Schroeder tunnel
The Schroeder tunnel is a former mine tunnel on the southern Salzgitter ridge near Liebenburg in the Goslar district in Lower Saxony . The mouth hole is located on the Grotenberge near the village of Klein Döhren . Since 2006 a group of people interested in mining has been working on restoring the facility and setting up a museum.
History and technology
The excavation of the Schroederstollen was started by the Ilseder Hütte in 1922. Ilseder Hütte operated the Georg-Friedrich iron ore mine near Dörnten .
The tunnel should fulfill three tasks:
- The shortening of the previous ore transport route from the mine to the ore loading point at the Hannoversche Treue mine in Salzgitter- Calbecht ,
- the natural runoff of the pit water at the tunnel level 170 m above sea level. NN and
- the investigation of the deposits in the vicinity of the mining fields of the Ilseder Hütte.
From 1924 the narrow-gauge route belonging to the tunnel was built through the forests of the Liebenburg State Forest between Straute , Südholz , Hasenspring to the west and Lewerberg and Kassebusch to the east . On March 10, 1925, the breakthrough of the Schroeder tunnel took place with the -60 meter floor of the Georg-Friedrich mine . It was named after the then regional geologist Dr. Henry Schroeder named. The tunnel was a total of 2206 meters long with a width of 3.4 meters and a height of 2.5 meters. The gradient towards the mouth hole was 1 in 1000.
Tracks with a gauge of 780 mm were laid on the bottom of the tunnel . The railway construction was completed in December 1925. 100 meters after the tunnel mouth hole was a transfer station with a total of five tracks for shunting and some smaller operating buildings. The tunnel locomotives drove up to this point and then handed over the wagons to the mainline locomotives. The old locomotives of the former railway to Dörnten station were used in the tunnel, but the driver's cab had to be lowered. Overhead line locomotives from Siemens with an operating weight of 40 tons were used on the 14.7 km long surface route from 1934 , before steam locomotives were used . These pulled the so-called Berliners, laden with four tons of iron ore , past Liebenburg and through Salzgitter-Bad . In Calbecht, the ore was transferred to 65-tonne railway wagons ( self-unloaders ). The old loading station in Dörnten was abandoned as early as 1929 and the route there that was no longer needed was broken off.
In 1938, a 720 meter long investigation section was driven from the Schroeder tunnel to the marrow of the neighboring Morgenstern mine of the United Steelworks in order to investigate the parts of the field located there.
After the establishment of the Reichswerke Hermann Göring , the properties of the Ilseder Hütte in the area of the Hannoversche Treue mine were expropriated. Therefore, in 1940 a new ore reloading station had to be built near Salzgitter-Vosspaß .
As early as 1965, the now outdated ore railway, which was in need of repair, was to be replaced by truck transports. However, due to the poor economic situation in German iron ore mining, investments were postponed.
After the Georg-Friedrich mine was closed in 1968, the Schroeder tunnel became superfluous. The Schroederstollen was particularly interesting for geologists because it once completely opened up the entire Salzgitter ridge with its rock layers from north to south. For example, the works geologist from Salzgitter ore mining and local researcher Heinz Kolbe advocated keeping the tunnel open. The Ilseder Hütte rejected this because of the high costs. In 1970, a dam was built into the tunnel for the production of process water for a carcass recycling plant that had taken over the operational buildings of the mine in Dörnten. The mouth hole was then filled in and the track system demolished.
Current condition
The original mouth hole has been restored since 2006 and the first meters of the tunnel cleared . In front of the mouth hole, a part of the narrow-gauge railway will be restored for illustrative purposes, but for technical reasons with a changed gauge of 600 mm.
The former railway line is now largely used as a hiking trail (hiking trail no. 5 Liebenburg – Salzgitter-Bad). The buildings of the ore transfer station in Vosspaß fell into disrepair after the closure and were demolished in 2013/14.
literature
- Rainer Slotta : Technical monuments in the Federal Republic of Germany - Volume 5, Part 1: The iron ore mining . German Mining Museum, Bochum 1986, p. 187-193 .
- Heinrich Korthöber et al .: Mining in Salzgitter . The history of mining and the life of miners from the beginning to the present. In: Archives of the City of Salzgitter (Ed.): Contributions to the city's history . 1st edition. tape 13 . Appelhans, Salzgitter 1997, ISBN 3-930292-05-X , p. 37-52, 297-304 .
- Manfred Watzlawik et al .: Fortuna, Morgenstern, Georg-Friedrich . History and stories of ore mining near Döhren. Ed .: Döhrener Mining Working Group. 1st edition. Self-published, Groß-Döhren 1983.
- Heinz Kolbe: The history of iron ore mining in Salzgitter: The exploration history of the plants south and north of the Salzgitter urban area . In: Geschichtsverein Salzgitter eV (Ed.): Salzgitter Yearbook 1984, Volume 3 . Salzgitter 1984, p. 28-41 .