Soden Railway

Bad Soden – Frankfurt-Höchst
Course of the Soden Railway and the neighboring Königstein Railway
Route number (DB) :	3640
Course book section (DB) :	643
Route length:	6.6 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Power system :	15 kV 16.7 Hz  ~
Legend 6.6 Bad Soden (Taunus) terminus Sulzbacher Strasse Limes Railway to Schwalbach L 3014 5.2 BÜ Oberliederbacher Weg 4.3 BÜ Bahnstrasse 4.3 Sulzbach (Taunus) 3.4 BÜ dirt road A 66 2.3 BÜ Lindenweg Regional bypass west from Eschborn Süd (planned) 1.7 BÜ Sossenheimer Weg 1.7 Frankfurt-Sossenheim ?,? Höchst City Park (planned) Zuckschwerdtstrasse Taunus Railway to Frankfurt ( FV / RV ) Main-Lahn-Bahn to Frankfurt 0.0 Frankfurt-Höchst Königsteiner Bahn to Königstein Taunus Railway to Wiesbaden and   Main-Lahn Railway to Niedernhausen Swell:

The Sodener Bahn is a railway line opened in 1847 in the west of Frankfurt am Main and part of the local transport network of Frankfurt am Main .

route

The Sodener Bahn runs from Frankfurt-Höchst via Sulzbach to Bad Soden and is 6.6 kilometers long. It was also called the Höchst-Soden Railway . The route bears the course book number 643 and is now operated by RMV as route 11.

history

In 1893 the route still ran over open fields

In 1845 the Sodener Actien-Gesellschaft was founded by the Bethmann bank to build a health resort and a railway line to Soden. The line was opened on May 22, 1847, making it probably the oldest branch line in Germany. In Höchst it has a connection to the Taunus Railway from Frankfurt to Wiesbaden , which has existed since 1839 , whereby the track position enabled continuous traffic in the direction of Wiesbaden, in the direction of Frankfurt a change of direction was necessary. The reason for the construction of the railway was the connection of the up-and-coming spa and seaside resort of Soden to the still very young railway network. The builder and owner of the railway was the Sodener Actien-Gesellschaft , which had transferred the management of the operation to the Taunus-Eisenbahn -Gesellschaft from the start .

Since 1972 there has been a connection to the Limes Railway from Bad Soden to Niederhöchstadt in Bad Soden station , via which the city is connected to the Rhine / Main S-Bahn network .

business

Initially, the train only ran in the summer months. In 1860, the operating company closed the line and demanded subsidies from the Nassau government, which they refused. Only on October 1, 1863, after the line had been sold to the Taunus Railway Company for 100,000 guilders, was operations resumed. On January 1, 1872, the Soden Railway was sold to the Prussian State Railway and has been running in winter since then.

From 1979 to 1997 the Sodener Bahn was part of the S3 line of the Rhein-Main S-Bahn . The line was electrified for this purpose. The occupation of the trains was very weak, so that the S-Bahn service was given up. In addition, the destination signs "Frankfurt-Höchst", despite additional texts and announcements, repeatedly led to "misuse" by passengers, which in addition to an enormously longer travel time due to the tariff, usually also resulted in a journey without a valid ticket.

The Frankfurt-Königsteiner Eisenbahn has been running the line since 1997 and, since their merger, the Hessische Landesbahn . Despite catenary only diesel railcar of the type were VT 2E and from 2006 LINT used for staff training on line acquisitions new electrical drove several times temporarily low floor - multiple units of the type FLIRT and Coradia Continental . Since the timetable change on December 15, 2019, Coradia Continental has been operating exclusively. There are no longer any carriage throughputs on other lines, unlike, for example, on the Frankfurt – Königstein and Frankfurt – Brandoberndorf routes.

In addition to regular passenger traffic, the S-Bahn continues to use the route at night for business trips without passengers.

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  LINT 41 in the field between Sulzbach (Taunus) and Frankfurt-Sossenheim

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  Hp Sulzbach

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  VT 2E near Sulzbach

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  Coradia Continental in Bad Soden train station

future

The section south of the federal highway 66 is planned as part of the planned regional light rail “ Regionaltangente West ” (RTW). If the project is implemented, the construction of a further stop at the level of the railway underpass on Zuckschwerdtstrasse (between the municipal clinics and the Höchst City Park ) and a double-track expansion of this section are planned. The plan approval procedure was opened in March 2017.

From 2022, it is planned to replace the diesel railcars operating on the route with railcars powered by hydrogen (type iLint ).

Web links

Commons : Sodener Bahn  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Schedule simulation for line 13

Individual evidence

1. ↑ DB Netze - Infrastructure Register
2. ↑ Railway Atlas Germany . 9th edition. Schweers + Wall, Aachen 2014, ISBN 978-3-89494-145-1 .
3. ↑ Query of the course book route 643 at Deutsche Bahn.
4. ^ Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund: change of line numbers. In: www.rmv.de. Retrieved December 24, 2016 . 
5. ^ Motor vehicles - HLB-Hessische Landesbahn GmbH. Retrieved December 21, 2019 . 
6. ↑ Official Journal No. 9/2017. Pp. 257-292
7. ^ Matthias Pieren: Rail traffic: The Taunus will be diesel-free. In: Taunus Zeitung. April 25, 2018. Retrieved April 29, 2018 .