Homburg (Saar) West customs station

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Homburg (Saar) West customs station
Zollbahnhof Altstadt.png
Former Customs station Homburg (Saar) West (highlighted in light green) at the municipal border Limbach (west) and Homburg (east). Roads and buildings in their current state.
Data
Location in the network Intermediate station
opening 1925
Conveyance 1945
location
City / municipality Kirkel
Place / district Old town
country Saarland
Country Germany
Coordinates 49 ° 19 ′ 6 ″  N , 7 ° 18 ′ 6 ″  E Coordinates: 49 ° 19 ′ 6 ″  N , 7 ° 18 ′ 6 ″  E
Railway lines

Mannheim – Saarbrücken railway line

Railway stations in Saarland
i16 i16 i18

The former customs station Homburg (Saar) West is a 50 ha large area in the district of Kirkeler hamlet old town north of Highway 119 (formerly B 40 ) between the Kirkeler district Limbach and Homburg . In addition to a track-laying operation and storage areas for materials for construction and maintenance of permanent way large parts are broke like and form an ecologically high-quality habitat , the 2004 National Development Plan Environment of the Saarland status priority area for conservation has received. Nevertheless, it is still a dedicated railway operating site.

The area owes the importance of the priority area for nature conservation to the protests of residents of the nearby old town. Together with local politicians, they protested against a planned coal dump that Saarbergwerke AG wanted to build on the site in the mid-1980s. This project activated biologists and other scientists who, in various reports with different perspectives, demonstrated the exceptional position of the site as the largest dry grassland area in the southwest. The German Bahn AG rejected her plan their route to run high-speed trains diagonally through the customs station.

prehistory

The area was only used by the railway for almost 30 years. Originally there was a larger lake at this point, the so-called "Black Woog ", which was mentioned in a document on April 29, 1434. Johann, Graf zu Hohenburg and Herr zu der Felß gave the Wörschweiler monastery brothers " out of special love and favor" " to enjoy half the black wagon as their own". And the deed of donation also says that half of the fish, crabs and frogs in the Black Woog belong to the Cistercians . In 1808 the farmers went to the barricades as landowners against Napoleon . He had the pond drained so that the " Kaiserstraße " from Metz to Mainz could be laid dead straight through the area of ​​the former body of water without any obstacles. The population lived from the lake, but they came to terms. After just a few years, the farmers had high-quality arable land on the former lake bed. The watercourse that drains this area towards the Blies is still called the “Schwarzweihergraben” today .

history

According to the provisions of the Versailles Treaty of 1919, customs barriers were set up between the Saar area and the German Reich from 1925 . The Mannheim – Saarbrücken railway crossed the border between Eichelscheid and Vogelbach, which is why the customs station for customs clearance of goods was built near the old town . Access tracks in the direction of Neunkirchen and Zweibrücken were also built. The good arable soil should not be sacrificed under any circumstances. But the protests were again unsuccessful. Blast furnace slag from iron processing and overburden from the coal mines were brought in to give the soft ground a hold. An incision had to be blasted on the western edge in order to be able to re-route the tracks to the main railway line. This material was also used for filling up. At that time, a passenger station was built on the main line to Homburg, which was called Homburg West . This was mainly used by the employees of the customs station and the track warehouse as well as the residents of the nearby villages of Beeden and Altstadt. It was closed in the 1960s.

A special episode was based on the fact that the old town workers 'and farmers' village was traditionally communist and also made up the majority in the local council. During the Nazi dictatorship , the communist and railway employee Eduard Buschlinger and his wife Carola gave shelter to political refugees between 1933 and 1935, who were smuggled in via the customs station. Carloads full of anti-fascist propaganda were also smuggled into the Reich with freight trains that were cleared through the customs station.

Since the annexation of the Saar area to the Reich in 1935, the customs station had lost its function and from then on was used as a marshalling yard for troops and material. During the war it was also more and more frequently targeted by Allied aircraft.

Customs station today

Three-fingered saxifrage

As described above, a sub-area was and is used industrially. Flora and fauna have been able to develop largely undisturbed since the systems were gradually abandoned at the beginning of the 1950s. The special equipment of the area and the combination of very different biotope types with sometimes extreme site conditions (heat, drought) provided habitats for numerous rare animal and plant species. Until the beginning of industrial use in 2005, the area was home to the largest contiguous dry grasslands in the Saarland, and the occurrence of the wall lizard ( Podarcis muralis ) was considered the largest population in southwest Germany.

At least 69 different bird species were found, including the nightingale , Orpheusspötter , red- backed shrike , hoopoe , black kite and temporarily red-headed shrike . This large number of rare species made the area a nationally known observation area among ornithologists. Also numerous endangered plant species were detected: Three Finger saxifrage ( Saxifraga tridactylites ), shepherd's cress ( Teesdalia nudicaulis ), field mugwort ( Artemisia vulgaris ), brick Whitlow and Hunds- Figwort ( Scrophularia canina ). In several scientific reports also u. a. examined the populations of butterflies, grasshoppers and bedbugs. The special biological equipment of the customs station and its importance for the preservation of biodiversity was also confirmed in a large-scale report that had been arranged by Deutsche Bahn AG.

The tasks as a customs station, later a marshalling yard, were obsolete by 6 July 1959 at the latest, the so-called day X (economic integration of the Saarland as the tenth federal state of the Federal Republic of Germany). From then on, the "Gleisbauhof Homburg" established itself as an organizational unit of the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB) and the Deutsche Bahn (DB AG). To this day, organizational units of the DB and the DB Group u. a. DB-Netz AG, DB-Bahnbau GmbH, DGT-Deutsche Gleis- und Tiefbau GmbH Provided services for the maintenance of the rail infrastructure in Saarland and the West Palatinate.

Today, as in the past, DB Netz AG also uses specialized, private companies as part of its tasks as a railway infrastructure company. Until the beginning of the 90 years this was e.g. B. Gerlach (Thyssen Group), which operated a rail welding plant on the site. The railway company Bahnlog GmbH is currently performing tasks in the course of ballast transport, processing and construction site logistics. The industrial use of the customs station and the establishment of the BahnLog company in 2005 took place under the hypothesis that the customs station was planned for railway operations purposes. However, a formal plan approval procedure was never carried out. In 2005, a legal opinion ordered and paid for by the company BahnLog had the objective of proving the priority of industrial activities before being defined as a "priority area for nature conservation". The planning approval for railway operational purposes assumed as existing means that only so-called "rail-related" activities may take place on the area. At the same time, there is also trade with private and business customers. Gravel is sold to private customers, and the "Oberrhein Handels Union" (OHU) Iffezheim, which is now also located on the site, offers "free delivery" and a. Sand, gravel and topsoil. The Federal Railway Authority (EBA) is responsible for supervision and planning authority , although there are uncertainties about the responsibilities of other authorities.

At the beginning of November 2008, a citizens 'initiative was formed against the activities at the customs station: The “Citizens' Initiative Affected by the Customs Station Activities” (BIBAZ), in which citizens of the surrounding towns of Altstadt, Lappentascherhof , Beeden and Limbach have come together, is primarily against them Dust, noise and waste water emissions from the industrial company. The environmental associations Naturschutzbund (NABU) and Bund für Umwelt- und Naturschutz Deutschland (BUND) also criticize the extensive destruction of biotopes and the associated destruction of rare animal and plant species.

In the late 1980s were for the first time contamination in the groundwater , which obviously came from the area of customs station: In a series of wells belonging to the nearby Waterworks "Beeden" in Old Town, which was herbicide Bromazil demonstrated the permissible limits were exceeded many times. After years of research, a small area was found on which the weed-killing trains of the railway had previously been cleaned over a long period of time. The redevelopment of this area was not completed in 2008, at that time still took herbicides in groundwater.

literature

  • Peter Wolff, Hubert Weyers ea: The former Homburg-West customs station, biological report on its worthy of protection within the meaning of the Nature Conservation Act , 3rd update 1992.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ State development plan. In: saarland.de. Retrieved April 24, 2019 .
  2. Martin Baus: Life between dead tracks, the customs station between Homburg and the old town . In: Saarpfalz Calendar 2005, p. 164, ISSN  1614-9084