Westerwald Railway
The Westerwald Railway was the project to build a direct railway connection between the cities of Cologne and Frankfurt am Main in the 19th century , i.e. across the Westerwald . It was pursued for several decades without ever becoming the main thoroughfare originally envisaged.
Starting position
After the railroad had proven to be a future-oriented and reliable means of transport, plans arose in Germany to connect the large metropolitan areas in this way. The traditional trading centers of Cologne and Frankfurt were ideal, especially since such a connection had further potential at both ends, on the one hand towards Great Britain , on the other to the Mediterranean . The port of Trieste was intended as a long-term destination . Such a railway would also have served the connection from Great Britain to India . In addition, Westerwald and Taunus were important for the mining of iron ore at that time, so they also promised high local traffic volumes.
The difficult terrain of the low mountain ranges and the small states at the time in the area to be crossed spoke against the chances of realizing such a plan . Each of the participating states had different, sometimes opposing interests, but had to issue a corresponding concession so that a continuous railway connection could be established.
The - kilometer longer, the Westerwald bypassing the routes between Cologne and Frankfurt went into operation one after the other:
- Deutz-Gießener Eisenbahn / Main-Weser-Bahn : 1862
- Left Rhine route : 1862 (the last missing piece of the route was the south bridge in Mainz )
- Right Rhine route : 1864 (at that time it flowed into the Left Rhine route near Koblenz; the section to Deutz was not completed until 1871.)
The project from 1846
The Westerwald Railway was first seriously planned by a consortium that approached the government of the Duchy of Nassau in 1846 with the idea of realizing this railway connection. A railway committee had also formed in Cologne to support this project. Cologne, then Prussian , asked Berlin whether the state was ready to support the project. The Prussian government refused this for financial reasons. Then there was the revolution of 1848/1849 , which initially brought the project to a standstill.
The project from 1850
In 1850 both the government of the Duchy of Nassau and Prussian authorities resumed the project, which was also operated by interested parties in the area of the Westerwald. The Prussian interest was also motivated by military strategy: the railroads propagated at the same time on both banks of the Rhine were too close to the French border for the Prussian military . They preferred a railway in the hinterland with additional protection from the low mountain ranges. As an alternative, Prussia also had the Deutz-Gießen Railway project examined, which promised a much longer section of the route that would be in Prussia . In 1851 a British- Belgian company applied for a concession for a Westerwald railway . While the Duchy of Nassau granted this, the Kingdom of Prussia refused because the company wanted to build a railway along the right bank of the Rhine beforehand. In the end, Prussia decided to grant a concession for the Deutz-Giessen Railway.
The attempt of 1859
In 1859, the renowned English railway entrepreneur Sir Samuel Morton Peto applied to the Nassau government for the concession for the Westerwald Railway - initially only for the Wiesbaden / Frankfurt - Limburg an der Lahn section . The ducal Nassau government did not even consider it necessary to answer him.
The project from 1862
At the instigation of the Westerwald Railway Committee in Altenkirchen , the Prussian authorities became active in the matter again in 1862 and promised the railway company a concession that would carry out the construction without any state financial commitment. Thereupon the local railway committees formed a "central committee" for the construction of a "Main-Lahn-Sieg railway" and began to found a stock corporation to build and operate the railway. The route was worked out, costs determined and Dutch merchants interested in financing. The Nassau license was requested on January 31, 1863, but the Prussian license was only requested on December 31, 1865. Both governments refused the applicants. Prussia justified this with the company's lack of financial security.
The war of 1866
With the annexation of the Duchy of Nassau by the Kingdom of Prussia as a result of the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, the Duchy went under as an independent state. The Nassau State Railroad became part of the Prussian State Railways . The Nassau State Railway was transformed into a Royal Railway Directorate Wiesbaden . The political differences between the two states, which caused the Westerwald Railway to fail, no longer existed.
The 1868 project
Now an initiative by the city of Diez penetrated the Prussian state, pleading for a route from Diez to Wiesbaden through the Aartal . In addition, a rail connection from Limburg to Hadamar was favored here. The state parliament gave its consent and passed a corresponding law on February 17, 1868, which made the construction possible. The private Hessische Ludwigsbahn (HLB) received the concession for the preparatory work from the Prussian district government . However, the government in Berlin revoked this concession: In their opinion, the state railway should build itself. The Franco-Prussian War broke out in 1870 and all further work was stopped. The Aartalbahn was finally realized in three large construction phases by 1894.
The project from 1872
Main-Lahn Railway
After the Franco-Prussian War, the HLB sought a concession for a railway line from Frankfurt and Mainz / Wiesbaden to Limburg in 1872, a resumption of the ten-year-old Main-Lahn-Sieg railway project. This was part of a "deal" between the Prussian state and the Hessian Ludwigsbahn: This had taken over the Taunus Railway shortly before and has now sold it to the Prussian state. One condition of the purchase was that the state granted HLB the concession for the Westerwald Railway from Frankfurt via Limburg. The line was opened on October 15, 1877, the branch from Niedernhausen station to Wiesbaden Ludwigsbahnhof , called Ländchesbahn , was opened on July 1, 1879.
Oberwesterwaldbahn
The HLB also applied for the continuation of this route across the Westerwald towards Cologne and the Ruhr area and received the concession for the Eschhofen (near Limburg) –Hadamar– Hachenburg - Troisdorf / Wissen route on December 4, 1873. The HLB immediately began with the preparatory work along the entire length of the route. At the northern end of the project, however, the Bergisch-Märkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft refused to make the connections to its network, which put the profitability of the project into question for HLB. The HLB therefore asked the Prussian state to refrain from the times laid down in the concession when the line had to be built, and even offered to waive the concession entirely. The state, however, initially remained tough and insisted on fulfilling the conditions in the concession. Finally a compromise was reached and the HLB was released from its construction obligation against payment of 800,000 marks .
Instead, the state decided to start building the railway. The northern connection was established in Au (Sieg) on the Cologne – Gießen railway line . The Limburg – Altenkirchen railway ("Oberwesterwaldbahn") was built until 1886. Only a single-track and - due to the terrain - winding secondary railway , which was continuously passable from May 1, 1887, was implemented. As a result, long-distance traffic hardly established itself here . That was not the main line between the Rhine-Main area and Cologne, which was originally planned, but at least a corresponding route - after more than 40 years.
Expansion considerations
In the spring of 1914 an initiative gained ground to renew the continuous expansion of the Westerwald Railway as a double-track main line between Cologne and Frankfurt. The First World War initially ended the initiative. After the war, the project was pursued until 1925.
And then ... but very different
On July 25, 2002, the high-speed route Cologne – Rhine / Main was opened. With no direct connection to the Westerwald Railway , this line fulfills the requirements under which the Westerwald Railway project has been operated for decades.
literature
- Konrad Fuchs: Railway projects and railway construction on the Middle Rhine 1836-1903 . In: Nassauische Annalen 67 (1956), pp. 158-202.