Weddeler loop

Weddeler loop (Braunschweig – Wolfsburg)
Route number :	1956
Course book section (DB) :	301/349
Route length:	24.8 km
Gauge :	1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Route class :	D4
Power system :	15 kV, 16.7 Hz  ~
Top speed:	160 km / h
Legend from Hanover and from Hildesheim from Salzgitter and from Bad Harzburg 3.4 Braunschweig Hbf from and to Gifhorn 5.7 Abzw Braunschweig Schmiedekamp to Braunschweig Rbf 7.0 Green hunter from Braunschweig Rbf 7.6 Braunschweig-Buchhorst junction 9.5 Weddel (Braunschw) 10.0 / 3.7 Abzw Weddel Route 1900 Braunschweig-Magdeburg 9.6 Federal motorway 2 12.1 Bbf apprenticeship (Braunschw) 12.9 Schunter 249 m former Brunswick State Railway (dismantled in 1942) from Braunschweig-Gliesmarode (1942–1998) 14.7 Great Brunsrode 19.9 Wolfsburg-Ehmen 22.0 Abzw Sülfeld Route 6399 (3rd track to Oebisfelde ) and to the high-speed line Hanover – Berlin from the high-speed line Hanover – Berlin 24.2 / 17.4 Wolfsburg-Fallersleben end of the route 1956 Continuation of route 6399 (3rd track to Oebisfelde) 12.6 Wolfsburg Central Station to Berlin

The Weddeler Loop is a 21.1 kilometer long railway line in northern Germany between Weddel (village of Cremlingen near Braunschweig ) and Fallersleben (district of Wolfsburg ). It is single-track, electrified and part of the course book route 301 (Braunschweig – Wolfsburg – Stendal).

course

The line branches off the Braunschweig – Magdeburg railway line at the Weddel junction at kilometer 10.0 (6.6 rail kilometers east of the Braunschweig main station ) and runs on a single track to the Lehr operating station . The double-track train station (without passenger traffic) is the only overtaking and crossing point on the route. It continues on a single track to the Sülfeld junction, where it branches off again into two tracks. One of them crosses the high-speed line Hanover – Berlin (kilometer 187.5) and merges there into its northern track, so that there the trains from the direction of Wolfsburg / Berlin split into the directions of Braunschweig and Hanover . The other track runs parallel to the high-speed line, with a transition to its southern track (direction Wolfsburg / Berlin), further as the third track (route 6399) to Oebisfelde .

Between the two branches (km 3.7 and 22.0), the track can be driven at 160 km / h as planned. The threading in and out at Fallersleben station is carried out using high-speed switches at speeds of up to 160 km / h. In the vicinity of the switches, the maximum permissible speed is 130 km / h. A line train control system is installed between the line kilometers 22.4 and km 24.2 . The route is controlled from the Fallersleben electronic signal box .

In the northern section from the height of Groß Brunsrode to Fallersleben, the Weddeler Loop runs on the route of the former Braunschweig – Fallersleben railway (Schuntertalbahn) . This section was generously redrawn in 1941.

The newly routed southern section is prepared for the installation of a second track. Here the superstructures for the second track only need to be rebuilt for two railroad overpasses. Five other, shorter bridges were built directly with two tracks. In the northern section, which continues to use the existing route of the single-track Schuntertalbahn, all road and railway overpasses must be demolished and rebuilt for the double-track expansion.

An expansion for 200 km / h is also provided as an option.

business

The line connects the long-distance train stations in Braunschweig and Hildesheim to the high-speed line from Hanover to Berlin and was also built together with it. In Hildesheim, the long-distance trains thread over the Hildesheim loop into the high-speed line Hanover – Würzburg .

In long-distance traffic, the route is mainly used by the ICE trains that run every hour between Berlin and Frankfurt am Main . In the transport drove regional rail line Braunschweig-Wolfsburg-Stendal. The line was operated with diesel multiple units of the 642 series and locomotive-hauled trains of the 112 series together with n-wagons every hour. Most of the services operated by diesel multiple units continued to Stendal every two hours. The number of passengers in regional traffic was 3680 passengers per day (2014, Monday – Friday).

ENNO multiple unit at InnoTrans 2014 in Berlin

In a Europe-wide tender by the then ZGB (now RGB ) and the LNVG , metronom Eisenbahngesellschaft was awarded the contract to operate the ENNO network from December 2015 for ten years. This also includes the Wolfsburg – Braunschweig – Hildesheim line, which runs every hour, with additional repeater trains during rush hour. Coradia Continental multiple units from the vehicle pool of the ZGB - today's regional association for the greater Braunschweig area - are used . The travel time between Wolfsburg and Braunschweig has been reduced by five minutes.

In addition to the Hildesheim loop , the single-track Weddel loop is one of the bottlenecks on the route between Frankfurt am Main and Berlin. There are no single-track sections on the alternative route via Erfurt .

history

Prehistory to 1989

The Schuntertalbahn was built as the first rail link between Fallersleben and Braunschweig between 1901 and 1904 . It was a branch line of the Braunschweigische Landes-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft that left Fallersleben on the east side, crossed the current route east of Lehr, then along the Schunter to Braunschweig-Gliesmarode (at that time without a connection to the Braunschweig – Wieren line ) and finally in led the then north station of the Braunschweig State Railway. This route was nationalized in 1938 and a new connection via Gliesmarode to what was then the main train station was built at the west end. On the east side, the Reichsbahn planned a double-track main line from Fallersleben, where today's Volkswagen plant was connected to the Lehrter Bahn , to the Braunschweig main station planned at the time (roughly where it was actually built in 1960) and on to the newly built steelworks in Salzgitter . The route should leave Fallersleben on the west side and then lead straight to the south. Of these plans, only the single-track section north of Lehr was completed by 1942 and provisionally connected to the existing branch line, the construction work was canceled and the old route from Lehr to Fallersleben was shut down. This provisional connection then remained for over fifty years, although the line for a branch line was densely occupied with goods traffic, up to 20 trains a day. The northern embankment of the crossing-free Fallersleben – Sülfeld branch was unused.

Planning from 1990 and construction 1996–1998

After the fundamental decision of July 1990 to build the high-speed line Hanover – Berlin via the north route via Wolfsburg (instead of the alternative south route via Magdeburg and Potsdam ), a connection between the Wolfsburg and Braunschweig stations became necessary. A diagonal route between Oebisfelde and Braunschweig was also considered, but rejected in favor of the city of Wolfsburg due to ecological arguments.

The line was included as a section of the upgraded Löhne – Braunschweig – Wolfsburg line in 1992 as an urgent requirement in the federal transport infrastructure plan. The project also found its way into the Federal Railways Expansion Act of 1993. The regional planning procedure was completed in the summer of 1993, and the planning approval procedure was initiated towards the end of the same year .

The southern section between Weddel and Groß Brunsrode (near apprenticeship) was rebuilt; in the section to Fallersleben, the line built in the 1940s for 160 km / h was expanded and electrified.

The question of financing remained unresolved for a long time. In order to be able to complete the line in time for the commissioning of the high-speed line between Hanover and Berlin planned for 1997 , savings options were examined in order to burden the tight federal budget as little as possible. The Federal Railroad went into a business case assumed by the provisional only single-track expansion the estimated cost (and thus the burden on the budget) of 300 to 350 by about 50 to 100 million DM to reduce.

In November 1996, the federal government released funds of 242 million DM for the expansion of the Weddel loop and the new construction of the Löhne – Braunschweig – Hildesheim section. After completion of all planning approval procedures , the large-scale construction began in 1997.

At this point in time, the opening of the high-speed line between Hanover and Berlin was not expected before the beginning of 1999. In May 1998, the converted Weddel branch was put into operation. By resolution of the board of directors of Deutsche Bahn, completion of the new line in September 1998 was planned for May. In the remaining four months, construction was carried out around the clock, seven days a week, in a three-shift system. Foreseeable bottlenecks at the Hanover junction were one of the decisive factors for this acceleration, if the hourly trains running in both directions between Frankfurt am Main and Berlin would have traveled via the Lower Saxony state capital (with a change of direction ). In addition, by running the trains over the Weddeler Loop, a journey time reduction of around 40 minutes compared to the previous timetable (via Magdeburg ) was to be expected. The time advantage compared to the longer route via Hanover (with a change of direction) is only about 10 minutes.

The opening took place on September 20, 1998.

outlook

Volkswagen is campaigning for a double-track expansion of the line. The Federal Ministry of Transport wants to examine such an expansion if additional regional transport is ordered and the company is shifting transport to rail.

On February 22, 2016, the magazine Focus reported that Lower Saxony's Transport Minister Olaf Lies , Deutsche Bahn and the Federal Ministry of Transport had agreed to double-track the route as a local transport project, regardless of the federal transport infrastructure plan. A planning agreement is to be concluded by summer 2016; detailed planning is to be advanced by the end of 2016. The planning agreement was signed in August 2016. According to other information, the planning agreement was announced in 2016, but it was not signed until autumn 2017.

The cost of such an expansion is estimated at around 120 million euros (as of 2014). In 2017, the total costs were estimated at around 130 million euros, the financing is to take place purely as a local transport project, with funds from the Municipal Transport Financing Act (60%) and funds from the state and regional association (40% in total), with the federal government contributing to this 40 percent share wants to participate due to the benefits for freight and long-distance travel. According to the agreement made known in autumn 2017, the state of Lower Saxony bears three quarters of the costs of 1.6 million euros in planning costs, and the regional association for the greater Braunschweig area bears a quarter.

The planning approval from the 1990s is still in place. In contrast to the original plan, the expanded section is designed for 160 km / h (instead of 200 km / h). Construction work is scheduled to begin in 2021, with double-track commissioning scheduled for 2023 . In November 2019, the Braunschweiger Zeitung reported that the financing was still controversial.

Web links

• Route, operating points and permissible speeds on the OpenRailwayMap
• Weddeler loop . Information on the expansion on the homepage of Deutsche Bahn
• The "Weddeler Loop" . Information about the expansion on the homepage of the regional association Braunschweig.

literature

• Jürgen Hörstel: Hanover – Berlin. History and construction of a rapid transit system . Transpress-Verlag, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-613-71088-9 (Chapter 6: “The connection to the south - Fallersleben – Braunschweig”).
• Wolfgang Fiegenbaum, Wolfgang Klee: Farewell to the rails. Disused railway lines in passenger traffic in Germany 1998–1999 , Transpress-Verlag, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-613-71144-3 , pp. 9–11. (old route)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Graphic: Two-track expansion of the "Weddeler Loop". (PDF, 222 kB) (No longer available online.) Deutsche Bahn, January 2018, archived from the original on May 2, 2018 ; accessed on May 1, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
2. ↑ Local transport plan 2016 for the greater Braunschweig area , final version, draft status November 6, 2015, page 80.
3. ↑ Region Hannover, LNVG, Zweckverband Großraum Braunschweig (Ed.): Metronom receives contract for Elektro-Netz Niedersachsen-Ost (ENNO) ( Memento of the original from August 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The  archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . Press release from August 6, 2014.
4. ↑ Connection for two ICE lines . In: Handelsblatt . November 22, 1996, ISSN  0017-7296 , p. 13 .
5. ↑ Uwe Hildebrandt: VW is pushing for the Weddeler Loop to be expanded . In: Peiner Zeitung (online edition), February 29, 2012.
6. ^ NN: ICE route Braunschweig-Wolfsburg is being expanded. In: Focus . February 22, 2016. Retrieved February 23, 2016 . 
7. ↑ Expansion of the Braunschweig-Wolfsburg railway line is progressing. In: Kreiszeitung.de. August 15, 2016. Retrieved August 20, 2016 . 
8. ↑ ^{a b} Two-track Weddeler Loop can be planned . In: Eisenbahn-Revue International . No. 11 , November 2017, ISSN  1421-2811 , p. 537 .
9. ↑ Weddel loop slows ICE: State government calls for expansion . Hessisch-Niedersächsische Allgemeine online, February 10, 2014.
10. ↑ Our construction projects - Weddeler Loop - schedule. Deutsche Bahn AG, accessed on May 17, 2019 . 
11. ^ Report in the Braunschweiger Zeitung from November 6, 2019