Oberlangenhorstbeeke siding bridge

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the towing bridge 2009 from the west with the damage that was given as the reason for the demolition

The Schleppbahnbrücke Oberlangenhorstbeeke is a single-arch quarry stone bridge of an old horse-drawn towing railway in Velbert and is registered there as a monument .

Location and description

In the Langenhorster Wald, a larger forest and local recreation area north of the city of Velbert in the Mettmann district, there is a hiking trail in the course of a former horse-drawn tugboat that was built in 1857 . Typical for a railway line, the popular hiking trail overcomes topographical obstacles with a steady gradient, gentle curves, cuts, embankments, and in the area of ​​the Langenhorstbeeke, a small inlet to the Rosentalbach, by means of a bridge. The building is a single arch bridge made of hewn Ruhr sandstone , mortared with lime mortar . The height is approx. 6 meters, the width of the passage approx. 3 meters. Two wing walls made of quarry stone are attached to both sides. The bottom of the brook is designed as a stone channel under the bridge.

history

The Velbert mining industry

The reason for the construction of the small bridge was the exploitation of the ore mines in Heiligenhaus and Velbert . The history of mining on the Velbert ridge goes back to the Middle Ages . Coal- bearing strata that come to the surface south of the Ruhr are not present here. Rather, mining (underground) was geared towards the extraction of iron ores , galena and zinc blende . The first document reported in 1301 that there was an abundant lead and silver mine in the Rützkausen district , which was archaeologically proven by the LVR office for soil conservation in the Rhineland . Mining came to a standstill in the Thirty Years' War and was reluctantly resumed in the middle of the 17th century. It was not until the 1850s that there were numerous prospects and speculations again, so in 1854 alone 412 prospecting licenses were issued. Because of the low capital investment of the local merchants, only a fraction of the mining rights were used. Well-funded merchants from the Cologne area or from Belgium, such as the Liège merchant Gallus Anton Lamarche, bought mining rights in the Velbert area and began mining.

Foundation of the horse-drawn towing railway

The mines of the Lamarche company with the names Clara, Wulff and Thalburg were widely scattered north of Heiligenhaus, Friedrich and Dietrich-Wilhelm north of Velbert. At that time, the only road with a lakefront was the coal road from Werden - Solingen, which was laid out in 1811-15. The mines, which were scattered "between fields and bushes", were initially connected to the Landstrasse by a 7 km long horse-drawn tram from the Wulff mine to the Dietrich-Wilhelm mine in 1852/53, where the ore could be reloaded onto horse-drawn vehicles. The routing required the construction of a tunnel with a Göpel shaft with a 33 ° gradient, which was later used by the Friedrich and Eisenberg collieries in the Krehwinkel mine . Lamarche guaranteed the Phönixhütte in Kupferdreh a daily delivery of 70 tons of iron ore . This amount of transport could only be moved by means of an efficient transport link.

the route of the towing railway now runs as a hiking trail in the Langenhorster forest

Extension of the tow to the Phönixhütte in Kupferdreh

The Lamarche ore mines were leased to the newly built Phönixhütte in Kupferdreh as early as 1855. Because of the transport difficulties over the few developed roads, the hut decided to extend the railway by 15 km through the Hesper Valley . As part of this expansion, the towing bridge over the Oberlangenhorstbeeke was built. The annual transport capacity of the Velbert mines was 39,000 t in 1865/66. A branch line opened up the limestone quarries in Hefel, from which around 45,000 t of raw lime were transported away. Increasingly, the towing railway then also served to remove the coal extracted from the steadily growing mines in the lower Hesper Valley.

In the Hespertal you can still see parts of the route near the Bläufabrik.

Closure of the ore mines after the drop in raw material prices

After the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, the raw material prices for metals fell, as cheaper mining areas were now available in Lorraine . The upper part of the horse-drawn tram with the towing bridge was shut down together with the ore mines. Nevertheless, the route network in the Hesper Valley to the limestone quarries of the Stollberg union was expanded.

Re-gauging, steam operation and public railways

While the lower Hespertalbahn , now a museum railway company, was relocated to standard gauge in 1877 due to the steadily growing transport volume, which saved the reloading of goods in the Kupferdreh station, the upper part remained a narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of 720 mm. But steam operations began here in 1880 as well. At the head station in Hesperbrück, the lime that was brought from the quarries in the Hefel by means of a narrow-gauge railway was burned. The finished product was loaded onto the standard-gauge railway and shipped at the head station in Hesperbrück, which is also the end point of the narrow-gauge railway, as well as the standard-gauge line. Finally, the narrow-gauge railway was converted into a public railway in 1881, with passenger and freight traffic according to a timetable. The closure took place suddenly in 1916 and due to the war. Rolling stock and tracks were dismantled and used for military purposes.

Decay of the towing bridge and monument protection

The bridge remained in place for over 90 years along the former route and was used as a hiking and forest path . Since the approaching dams were densely planted and the bridge body was overground, hardly anyone took any notice of this historic building. In 2009 the city forester of the city of Velbert requested the demolition of the allegedly dilapidated bridge and replacement with a simple pipe opening. The path was blocked. The repair was put at € 130,000. The city forester turned down the spontaneous offer made by Ruth Adomaitis and Georg Steih to repair the building through the initiative of the Langenhorst settlement community. The architect Josef Johannes Niedworok documented the building and applied for it to be included in the list of monuments. The Rhineland Regional Council determined the monument value in an expert report. Finally, the building was renovated by the technical operations Velbert for 50,000 €.

Tourist importance

The building is located in a much-used local recreation area between the city of Velbert and the city of Essen and is used by the Neanderlandsteig .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ralf-Ulrich Lütsch: The Velberter Bergbau and the Bergrevier Werden. Bergischer Geschichtsverein eV Velbert-Hardenberg 1980, p. 29.
  2. ↑ Joachim Leitsch, Dirk Hagedorn: Coal, lime & ores. The history of the Hesper Valley Railway. 2nd Edition. Hespertalbahn eV, Essen 2008, p. 16.
  3. ↑ Kurt Wesoly (Ed.): Rheinischer Städteatlas, No. 57, X delivery. Velbert . Röhrscheid, Berlin 1992, ISBN 3-7927-1271-7 , p. 1
  4. ↑ Horst Degen, Christoph Schotten: Velbert - history of three cities. Bachem, Cologne 2009, ISBN 978-3-7616-1843-1 , p. 222.
  5. ↑ Velbert, release submission 371/2009 1. Supplement to the district committee V. Center 15.09.2009
  6. ^ Dieter Klemp: Velbert bridge stories. Scala, Velbert 2011, DNB 1062521528 .

Coordinates: 51 ° 21 '28.8 "  N , 7 ° 1' 50.9"  E