Worms – Rosengarten route
| Worms-Rosengarten route | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Trajectory length: | about 320 m | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Trajectory operation: | 1870-1901 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Course to 1900 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The ferry Worms rose garden was a railway ferry from 1870 to 1900 between the station Rosengarten, the then rechtsrheinischen station of Worms and the left bank town of Worms in operation.
prehistory
The Main-Neckar Railway opened its line from Heidelberg via Darmstadt to Frankfurt on the right bank of the Rhine in 1846 . On the left bank of the Rhine, the Hessian Ludwig Railway opened its railway line from Mainz to Worms by 1853 , which was connected to the Palatinate Ludwig Railway to Ludwigshafen in the same year . Between the two sides of the Rhine, the first permanent railway connection was established in 1858 with the southern bridge in Mainz for the Rhine-Main Railway to the state capital Darmstadt of the Grand Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt . In the south of Worms, the Ludwigshafen and Mannheim stations were connected by a trajectory in 1863 and, from 1867, by a fixed bridge.
Construction of the trajectory
In order to close the roughly 66-kilometer gap between these Rhine crossings, the Hessian Ludwigsbahn received a concession on February 28, 1868 for the construction of the Riedbahn , a railway line initially from Darmstadt, later from Frankfurt am Main, via Gernsheim , Biblis , Hofheim and Rosengarten to Worms. The construction costs of the line were estimated at 1 million talers . While the railway line was supposed to be completed by August 1871, no date was set for the construction of the Rhine bridge, as the railway did not have the funds to finance it. Therefore, a trajectory was initially planned for the connection across the Rhine.
The stretch on the right bank of the Rhine from Darmstadt to Rosengarten was opened on June 1, 1869. On November 1st of the same year the Nibelungen Railway followed from Bensheim to Hofheim an der Riedbahn. The stretch on the left bank of the Rhine from the bank of the Rhine to the Worms main station was opened on August 12, 1870 together with the trajectory. On October 15, 1877, the Weinheim – Rosengarten route followed .
The ferry traffic
Initially only the paddle steamer Ludwigsbahn I and three shells were available. Ludwigsbahn I was built in 1869 especially for ferry traffic at the shipyard in Duisburg - Ruhrort . While the passengers used this ship as a ferry and boarded a train standing there on the other bank, freight wagons were loaded onto the shells. This had the bug a device to track the ship on the shore track to dock. They could accommodate three freight cars. The shells were coupled alongside the steamboat for the crossing. Due to the transition from the bank track to the Schalde without landing stages, only two-axle wagons could be transported due to the sharp kink in the track layout, which was the usual design for freight wagons at the time. In the event of extremely low water, the ferry traffic had to be stopped. Pictures of the ferry traffic with paddle steamer and the Schalden can be viewed at the Worms City Archives.
The trajectory was very important in freight transport. In 1886 39,537 wagons were transferred. That was an average of 108 cars a day. The maximum output was 150 cars per day. Three steam boats and three shawls were available for this.
The passenger traffic utilization of the trajectory was also high. In 1880 12 pairs of trains drove to Rosengarten every day, in 1897 there were 15. The time between the train arrival on one bank and the departure on the other bank is given as seven minutes. The Hessische Ludwigsbahn paid for the complex trajectory with a tariff surcharge of 8.4 kilometers. A passenger who wanted to travel from Worms to Bensheim had to pay the tariff for 32.5 kilometers for the 24.1 kilometer route. At that time there were comparable regulations in some other cases, e.g. B. for the ship bridge Speyer and for the railway bridge Wesel .
In the course of straightening the Rhine and based on military considerations, planning began to bridge the Rhine near Worms from 1890 onwards. The double-track Rhine bridge in Worms was built and went into operation on December 1, 1900. This enabled continuous train traffic across the Rhine and made the trajectory superfluous, which was immediately discontinued. The parallel ferry for pedestrians stopped operating a month later, on January 2, 1901.
literature
- Ralph Häussler: From the Ludwig Railway to the Rhineland-Palatinate Clock . In: Eisenbahn Magazin, No. 9/2003, Düsseldorf.
- Ralph Häussler: Railways in Worms . Hamm / Rheinhessen, 2003.
- Magistrate of the City of Lampertheim (Ed.): Rosengarten. Contributions to the history of the Rosengarten community - on the 40th anniversary of the Rosengarten community . Lampertheim 1977.
- Fritz Paetz: Data collection on the history of the railways on the Main, Rhine and Neckar . Bensheim-Auerbach 1985, p. 47ff.
- HW Scharf: Railway Rhine bridges in Germany . Freiburg, 2003.
- Hans Schlieper: Railway trajectories across the Rhine and Lake Constance . Düsseldorf, 2009, pp. 86-94. ISBN 978-3-87094-369-1