Grinding track

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Grinding track
Route length:	3.1 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend from Ludwigshafen Mannheim Central Station 0.0 Baden Railways and Main-Neckar Railway old trainstation Friedrichring Neckar harbor Luisenring 3.1 Rhine port Main customs office to the central station

The grinding track was a railway line in the city of Mannheim , which was used exclusively for freight traffic .

Infrastructure

The originally 3.1 km long route was single-track . It connected the apron of the old station with the Rhine and Neckar ports and was later extended from there to the main station.

Geographical location

The route threaded itself out of the approach of the “old station” in front of the track and then ran on the Gürteldamm along the ring roads, Friedrichring and Luisenring, once around today's inner city . There was one freight yard for the Neckar and Rhine ports .

history

When Mannheim's first train station, later called “Alter Bahnhof”, was planned at the end of the 1830s and finally inaugurated on September 12, 1840, the planners succumbed to the false prognosis that railways would only become important in passenger transport but not in freight transport. In Mannheim, for example, the railway was far away from the port facilities, which made the handling of goods very complex.

From 1852, however, the Grand Ducal Baden State Railways ' revenues from freight transport exceeded those from passenger transport. The train station and the port facilities were therefore connected with a line that was given the name Schleifbahn , but was also called "Hafen-", "Ring-" or "Gürtelbahn". The construction cost 370,000 guilders . It was opened on November 9, 1854.

During the planning in Mannheim - as in many other places - the traffic generated by the railroad was completely underestimated. As a result, the railway systems in the city had to be redesigned several times in the second half of the 19th century: in 1867 the “old station” was replaced as a passenger station by the main station, but continued to be used as a local freight station. The loop was extended behind the Rhine harbor and introduced into the north end of the main station. This made it possible to bypass Mannheim completely on the grinding track. In 1879 a new freight yard went into operation in Mühlau . The “old station” and the section of the grinding track running on the ring were abandoned, the facilities were subsequently torn down and the fallow land was built over by the expanding city of Mannheim. Structurally, none of this has survived today. The Rhine and Neckar harbors were still accessible for freight trains as the line threaded into the north end of the main station .

literature

• Albert Kuntzemüller : The first Mannheim railway. For the secular celebration of the Baden State Railways on September 12, 1940 . In: Mannheimer Geschichteblätter. 41st year. Issue 1/1940, pp. 1–26.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Kuntzemüller, p. 15
2. ↑ W. Mayher: Map of Mannheim and Ludwigshafen . Heckel, Mannheim approx. 1875.
3. ^ Hans Huth: Die Kunstdenkmäler des Stadtkreis Mannheim 1. Deutscher Kunstverlag, Munich 1982. ISBN 3-42200556-0 , p. 840.