railway Company was also the leaseholder of the Wilhelm-Luxemburg-Bahn with a route length of 169 km (according to other information 237 km), the Reichseisenbahnen took over the operational management. An 18 km long railway line from Colmar to Munster ( Munster in French ), which belonged to the city of Munster, was also bought.
In the following years the route network was expanded extensively. In 1912, the network of the Reichseisenbahnen in Alsace-Lorraine comprised lines of 2100 km in length, of which 78 km were narrow gauge.
The procurement of rolling stock was to a large extent dependent on the development of wagon types at the Prussian State Railways. But there were not only wagons that were built according to the specifications of the Prussian sample sheets; because local companies such as de Dietrich from Reichshofen and the Elsässische Maschinenbau-Gesellschaft Grafenstaden appeared as suppliers alongside all the well-known wagon factories of the empire. The companies Gebrüder Gastell from Mainz and van der Zypen and Charlier from Cologne-Deutz had larger shares .
After 1918
After the end of the First World War and the return of Alsace and Lorraine to France as a result of the Treaty of Versailles of 1919, the lines there remained independent under the name Administration des chemins de fer d'Alsace et de Lorraine (AL) as French state railways. The German railway officials - if they had fled or expelled - were integrated into German railway administrations, which was legally complicated because they were Reich officials, but in 1919 the German railways were still state railways . The Karlsruhe Railway Directorate and later Reichsbahndirektion Karlsruhe were responsible for the settlement, and until 1924 it maintained its own "Department F".
On the network of the former imperial railways in Alsace-Lorraine , the right-hand drive continues to this day on multi-track lines , while left-hand drives in the rest of France. During the general nationalization in 1938, the AL network was incorporated into the SNCF .
Web links
- Jean-Georges Trouillet: Railways in Alsace-Lorraine. May 20, 2004, accessed March 8, 2013 (French, German, English).
Individual evidence
- ↑ Article 24 of the constitution regulated the railway system
- ↑ Prussian and Hessian Railway Directorate in Mainz (ed.): Official Gazette of the Prussian and Hessian Railway Directorate in Mainz of August 30, 1919, No. 43. Announcement No. 568, pp. 285–287.
- ^ Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz (ed.): Official Gazette of the Reichsbahndirektion in Mainz of April 5, 1924, No. 14. Announcement No. 326, p. 181.