Erndtebrück – Bad Berleburg railway line

Erndtebrück – Bad Berleburg
Route number (DB) :	2871
Course book section (DB) :	443
Route length:	19.7 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Top speed:	60 km / h
Dual track :	-
Legend from Kreuztal 0.0 Erndtebrück ⊙ 481  m to Cölbe 2.3 Womelsdorf (until 1994) ⊙ 3.6 Birkelbach ⊙ to Lennestadt-Altenhundem Eder 9.1 Aue - Wingeshausen ⊙ Eder 13.1 Berghausen VEW ( Anst ) Eder 14.5 Berghausen (Wittgenstein) ⊙ 15.8 Raumland -Markhausen ⊙ from Allendorf 17.3 Listen ( Abzw ) 19.7 Bad Berleburg (formerly Bf) ⊙ 418  m Sources:

The Erndtebrück – Bad Berleburg railway is a 20 km long branch line from Erndtebrück to Bad Berleburg that branches off the Kreuztal – Cölbe railway . In Bad Berleburg there used to be a connection to the now largely dismantled railway line Bad Berleburg – Allendorf to Frankenberg . The single-track, non-electrified railway line is operated as a branch line block .

story

Bad Berleburg stop

The line was opened in 1911. In 1994 the rail buses and locomotive-hauled wagon trains were replaced by type 628 multiple units. At the same time, the range of services was expanded and a cycle timetable with standardized routes was introduced. The local transport line, which was advertised as the “Rothaar Express” when it was introduced, has been running every hour between Bad Berleburg and Siegen since then. At the turn of the millennium, multiple units of the type 640 were used on the line, which were retained even after the Dreiländerbahn was first awarded. All alternative and parking options have been dismantled so that no other train services can be handled in addition to the hourly local transport service.

The Bad Berleburg stop was modernized in 2011 for 1.3 million euros. Among other things, the platform was raised to 55 cm above the upper edge of the rail.

With the winning tender for the "Eifel-Westerwald-Sieg" diesel network, the Hessian State Railroad took over the operation of the RB 93 line from DB Regio at the time the timetable changed in December 2014. The start of operations was originally planned for August 2015. However, since in negotiations for a necessary transition concept an early start of HLB operations seemed better than an extension of the contract with DB Regio, the transfer of operations was brought forward accordingly. For this purpose, locomotives of the Regio-Shuttle type were temporarily used, which were rented by the East German Railway . The line was operated between Bad Berleburg and Siegen until December 2015 as part of a transitional concept; then the line was extended beyond its previous endpoint in Siegen to Betzdorf and LINT 41 multiple units were used.

expansion

The Erndtebrück junction was completely modernized by 2017 . The modernization included the track systems, the barrier-free expansion of the platforms and the construction of an electronic interlocking. The railways, the federal government and the state of North Rhine-Westphalia invested a total of 13.8 million euros in the modernization.

Local traffic on the Rothaarbahn is to be accelerated by securing and removing level crossings. The unsecured Aherhammer level crossing was therefore closed to private motorized traffic in 2017 for safety reasons.

Current transport offer

The railway line is served every hour by the RB 93 (Rothaar-Bahn) in local rail passenger transport. In Siegen and Betzdorf it has short crossings to the Rhein-Sieg-Express (RE 9) and the Westerwald-Sieg-Bahn (RB 90) and in Kreuztal to the Ruhr-Sieg-Bahn (RB 91). Connections in Siegen in the direction of Dillenburg , Gießen and Frankfurt are only possible with longer waiting times of approx. 40–55 minutes. The connection in Kreuztal to the RE 16 is also not attractive due to the long waiting time of around 35 minutes.

The train crossings take place about 2 minutes before the usual symmetry time in Erndtebrück.

In Erndtebrück there is a connection to the Obere Lahntalbahn (RB 94) to Marburg via Bad Laasphe and Biedenkopf every 2 hours .

Local rail passenger transport is carried out by HLB under the Dreiländerbahn brand , which uses diesel multiple units of the 640 , 648 and 1648 series for speeds of up to 120 (1648: 140) km / h.

Originally, the hourly service on Sundays was to be introduced with the timetable change on December 11, 2016. As a result of the tense personnel situation at HLB, the introduction date had to be postponed to January 15. Thus, on Sundays, the unfavorable connection situation in Erndtebrück from the direction of Bad Laasphe to Siegen should be eliminated with an hour's waiting time; the unfavorable connection situation has only existed since December 2015. In order to reduce downtime in Bad Berleburg, the two-hour service in the direction of Siegen was postponed by one hour.

Since the timetable change in December 2015, the RB 93 has been suffering from a punctuality problem caused by a new timetable concept. Since then, the line has been running beyond the previous endpoint in Siegen to Betzdorf, with travel times in the Hilchenbach – Siegen section shortened without any changes to the infrastructure. In Betzdorf, the line also starts at a block distance from the RE 9 line, which is prone to delays. Delay transmissions from this line cannot be dismantled in the further course of the route due to the tight schedule and are transmitted to other trains from Kreuztal through the single-track infrastructure. The punctuality is to be improved by lengthy infrastructure measures. To eliminate the lack of punctuality, the Westphalia-Lippe local transport association plans to end the RB 93 in Siegen again in the future and to transfer the service of the Siegen - Betzdorf section to a different line.

Attack on April 13, 2019

In the early morning of April 13, 2019, several manhole covers broke through the windshield of a Hessian state rail car in Raumland , which was on its way as an empty run from Erndtebrück to Bad Berleburg. The train driver was slightly injured. The sewer covers, which had probably been stolen the day before in the area of ​​the town of Hilchenbach , had been hung over the tracks with ropes from a bridge at the level of the driver's cab of trains. The police and the public prosecutor opened an investigation into attempted murder against unknown persons.

Less than two weeks later, the suspicion arose that the driver on duty was responsible for the attack. On April 24, 2019, the house was searched and the train driver was temporarily arrested. Among other things, traces of the man's DNA were found on the ropes used in the act. On October 2, 2020, he was sentenced to one year and nine months in prison without parole in a circumstantial trial for dangerous interference with rail traffic and faking a criminal offense . The motive for the act remained unclear. The train driver appealed against this judgment, but died in early January 2022 shortly before the start of the main hearing.

Web links

Commons : Rothaarbahn  - album with pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ↑ Deutsche Bahn press release on the modernization of Bad Berleburg station. pressrelations.de, July 16, 2010, accessed on February 21, 2016 . 
4. ↑ HLB - Our local rail transport services ( Memento from October 6, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Line overview of the HLB
5. ^ Association meeting of the SPNV Nord in July 2014, p. 5. (PDF) (No longer available online.) In: spnv-nord.de. July 7, 2014, archived from the original on September 24, 2015 ; accessed on February 21, 2016 . 
6. ↑ Press release of the NWL on the award of the diesel network Eifel-Westerwald-Sieg. nwl-info.de, accessed on February 21, 2016 . 
7. ↑ The station is now completely blocked. siegener-zeitung.de, July 28, 2016, accessed on November 27, 2016 . 
8. ↑ The Rothaarbahn should start the sprint. wp.de, July 17, 2013, accessed on May 7, 2017 . 
9. ↑ Aherhammer in Ferndorf - level crossing should give way. In: Siegener Zeitung. October 10, 2017, accessed February 13, 2018 . 
10. ↑ Wittgenstein will soon be approached every hour on Sundays. derwesten.de, November 23, 2016, accessed on November 27, 2016 . 
11. ↑ Rothaarbahn is the most unreliable line in Westphalia-South. derwesten.de, September 28, 2016, accessed May 7, 2017 . 
12. ^ Zweckverband Personennahverkehr Westfalen-Süd (ZWS), 24th Association Assembly, Item 5: SPNV offer conception in DreiLänderEck20XX, June 3, 2020
13. ↑ Zweckverband Personennahverkehr Westfalen-Süd (ZWS), 24th Association Assembly, Item 5: SPNV conception in the DreiLänderEck20XX annex, June 3, 2020
14. ↑ Special press release from the Siegen public prosecutor, the Hagen homicide squad and the Siegen-Wittgenstein district police department from April 13, 2019 ( Presseportal.de )
15. ↑ Addendum to the special press release by the Siegen public prosecutor, the Hagen homicide squad and the Siegen-Wittgenstein district police department of April 13, 2019 (Presseportal.de)
16. ↑ Attack: train driver arrested . In: Siegener Zeitung . April 25, 2019, accessed January 4, 2022.
17. ↑ The train driver staged a manhole cover attack . In: n-tv , October 2, 2020, accessed January 4, 2022.
18. ↑ Appeal process canceled - defendant dead. In: Hessenschau . January 4, 2022.