Main line of the Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft

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Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (nationalized in 1879), Cologne-Minden
trunk line in dark red
Main route of the Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft on the Germany 1849 railway map

The main line of the Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft ( Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn for short ) was the supra-regional railway line that gave the Cologne-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (CME) its name.

In Friedrich List's 1833 printed concept of a railway network for Germany, the line was the westernmost part of the railway line from Berlin to the Rhine . Friedrich Harkort (entrepreneur and politician from the Ruhr area) had already advertised the construction of a railway line from Cologne through the Ruhr area to Minden in 1825.

history

On December 18, 1843, the CME received the concession to build a railway line that would connect the metropolis of Cologne with the cities of the Rhenish-Westphalian industrial area and in Minden the connection to the route network of the Royal Hanover State Railways .

A route through the Bergisches Land was rejected due to the cost of the necessary engineering structures and on the advice of the Aachen merchant and banker David Hansemann - later also Prussian finance minister for a short time. Instead, the cheaper variant from Deutz via Mülheim am Rhein , Düsseldorf , Duisburg , Oberhausen , Altenessen , Gelsenkirchen , Wanne , Herne , Rauxel , Dortmund , Hamm , Oelde , Rheda , Bielefeld and Herford was chosen by bypassing the mining area at that time .

The first section from Deutz to Düsseldorf was opened on December 20, 1845, the second to Duisburg on February 9, 1846. The following year, Hamm was reached on May 15 via Dortmund, and on October 15, 1847, the entire 263-kilometer route to Minden was completed on a single track. The route with the Schildescher Viaduct and other engineering structures was already designed for the planned two-track system.

Network significance 1847/48

Railway map of Germany and neighboring countries 1849. Thinly depicted routes were only planned or under construction.

On the same day opened Royal Hanoverian State Railways , the Hanover-Minden railway . On September 1 of that year, the Saxon-Silesian Railway in Görlitz was connected to a branch of the Lower Silesian-Märkish Railway (NME). On October 18, the Upper Silesian Railway reached the border station Myslowitz ( Mysłowice ), the end point of the Kraków-Upper Silesian Railway , which opened on October 13 . This opening of several hundred kilometers of railway lines in September / October 1847, together with other railway lines that had been in operation a few years earlier, created a continuous rail link from the Rhine via Braunschweig , Oschersleben , Magdeburg , Dresden and Breslau to the Vistula . The routes from Berlin to Magdeburg and to Breslau could be used a year earlier, but before 1851 there was no connecting track between the various Berlin train stations. On April 1, 1848, the southern terminus of the Warsaw-Vienna Railway was opened on the Krakow-Oberschlesische Eisenbahn , on September 1, the Oberschlesische Bahn was connected to the Kaiser-Ferdinand- built from Vienna via the Upper Silesian Wilhelmsbahn in Oderberg ( Bohumín ). North runway .

Avenwedde railway accident

On January 21, 1851, a train from Minden to the Rhineland derailed in what is now Gütersloh - Avenwedde . The result was three fatalities. It was the worst railway accident in Germany to date. Prince Friedrich Wilhelm of Prussia, who later became Emperor Friedrich III , also traveled on the train, but was only slightly injured. In 1860 he donated the zinc die-cast of a baptismal angel by Bertel Thorvaldsen to the Martin Luther Church in Gütersloh as a thank you for being saved from the railway accident .

course

Today the main line has lost its importance as a continuous main line. Long-distance passenger rail traffic no longer runs on the main line in the north of the Ruhr area , but on the more central Dortmund – Bochum – Essen – Duisburg line of the former Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft .

Due to the different importance of the different sections of the main line, the exact route with all operating points is described in the following four lemmas (today's meaning measured by the number of trains running):