Zittau-Reichenberger Railway Company

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The route of the Zittau-Reichenberger Railway

The Zittau-Reichenberger Eisenbahngesellschaft was a railway company in Saxony . She was the owner of the cross-border rail link Zittau – Reichenberg .

history

The first considerations for building a railway between Zittau and Reichenberg originated in the early 1840s. At that time, a route for the later Saxon-Bohemian State Railroad from Dresden through Upper Lusatia towards Prague was discussed.

On April 24, 1853, Saxony and Austria signed a state treaty on the construction of the Zittau-Reichenberger Railway. Part of the contract was, among other things, the agreement that the possible construction of a direct railway connection from Reichenberg to neighboring Prussia was excluded for a period of 25 years. This secured a monopoly for the railway to be built, which was supposed to guarantee its profitability.

The Kingdom of Saxony wanted to run the route as a state railway. However, Austria was not interested in a foreign state railway on its own territory. The only way out was to found a private railway company, in which the Saxon state took over 90% of the shares. Since there was no concession law for private railway construction in Austria at that time, the project was initially suspended for a year.

On September 13, 1854, Austria issued the "Ordinance ... Regarding the Granting of Concessions for Private Railway Buildings". The concession for the Zittau-Reichenberger Railway was granted on April 23, 1855, after which the construction of the line could begin. The construction of several large bridges over the Lusatian Neisse and difficulties in acquiring land led to several construction delays. The 745 meter long Neisse viaduct near Zittau cost more than 400,000 thalers. It is still one of the largest railway bridges in Saxony today.

On December 1, 1859, the 26.61-kilometer line was finally put into operation. The Royal Management of the Eastern State Railways took over the management on behalf of the company. The first timetable showed a total of four pairs of trains that took about an hour to cover the entire route.

Contrary to the forecasts, the volume of traffic did not develop as expected. The company had to make use of the state interest guarantee every year.

On October 24, 1870, Saxony and Austria agreed in a new state treaty to delete the 25-year protection clause against the construction of new railways from Reichenberg across the border. The south-north German connecting line (SNDVB) extended its Pardubitz – Reichenberg line to Seidenberg in Prussia, where there was a connection to the Berlin-Görlitz railway . The line went into operation on July 1, 1875. Between Reichenberg and the junction at km 3.6, the new route used the second free subgrade of the Zittau-Reichenberger Railway. The SNDVB paid an annual rent of 33,864 marks for this.

When the Reichenberg train station had to be rebuilt around the turn of the century, the company was no longer able to cover the proportionate costs from its own resources. Saxony then strove for nationalization. A state treaty between Austria and Saxony of April 26, 1904 finally regulated the conditions. On January 1, 1905, the Zittau-Reichenberger Railway came into the hands of the Saxon state. From then on, it was run as a data center line by the Royal Saxon State Railways .

The route still exists. Today it is partly managed by the railway infrastructure companies SŽDC (Czech Republic), PLK (Poland) and DB Netz (Germany).

For more information on the Zittau-Reichenberger railway line, see main article: Liberec – Zittau railway line

Locomotives and wagons

The Zittau-Reichenberger Eisenbahn acquired the same locomotives and wagons for their route as were used by the Eastern and Western State Railways. In 1857 and 1859, six mixed train locomotives of the Saxon class II were purchased as initial equipment . Like almost all Saxon locomotives, they were built by Hartmann in Chemnitz . The outsider in the locomotive park was the REICHENBERG , built in 1847 near Cockerill in Belgium , which was used by the Löbau-Zittau Railway in 1869 . The locomotives were given names but not numbers. From 1883 onwards, the old locomotives were gradually replaced by those of class IIIb , with the names of the decommissioned locomotives being transferred to the new ones .

For nationalization in 1905, only the class IIIb locomotives built from 1883 were still in stock. All six machines came to the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1920 , which they retired by 1927.

Locomotive overview
Surname genus Manufacturer Factory no. Construction year Track no. (1905) DR number (1924) comment
REICHENBERG I. Cockerill 186 1847 - - Original BOHEMIA of the Löbau-Zittau Railway , acquired in 1869
GROTTAU II Hartmann 85 1857 - - 1858 as PILLNITZ to the Eastern State Railway
RICHARD HARTMANN II Hartmann 90 1857 - - retired after 1898
HAMMERSTEIN II Hartmann 91 1857 - - Locomotive of the Löbau-Zittau Railway , part of the ZRE from 1858 to 1860
SATURN II Hartmann 134 1859 - - Retired in 1896
JUPITER II Hartmann 135 1859 - - Retired in 1882
MARS II Hartmann 136 1859 - - Retired in 1894
NEPTUNE II Hartmann 142 1859 - - Retired in 1897
JUPITER" IIIb Saxon machine factory 1265 1883 486 - -
REICHENBERG " IIIb Saxon machine factory 1445 1886 487 - -
MARS" IIIb Saxon machine factory 2077 1895 488 34 7806 -
SATURN" IIIb Saxon machine factory 2211 1897 489 - -
NEPTUNE" IIIb Saxon machine factory 2212 1897 490 - -
RICHARD HARTMANN " IIIb Saxon machine factory 2720 1902 491 34 7807 -

literature

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Ordinance of the Ministry of Commerce, Industry and Public Buildings, applies to all crown lands, with the exception of the military frontiers, regarding the granting of concessions for private railroad construction
  2. ↑ Erich and Reiner Preuß: Saxon State Railways. transpress, Berlin 1991, ISBN 3-344-70700-0 , p. 128.
  3. ^ State treaty of October 24, 1870 between Austria-Hungary and Saxony due to amendment of § 6 of the state treaty of April 24, 1853 concerning the construction of a railway between Reichenberg and Zittau
  4. ^ Victor von Röll: Encyclopedia of the Railway System. Volume 8 (1917) on: www.zeno.org
  5. ^ State treaty of April 26, 1904 between the Austro-Hungarian monarchy and the Kingdom of Saxony, concerning the takeover of the lines of the Zittau-Reichenberger railway company into the ownership of the Saxon state
  6. ↑ Dietrich Kutschik, Fritz Näbrich, Günter Meyer, Reiner Preuß: Lokomotiven Sächsischer Eisenbahnen I. 2nd edition. transpress-Verlag, Berlin 1995.