Rhenish Railway Company

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Lines of the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft shortly before the nationalization

The Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft ( RhE for short ) belonged to the Cologne-Mindener and Bergisch-Märkischen one of the three large railway companies that from the middle of the 19th century mainly covered the Rhineland and the Ruhr area (in today's North Rhine-Westphalia and northern Rhineland-Palatinate ) by rail .

founding

When looking for ways to avoid the high Dutch tariffs on the Rhine, the industrialists on the Rhine and in the Bergisches Land became aware of the railway early on. The Belgian state , founded in 1831, was also interested in trade relations with Prussia . As a non-Rhine bank, the country was at a disadvantage compared to the Netherlands in trade and quickly pushed ahead with the development of its rail network.

In December 1833, the Cologne Railway Committee, headed by Cologne Mayor Johann Adolph Steinberger and the entrepreneur Ludolf Camphausen, was granted the concession to build a railway line between Cologne and the Belgian border. The route drawn up by the Cologne Railway Committee contained a bypass of the city of Aachen , which the local merchants did not agree with. Under the direction of David Hansemann and Philipp Heinrich Pastor , they in turn founded the Aachen Railway Committee. This was the beginning of the so-called railway dispute between Cologne and Aachen .

The Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft was founded in Cologne in 1836 , and Ludolf Camphausen , who was also Prime Minister of Prussia for a short time, became the company's first president . In Aachen on March 31, 1836, the Prussian-Rhenish Railway Company was founded as a counter-organization (by David Hansemann). Each railway company represented the interests of the merchants in the place where it was founded. On April 6, 1836, a conference in Jülich , which was chaired by the Upper President of the Rhine Province Ernst von Bodelschwingh and attended by representatives of the Aachen and Cologne businesses, could not bring about a solution to the railway dispute. Hansemann and the Aachen cloth manufacturer Joseph van Gülpen then traveled to Berlin and submitted a request for a route via Aachen. Lengthy negotiations between Aachen and Cologne representatives took place in Berlin until the Prussian King Friedrich Wilhelm III. on February 12, 1837, the route via Aachen decided and thus ended the railway dispute.

From March 31 to June 8, a "joint general assembly" in Cologne decided to merge the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft and the Prussisch-Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft so that the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft could be re-established on July 9, 1837 .

From 1844 until nationalization, Gustav Mevissen took over the presidency of the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft.

A connection with the German North Sea ports did not come about until years later. It was not until 1843 that the Cologne-Minden Railway Company was founded, which built the railway to Minden by 1847 . Via the Royal Hanover State Railways , connections to German seaports were made via detours. Direct rail lines from the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area to German North Sea ports were only opened in 1856 with the Hanoverian Westbahn to Emden and in 1873/1874 with the Hamburg-Venloer Bahn to Bremen and Hamburg.

Track construction

Cologne – Aachen – Belgium

House Belvedere, end point of the route to Müngersdorf
View from the Ichenberg tunnel to Eschweiler Hbf between Düren and Aachen

On August 21, 1837, the company received the Prussian concession to build the 86 kilometer long Cologne - Düren - Aachen - Belgian border line after the dispute over the route had been settled. The first section in Cologne with seven kilometers to Müngersdorf was opened in 1839. Two further sections via Lövenich and Düren to Aachen were completed in 1840 and 1841. This also included the 1,632 m long Königsdorf tunnel , which has now been slashed . The last section to the Belgian border near Herbesthal was opened to traffic on October 15, 1843. On the 1:38 slope between Aachen and Ronheide ( Ronheide ramp ) there was a rope hoist with a stationary steam engine until 1855. The line was the first railway leading from Germany to other countries.

With the opening of the line, there were already two connections to northern France via the well-developed Belgian network ; the routes from there to Paris were completed in 1846: on June 16 from Valenciennes and on June 20, 1846 from Lille.

Left Rhine route and Cologne Central Station

The RhE began its expansion on January 1, 1857 with the takeover of the Bonn-Cölner Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (BCE) for 1.05 million talers with its 45-kilometer route from Cologne (St. Pantaleon station) -Bonn– Rolandseck . They built this left Rhine route with a length of 107 kilometers via Koblenz to Bingerbrück until 1859 and thus received connections to the Hessian Ludwigsbahn to Mainz and Ludwigshafen as well as to the Rhein-Nahe-Bahn to Saarbrücken to the coal mines there ( Saarrevier ). In addition, a connection between Koblenz and the Nassau State Railway in Oberlahnstein was established over the Pfaffendorfer Rhine Bridge in 1864 . The Prussian state gave an interest guarantee for this stretch and the bridge and contributed to the construction costs of the bridge.

After the merger with BCE, the "Centralbahnhof" was built in the same year according to the plans of Hermann Otto Pflaume on behalf of RhE. The station was opened in 1859 together with the cathedral bridge . The Centralbahnhof was a combined terminus and through station : The RhE trains from the west ended at four head tracks, while the CME trains from the cathedral bridge touched the station on two through tracks.

Cologne – Kleve – Netherlands

On June 1, 1860, the Cöln-Crefeld Railway was taken over by the Rheinische Eisenbahn and its 53-kilometer route from Cologne to Krefeld was extended by a further 65 kilometers via Goch to Kleve in 1863 . From there, in 1865, she built a railway line over the Griethausen railway bridge , the Spyck-Welle and Elten trajectory to Zevenaar in the Netherlands .

This not only gave the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft a connection to the Dutch North Sea ports , but also became part of a lucrative through route to southern Germany and Switzerland . A connection from Kleve to Nijmegen was also built in the same year . In Goch , in 1878, a representative new station building in an island location was put into operation as a shared station with the Noord-Brabantsch-Duitsche Spoorweg-Maatschappij crossing there .

The RhE opened another connection to the Netherlands in 1868 with its Kempen – Venlo line , which runs from Kaldenkirchen parallel to the Viersen – Venlo line of the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft .

Eifelbahn

Düren letter 1920

In 1864, construction began on the 170-kilometer-long Eifel Railway from Düren via Euskirchen and Gerolstein to Trier , which was reached on July 15, 1871. This gave the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft a second access to the Saar area and cheap connections to the ore mines in Lorraine, which became German in 1870/1871 . After the war of 1866 , the company endeavored to take over the Saarland railways and the Nassau State Railroad Wiesbaden - Oberlahnstein - Wetzlar from the Prussian state as an addition to its Eifelbahn, which was under construction, and the planned route on the right bank of the Rhine . However, since this also demanded the takeover of the high-deficit Rhein-Nahe-Eisenbahn , nothing came of this interesting expansion. A takeover of the Nahe Valley Railway would have severely restricted the profitability of the Eifel Railway.

Ruhr area route

The company, which until then had only been active on the left bank of the Rhine, took the step across the Rhine on September 1, 1866, when it opened its Ruhr area route from Osterath via Krefeld- Uerdingen , (Duisburg-) Rheinhausen , the Rheinhausen-Hochfeld trajectory over the Rhine, (Duisburg-) Hochfeld , (Mülheim-) Speldorf, Mülheim (Rheinisch) , (Mülheim-) Heißen to Essen  Nord (Rheinisch).

For the most part free of charge for the connections, she built sidings to many coal mines in this region. The route was continued until 1874 via Bochum  North, Langendreer  North to Dortmund South. In the same year the trajectory was replaced by a fixed bridge over the Rhine ( Duisburg-Hochfelder railway bridge ) and the embankment facilities on the right bank of the Rhine were expanded into a railway-owned port and used to load the coal that had come into the ship.

On February 15, 1870, a three-kilometer branch line went into operation from the Hochfeld train station to (Old) Duisburg , which in 1879 became the starting point for the railway line to Quakenbrück . As a result, there were for a long time three independent stations of the large private railways in a small area in Duisburg at what is now the main train station until it was built in 1935.

The route, which is still sometimes referred to as the “Rheinische Bahn”, has now been closed in sections and is mostly only used by delivery freight trains, if at all; only the route in Dortmund  Süd is used by the S 4 of the S-Bahn Rhein-Ruhr . As part of the unification of the Universities of Duisburg and Essen , discussions were briefly as well as inconclusive about preparing the route from Duisburg - Neudorf via (Mülheim-) Speldorf, Mülheim (Ruhr) Hauptbahnhof , (Mülheim-) Heißen to Essen  Nord for passenger traffic in order to provide a Establish a direct connection between the two campuses . This section has been closed (as of 2009) and converted into a cycling and hiking trail . On March 6, 2011, the bridge over the A40 in Bochum was dismantled. The connection from Gelsenkirchen-Wattenscheid station to Bochum Nord station, which was put into operation on October 15, 1874, is therefore interrupted.

Right stretch of the Rhine

Keystone of the former train station in Herdecke

In addition, from 1869 the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft built the right Rhine route from Ehrenbreitstein near Koblenz via Neuwied , Oberkassel to Troisdorf, which was reached in 1871. In Oberkassel, the Bonn – Oberkassel trajectory was opened on November 1, 1870 , and remained in operation until 1914, connecting the left and right sections of the Rhine. A similar crossing, the Stolzenfels – Oberlahnstein trajectory , existed south of Koblenz in 1862–1864 for the premature connection of the right with the left Rhine route until the construction of the Pfaffendorfer railway bridge could be completed. The extension of the Troisdorf – Mülheim-Speldorf railway via Cologne-Mülheim , Opladen , Düsseldorf-Eller and Ratingen West connected this route to the aforementioned Ruhr area in 1874 and opened up the cheaper route to the south for coal transports.

The Ruhr area line ran largely parallel to the existing Duisburg – Dortmund line of the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft and was intended to draw some of the lucrative coal transports away from the competition by connecting many mines to its own route network. This project of its President, the Secret Commerce Council v. Mevissen , the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft succeeded completely. The coal transports grew enormously from the beginning, as the railway with its newly introduced one-penny tariff for the coal transport clearly undercut the tariffs of the other company. As a result, coal prices in Germany and neighboring countries fell by 10% to 15%.

Bergisches Land

Viaduct over the Hasper coal railway between Hagen-Westerbauer and Hagen-Heubing

The same strategy pursued the company in 1873 with the construction of opened only on September 19, 1879 75 km long railway line Dusseldorf-Derendorf-Dortmund south of Dusseldorf on Elberfeld (today Wuppertal ), Schwelm  North, Gevelsberg , Hagen , Herdecke and Horde after Dortmund , with which it also competed with a line of the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft . From this route branched off in Dortmund-Löttringhausen to Langendreer via Witten Ost ( Rheinischer Esel ).

The route is used today from Düsseldorf to Mettmann (passenger (S 28) and freight trains) or to Dornap- Hahnfurth (freight trains only). From the end of 2020, passenger traffic to Wuppertal-Vohwinkel (through the extension of the S 28 route to Wuppertal Hbf) is to be resumed. However, Vohwinkel is of course not reached on the old route via Wuppertal-Lüntenbeck, as this was always only possible from the east for operational reasons and the Tesch tunnel, which then has to be passed through, is no longer used to protect the bats looking for their winter quarters in it may. Instead, just before the Dornap-Hahnenfurth train station, the route is swiveled to the northeast, parallel to Bundesstraße 7, where after about two kilometers and passing the new Hahnenfurth-Düssel stop it grinds onto the Prinz-Wilhelm-Bahn coming from Essen-Steele , which runs over the wedge station in Vohwinkel reaches the Wuppertal main line.

With the opening of the Wuppertal Nordbahntrasse on December 19, 2014, the conversion to a cycle and hiking trail for the section Wuppertal- Lüntenbeck - Wuppertal- Wichlinghausen is complete. This also includes the short connection to the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn Lüntenbeck- Vohwinkel . Its counterpart at the other (eastern) end of Wuppertal, the connection there to the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn Wichlinghausen- Langerfeld , has also been a free space for non-motorized traffic since the end of 2019 as Schwarzbachtrasse . The Wuppertal Movement , a non-profit association that initiated the conversion, now maintains the route and its structures.

There are only tracks left from the west portal of the Rott tunnel past the Loh train station a bit up the former connection of the consumer cooperative Vorwärts-Liberation on Clausen, 1.6 kilometers long used for trolley trips.

In the further course from Wuppertal-Wichlinghausen, whose 13 hectare marshalling yard area is experiencing an urban renaissance as the "Bergisches Plateau" with 300 residential units, the line has long since been closed and dismantled to Schwelm-Loh. After Schwelm-Loh to Hagen, the route is used by the S 8 of the S-Bahn Rhein-Ruhr , which comes over a connecting route from Schwelm station of the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn . At Gevelsberg West station this connection joins the Rhenish route; beforehand, the northern Schwelmer ridge is crossed under the northern Schwelmer ridge in two close-by, several hundred meter long parallel tunnels. The short section Loh-Gevelsberg West was still used by freight trains to serve a scrap dealer until December 2005 (?), But then "due to inefficiency" on the part of DB Netz for takeover by third parties and also closed in 2006.

To the North Sea

The train station of Dorsten as a typical building of the Rhenish Railway Company

The Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft now lacked a connection to the German North Sea ports. Here the Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft had brought all rail traffic under its control since June 18, 1874 with the opening of its line from Wanne via Haltern , Münster , Osnabrück and Bremen to Hamburg .

With its Prussian concession on June 9, 1873, the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft built its own line to the north within 6 years. Starting from the Rheinischer Bahnhof in Duisburg , built in 1870 , the 175-kilometer-long Duisburg – Quakenbrück railway , which opened on July 1, 1879, led via Oberhausen  West, Bottrop  Nord, Dorsten and Rheine to Quakenbrück . In Rheine it had a connection via the route network of the Royal Westphalian Railway Company to Emden and in Quakenbrück to the Grand Ducal Oldenburg State Railways to Wilhelmshaven .

Still in operation today

In the Ruhr area , the lines of the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft were not optimally connected to the economic centers of the time due to the relatively late construction, especially since they were mainly planned for coal removal. That explains why most of the RhE lines are no longer in operation there today. In contrast, the routes in the Rhineland and the Rhine Valley are still indispensable for rail transport today .

Locomotives and wagons

Model of the "Atlas" in 1:20 scale

The Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft began operations in 1839 with machines from George Stephenson's English locomotive factory. Two of these machines from a delivery in 1845, named Saturn and Schelde, were still in operation in 1875.

In 1837 the “Atlas” was ordered from the English manufacturer Longridge, Starbuck & Co. in Newcastle together with two smaller machines, the “Pluto” and “Phönix” . On August 2, 1839, “Atlas” and “Pluto” pulled a train for the first time from Cologne's “Am Thürmchen” station to Müngersdorf.

The main suppliers of locomotives, however, were the Borsig locomotive factory in Berlin with over 380 machines and Henschel & Sohn in Kassel with more than 50 locomotives. This also included so-called Crampton locomotives with a 2 A wheel arrangement and a driving wheel diameter of 2,135 mm. Most of the other locomotives had a 1 B or C wheel arrangement.

Starting in 1871, Beyer, Peacock in Manchester and later from Szczecin “Vulcan” purchased tender locomotives with the 2B wheel arrangement for the winding Eifel route . With the cessation of rope hoist operations in Aachen from 1855, heavy mountain train tank locomotives with the wheel arrangement C took over the supply of the trains to Ronheide.

The passenger cars were compartment cars that were mostly built by MAN. The freight cars were painted light gray.

Business development and nationalization

The banker and merchant Ludolf Camphausen was in charge of founding the Rheinische Eisenbahn. Other bankers such as Wilhelm Deichmann (from A. Schaaffhausen & Co. ) and JH Stein & Co. , and later Abraham Oppenheim ( Sal. Oppenheim jr. & Cie) and JD Herstatt were also involved at an early stage . With an initial share capital of three million thalers , the Rheinische Eisenbahn was then the largest private company in Prussia.

Even before the constituent assembly of the company, a group came together around the banker Abraham Oppenheim, which together held the majority of the votes. Oppenheim alone held almost a quarter of the share capital, the six largest Cologne bankers together a further third. Six months later, Oppenheim and his friend, a Belgian banker, Bischoffsheim, held a majority.

Even before the railroad began operating, the bankers made substantial profits through speculative and, in particular, arbitrage , which were often conducted at the expense of other investors with no apparent benefit to the company. The bankers received criticism from the public, especially because they exploited their dual role as corporate decision-maker and financial intermediary too clearly in favor of the latter. Abraham Oppenheim, for example, agreed with other "insiders" such as David Hansemann (1837) or Gustav Mevissen (a little later) to lower the price of REG securities in Cologne through sales or to keep them low through purchases that were as inconspicuous as possible, so that the arbitrage profit in other markets such as Brussels, Paris or Berlin could be larger. This business was highly profitable for him because the business with Paris, for example, achieved an annual return of between 10 and 90% after just 2 months.

In order to meet the high capital requirements of the railway company, the bankers developed new forms of cooperation such as supra-regional consortia (issuing consortia ) and later joint stock banks. When the Cologne bankers ran into liquidity problems with a capital increase in 1838/1839 because of the weak economy and the resulting sluggish sale of shares, they tried to return their financial obligations to the railway company. Finally, in 1840, the Belgian state bought the previously unsaleable shares.

After the company began railway operations in 1841, increasing sums of money were received in the tills held by the bankers. In the late 1840s the Cologne bankers became chronic debtors or "administrators" of the surplus money of the Rheinische Eisenbahn. For example, in 1847 they owed the company around 300,000 thalers with a balance sheet total of around 10 million thalers. In the 1850s these sums rose further, in 1858 to about one million thalers, with a balance sheet total of about 23 million.

As part of Bismarck's nationalization policy , the law for the nationalization of the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft was promulgated on February 14, 1880 . At that time, the Prussian state already owned 42% of the company's share capital. The "Royal Direction of the Rhenish Railway in Cologne", which was founded for the administration and management of the railway, took over management as early as January 1, 1880. On February 23, 1881, this direction was renamed the "Royal Railway Direction of Cologne on the left bank of the Rhine". The lines on the right bank of the Rhine went together with those of the also nationalized Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft with effect from April 1, 1881 to the newly founded "Royal Railway Directorate for Cologne on the right bank of the Rhine".

When it was nationalized, the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft had 507 locomotives, 862 passenger cars and 13,572 freight cars. It operated a route network of 1,356 kilometers in length. The purchase price financed through government bonds was 591,129,900 marks. The company was dissolved on January 1, 1886.

Fonts

  • Petition from the Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft to the High Estates Assembly of the Rhine Province: plus explanatory report . Beaufort, Aachen 1843 ( digitized version )

literature

  • Administrative report for the year ...: presented by the special director to the general assembly of shareholders . Cöln, verified 1841 (1842) - 1846 (1847) ( digitized edition of the University and State Library Düsseldorf )
  • Deutsche Reichsbahn: The development of the German railways 1835–1935 , Berlin 1935.
  • Wolfgang Klee, Dr. Günther Scheingraber: Prussian Railway History , Part 1: 1838-1870 in: Prussia Report Volume No. 1.1, Fürstenfeldbruck 1992.
  • Karl Kumpmann: The origin of the Rheinische Eisenbahngesellschaft 1830–1844 - A first contribution to the history of the Rheinische Eisenbahn , Essen / Ruhr 1910
  • Rolf Ostendorf: Ruhr area railway junction. The history of development of the Revierbahnen since 1838 , Stuttgart 1979.
  • Friedhelm Stöters: Rhenish Railway. From the Lower Rhine to the Ruhr Area , Bühl 1988.
  • Jürgen Wennemann: Actual investigation of the development of the "railway quarter" in Aachen around the middle of the 19th century. A contribution on the subject of land utilization by private railway companies in: Gerhard Fehl; Juan Rodriguez-Lores (ed.): City extensions 1800–1875. From the beginnings of modern urban planning in Germany (= city, planning, history. Vol. 2) . Christians, Hamburg 1983, ISBN 3-7672-0807-5 , pages 205-233. Especially pages 206–216 on property speculation. Further reading
  • Hans-Paul Höpfner: Railways. Your story on the Lower Rhine . Mercator-Verlag, Duisburg 1986, ISBN 3-87463-132-X .

See also

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d Bernhard Poll (ed.): History of Aachen in data , City Archives Aachen , Aachen 1960, pp. 132-137.
  2. ↑ Essen-Duisburg railway line becomes a cycle and hiking path, WDR ( Memento from January 22, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Holdings of the Cologne City Museum
  4. ^ Richard H. Tilly: From the customs union to the industrial state . dtv 1990. p. 61 ff.