Solvay works railway

Solvay 7 MaK G 1203 BB in Rheinberg
near the Borth rock salt mine

		Direction Wesel
		Buderich
		City limit Wesel / Alps
		former Boxteler Bahn to Goch
		Link from Büderich
		City border Alps / Rheinberg
		Borth Salt Mine
		B58 ( Geldern - Wesel )
		Wallach former shafts I / II
		Rhine port of Ossenberg
		Solvay Harbor

		East part of the plant
		Freight depot
		Solvay Chemicals GmbH
		B57 ( Kleve - Moers )
		West part of the plant
		Lower Rhine route Millingen Gbf

Solvay-Rheinhafen Ossenberg

The Solvay factory railway is a factory railway that connected the salt mine in Borth with the Ossenberg port and also connects the Solvay factory with the same port.

Solvay has had its own works and industrial line in Rheinberg for more than 100 years . This makes it the oldest and largest of the German Solvay locations. The train was the only means of transport and created the conditions for the plant to be built here.

history

The railway line was built in the course of the establishment of the Rheinberg plant and the sinking of the Borth and Wallach shafts (1897–1924)

Towards the end of the 19th century, large stretches of land in the lower Lower Rhine were examined for hard coal deposits.

Solvay-Werke decided to build a new soda factory in Rheinberg , since salt is the key raw material for making soda . The plant went into operation in 1907.

Salt has been mined in Rheinberg Borth in the Lower Rhine region for 90 years. To this day, some of the salt is transported by rail from the mine for shipping to the nearby Rhine port of Ossenberg.

The line also leads outside the plant, to the Millingen freight station, three kilometers away, and at the northern end behind the Borth salt mine to the Büderich connecting line , where the Solvay tracks are connected to the DB Netz AG tracks .

Today most of the raw material transports and part of the shipping of Solvay products such as soda, epichlorohydrin or caustic soda are still carried out by rail. Around 1.7 million tons of limestone , anthracite , coal or propene enter the plant in this way. This also includes the raw materials that are delivered to the Rhine port by ship and brought to the factory via the industrial railway.

In addition, Solvay transports the salt from the mine in Rheinberg-Borth to the port for the European Salt Company .

In the near future, a new logistics center is to be built near the Solvay plant , for the construction of which the convenient location on the Lower Rhine , the proximity to the Ruhr area and the existing infrastructure and services as well as the connection to the Solvay industrial railway, via which the majority the goods to be delivered are decisive.

The decision to move inland waterway handling to the Wesel city port was made in mid-2013 after the company had succeeded in developing the new concept together with the previous logistics partner of the Hülskens company and the Wesel municipal utility. The realignment of the Wesel city port, but also the construction of a new bypass road and the Rhine bridge, were an important basis for the realignment of logistics. There have been no more salt trains since January 2015. The railway systems between the Borth salt mine and Ossenberg were dismantled.

Individual evidence

literature

Stefan Högemann: Salt as the elixir of life; The Solvay works railway in Rheinberg. In: Bahn-Report, issue 4/2014, July / August, issue 190; ISSN 0178-4528
Rolf Swoboda: The Solvay plant in Rheinberg / Borth and its works railway . In: Venloer Bahn. Haltern - Wesel - Venlo . VBN Verlag B. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2010, ISBN 978-3-941712-04-1 , p. 267-277 .

Map series

Land surveying office of North Rhine-Westphalia (ed.): Kreiskarte Kreis Wesel 1: 50000 . 5th edition. 1991, ISBN 3-89439-578-8 .

Web links

Commons : Transport in Rheinberg - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

[1] solvay.de railway company inspection

[2] rp-online.de A few days of air March 9, 2011

[3] rp-online.de New logistics center next to Solvay March 7, 2014

[4] sco-salt.com, Salt loading via Wesel city harbor: Optimized logistics strengthens the Borth location

[5] rp-online.de, tracks of the works railway are being dismantled, By Uwe Plien, from May 25, 2017