Weinsberg tunnel
| Weinsberg tunnel | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
 The tunnel from the Heilbronn side
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| use | Railway tunnel | |||
| traffic connection | Crailsheim – Heilbronn railway line | |||
| place | Weinsberg - Heilbronn | |||
| length | 891.3 m | |||
| Number of tubes | 1 | |||
| Largest coverage | approx. 90 m | |||
| construction | ||||
| Client | KWSt.E. | |||
| building-costs | 650,000 fl. | |||
| start of building | October 1859 | |||
| completion | July 18, 1862 | |||
| business | ||||
| operator | DB network | |||
| release | 4th August 1862 | |||
| location | ||||
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| Coordinates | ||||
| Northeast portal | 49 ° 8 ′ 55 ″ N , 9 ° 16 ′ 2 ″ E | |||
| Southwest portal | 49 ° 8 ′ 36 " N , 9 ° 15 ′ 29" E | |||
Map with all coordinates: The Weinsberger Tunnel is a 891.3 m long tunnel on the Crailsheim – Heilbronn railway between Weinsberg and Heilbronn . When it opened in 1862, it was the longest tunnel in Württemberg . The listed railway tunnel crosses the Keuper marl of the Heilbronn mountains . Anhydrite stored in the rock caused major problems during construction and still requires extensive maintenance work today.
Geographical location
The Weinberger tunnel runs in the northern part of the Heilbronner mountains below on the border of the cities vineyard in East and Heilbronn in the West in the Kerner peace located notch ( 291.3 m above sea level. NHN ), 350 m southeast of the summit of the Won Bürg with east Won adjacent Schnarrenberg lying northern dome ( 301.7 m ) and 1.2 km (each a straight line ) from that of the north-northwest Südkuppe of Galgenberg (about 312 m is). Over the north summit, the landscape leads north-west to the Weinsberger Sattel (approx. 235 m ) with the federal highway 39 there .
prehistory
The Weinsberger Tunnel owes its creation less to geographic conditions than to political influences. In 1857 the state of Württemberg decided to establish a railway connection from Heilbronn via Crailsheim to the Bavarian city of Nuremberg . At the beginning of May 1858, the Württemberg Ministry of Finance, which was responsible for the railway construction at the time, presented plans for the route: The route was to continue eastwards from Heilbronn via Neckarsulm , Neuenstadt and Öhringen . A new port on the Neckar was planned for Neckarsulm as part of the railway construction . Since Heilbronn was the starting point, the city had shown little interest in questions about the course of the railway up to this point, but now saw a serious threat to its own economic strength in a Neckar port in neighboring Neckarsulm. The Oberamtsstadt Weinsberg previously requested a route through the Weinsberger Tal , as otherwise the connection to the railway network would have been denied in the long term.
Both Heilbronn and Weinsberg intervened immediately after the plans became known. The former imperial city of Heilbronn argued that due to the economic disadvantages caused by a port in Neckarsulm, it was also falling behind its Baden competitor in Mannheim . In addition, only the shortest possible route on a possible long-distance route Strasbourg – Nuremberg – Berlin / Prague is appropriate. Weinsberg weighed in on its previous importance as a hub for trade from the east in the direction of Heilbronn and indicated that a route via Neuenstadt would run close to the Baden border. The report of the Economic Commission of May 22, 1858 already bore the first fruits, as it recommended that the route should be run via Weinsberg, especially since Neckarsulm was to be connected to the railway network via a planned route from Heilbronn in the direction of Neckarelz . The Chamber of Deputies followed the proposal on May 25th with a large majority.
The tunnel had not been requested by either Heilbronn or Weinsberg. Both cities assumed that the route would go north around the Wartberg . Only a report by the Ministry of Finance of October 29, 1858, which preceded the royal decree on the construction of the route of November 17, 1858, brought the tunnel into play, as it seemed the most economical due to the shortest possible route.
construction
The groundbreaking ceremony for the Heilbronn – Hall line took place in August 1859 in Heilbronn. Two months later, work began on the tunnel, which was tackled from the Heilbronn and Weinsberg sides as well as from above via an 80 m deep shaft. The large number of workers, including many Italian guest workers, posed great challenges for the municipalities. In Heilbronn alone, which had a population of 14,000 at the time, around 1500 workers had to be accommodated. At the end of July 1860, the work claimed a fatality when a worker was buried on the Weinsberg side.
The tunnel wall was lined with Heilbronn sandstone , which was extracted in the nearby quarries at the Jägerhaus and above the tunnel. As the work progressed further into the interior of the ridge, problems arose that have not been fully resolved to this day: The Keuper marl with its plaster benches through which the tunnel was cut turned out to be anhydrite . If the rock came into contact with penetrating water, which was particularly the case above the shaft and on the Weinsberg side, it reacted to gypsum and swelled up. The plaster of paris raised the floor of the tunnel by 24 cm a month and blew up the wall in many places. Only with permanent drainage and a 430 m long wooden floor vault did the tunnel builders succeed in sufficiently alleviating the problems.
The breakthrough between Heilbronn and Weinsberg was achieved on November 19, 1860. The work was completed on July 18, 1862. The double-track, but initially only one track tunnel is a maximum of 8.3 m wide and was initially 5.7 m high. It rises towards Weinsberg. The construction costs of 650,000 f. made up almost 1/10 of the total budget for the Heilbronn – Hall section. At 891 m, the tunnel was the longest tunnel in Württemberg after its opening on August 4, 1862 and after the commissioning of the 1557 m long Hochdorf tunnel as part of the Nagold Valley Railway in 1873, it became the second longest railway tunnel in the route network of the Royal Württemberg State Railways .
business
After its commissioning, the tunnel soon became a major problem child. The difficult geological conditions repeatedly require extensive renovation work, for example as early as 1866 to 1867, when the wooden vault was almost completely destroyed and wooden cladding had to be installed in sections to intercept falling stones. Oscar Fraas called the tunnel in 1880 in his description of the Württemberg railway network Württemberg railways with the country and people on the railway a "dangerous, damaged structure [which] has gained a bad reputation".
The tunnel has been double- tracked since 1888 .
After the Second World War, the need for renovation was so great that the Deutsche Bundesbahn considered circumventing the tunnel via Binswangen and Erlenbach . Even if this variant would have been cheaper in the long term, it was not implemented because of the high investment volume in the short term. Further renovation work was necessary in 1956–1957, 1973–1975 and 1988–1989, with the tracks being laid deeper in 1973 to prepare for possible electrification .
When in June 2003 the Crailsheim – Heilbronn railway line was to be upgraded for the Heilbronn light rail system, and with it electrification, the DB again tackled renovation work, which, due to unexpected problems, took a year and a half instead of the six months initially planned. To ensure sustainable protection, the tunnel was given a 20 cm thick buffer made of Styrofoam between the rock and the tunnel walls, which is supposed to withstand the swelling rock for several decades. In order to expand the clearance profile for electrification, Deutsche Bahn used Y sleepers analogous to the tunnels of the Murg Valley Railway .
literature
- Christhard Schrenk: With the steam horse from the Neckar to the stove. 125 years of the Heilbronn-Schwäbisch Hall railway line . Heilbronn City Archives, Heilbronn 1987, ISBN 3-928990-31-4 ( PDF - Small series of publications by the Heilbronn City Archives . Issue 18).
- Siegfried Lorenz, Thomas Rupp: Stadtbahn-compatible expansion of Heilbronn – Öhringen . In: The Heilbronn tram. Rail traffic between Eppingen and Öhringen . Regional culture publishing house, Ubstadt-Weiher 2005, ISBN 3-89735-416-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Julius Fekete, Simon Haag, Adelheid Hanke, Daniela Naumann: Monument topography Baden-Württemberg . Volume I.5: Heilbronn district. Theiss, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 978-3-8062-1988-3 , pp. 78 .
- ↑ Map services of the Federal Agency for Nature Conservation ( information )
- ^ Albert Mühl, Kurt Seidel: The Württemberg State Railways . 2nd Edition. Theiss, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-8062-0249-4 , pp. 264 .
- ^ Oscar Fraas: Württemberg's railways with country and people on the railroad . Swiss beard, Stuttgart 1880, p. 64 .