Schelden Valley Railway
Dillenburg – Wallau (Lahn) | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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Route number (DB) : | 3721 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Course book section (DB) : | 366 (1987) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
Maximum slope : |
Adhesion 60 ‰ rack 60 ‰ |
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Rack system : | ABT | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Schelden Valley Railway is a former branch line that ran from Dillenburg via Breidenbach to Wallau (Lahn) and was built to develop the Lahn-Dill area . It led from Wallau upriver through the valleys of the Perf and its tributary Gansbach , and finally, after crossing the watershed between the Oberer Lahn and Dill , it followed the Scheldt downstream of the eponymous Scheldt .
history
The Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft built the first section from Dillenburg via Oberscheld-Hochofen to the August tunnel and put it into operation on February 11, 1872 for freight traffic. Passenger traffic followed from March 1st. On August 7th, both mine connections to Oberscheld Ort were extended. There was passenger traffic here from 1896. The opening of the entire line did not take place until May 1, 1911 by the Prussian State Railways .
On May 30, 1987 the passenger traffic was stopped, at the same time the freight traffic on the steeper section Dillenburg – Niedereisenhausen ended. Four years later, on June 1, 1991, this affected freight traffic between Niedereisenhausen and Breidenbach. In the years that followed until around 1993, a large part of the line was gradually dismantled. As a result of the land consolidation, apart from the viaduct in Niederscheld, hardly any traces of the former Schelden Valley Railway can be found. Freight traffic from Wallau to Breidenbach ended - for the time being - on December 15, 2002.
business
Basically, passenger trains did not end in Wallau, but were tied through to Biedenkopf from the start . It was noteworthy that between Herrnberg and Hirzenhain there was a steep section to overcome with a maximum gradient of around 60 per thousand, which was even equipped with a rack (Abt system) until 1923 . After that, special locomotives with steep-distance approval were necessary there, the class 94.5-17 of the Dillenburg depot were used during the steam locomotive era , after 1972 Uerdingen rail buses with steep-distance approval and class 213 diesel locomotives .
Most of the passenger trains did not end at Dillenburg station , but continued on the Dietzhölztalbahn to Ewersbach . For this reason, the Schelden Valley Railway has been shown in the timetable together with it since 1911 .
The operational center and crossing station of the Schelden Valley Railway was Gönnern , where after the end of the steam locomotive era in 1972 the locomotive 94 1538 was erected as a monument, and the locomotive has since been refurbished to be operational. In recent years there have only been a few pairs of trains per day, most recently only two on weekdays during school hours and even fewer during school holidays. At the weekend the traffic was completely quiet.
In 2002 the line was transferred to the RegioNetz Kurhessenbahn , which belongs to the EIU DB RegioNetz Infrastruktur GmbH. Until the timetable change in December 2002, there was still little freight traffic on the remaining section between Wallau (Lahn) and Breidenbach. In the course of DB Cargo's MORA C program , the service at the Breidenbach tariff point (which was now served as a siding via the alternative junction [former station] Wallau) was discontinued and in April 2004 the service between the former Wiesenbach stop and the Buderus company in Breidenbach was switched off and on partly overbuilt. Since then there has been a buffer stop not far from the former platform in Wiesenbach.
Freight traffic has been taking place again on a short section of the Schelden Valley Railway since April 2007. In order to be able to transport windbreak timber from Hurricane Kyrill , the new Breidenstein timber loading point was initially set up on the open road . A loading line was built parallel to the main line, which enables the simultaneous loading of several timber transport wagons. Since there was a long-term need for this centrally located timber loading point, the state of Hesse has promoted the further expansion of loading capacities. Up to five block trains with 18 wagons were driven to sawmills every week, primarily in southern Germany and Austria. The freight trains are hauled by the Kurhessenbahn, DB Cargo and other non-federal railways . As a result, 9,600 truck trips and 4.9 million truck kilometers were avoided in 2008 . In the following years there were only irregular transports, in 2020 there will be more traffic again.
today
Today the line between Wiesenbach and Dillenburg including all connecting railways has been completely dismantled. In these sections it is used as follows:
- Breidenbach – Wolzhausen: Railway cycle path
- Niedereisenhausen: industrial area
- Niederscheld – Adolfshütte: playground, footpath and houses
The former route can still be seen through embankments and bridges. However, the deep cuts between Frechenhausen and Hirzenhain were filled between 2000 and 2010.
literature
- Urs Kramer, Matthias Brodkorb: Farewell to the railways - freight lines from 1994 to today. Transpress, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-613-71333-8 , p. 49.
- Urs Kramer, Matthias Brodkorb: Farewell to the Rail - Freight Lines 1980 to 1993. Transpress, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-613-71346-8 , p. 48.
- H. Schomann: Railway in Hessen - Railway constructions and routes 1839-1939. Wiesbaden 2005, ISBN 3-8062-1917-6 , pp. 472-479.
- M. and S. Zöllner: DB branch line romance of the eighties - at the end of an era. Brilon 2003, ISBN 3-86133-329-5 , pp. 79-98.
- Urs Kramer: Dillenburg – Wallau (Lahn). In: W. Machel (Ed.): Secondary and narrow-gauge railways in Germany then and now. Munich 1999.
- Wolfgang Fiegenbaum, Wolfgang Klee: Farewell to the rails - disused railway lines in Germany's passenger train traffic 1980–1990 . transpress, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-613-71073-0 , p. 353-359 .
- J. Stiehl: The Schelden Valley Railway with the steep 1:17 route. In: Verein Eisenbahnfreunde Dillenburg (ed.): Commemorative publication for the DB open day. Dillenburg 1970, DNB 790697203 , pp. 30-33.
Web links
- Excerpt from the course book from 1944
- www.rostendeschienen.de - Documentation of the route ( memento from June 23, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- www.eisenbahnbildarchiv.de - Photos from the Schelden Valley Railway from 1972
- www.drehscheibe-foren.de - 94er on the Schelden Valley Railway, June 1970
- - The Bw Dillenburg and its steep sections-94 ( Memento from December 7, 2005 in the Internet Archive )
- www.drehscheibe-foren.de - 1987: Last winter on the Schelden Valley Railway (m22B)
- Photo collection from 2013
Individual evidence
- ↑ First Hessian station for storm wood built near Biedenkopf. In: Gießener Anzeiger. May 3, 2007.
- ↑ In Breidenstein near Biedenkopf, a loading point for timber transports is being converted and expanded for permanent use. (pdf) Hessian Ministry of Economics, Transport and Regional Development, November 23, 2007, archived from the original on November 26, 2007 ; Retrieved May 21, 2009 .
- ↑ Dietmar Bosserhoff: Maintaining the rail infrastructure is a premise for modal shifts . In: freight railways. Issue 2/2009, p. 32, Alba Fachverlag Düsseldorf, ISSN 1610-5273 .