Altona-Kiel Railway Company

The Altona-Kiel Railway Company (German: Altona-Kieler Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, AKE) was a joint-stock company, established under the law of Denmark in personal union with the Duchy of Holstein, that built and operated an 105 km railway line between Altona and the Baltic Sea port city of Kiel. Altona was at that time the second largest city under Danish rule and the railway line was the first built in Danish-controlled territory.

The company was founded in December 1840 on the initiative of merchants from Altona and Kiel. Among the initiators in Kiel were Georg Hanssen and Johann Christian Kruse. The participants sought to improve the transport of their goods to markets by connecting the North and Baltic Seas and they agreed to promote this objective as members of the Altona-Kiel railway committee.

In 1833, the economist Friedrich List had proposed a network of railways in Germany, including a rail link between the Hanseatic cities of Hamburg and Lübeck. In 1835, this proposal was rejected by the Royal Railway Commission, established by the King of Denmark, Frederick VI, as the heir to the throne, later Christian VIII, would only agree to a rail link between the Elbe and the Baltic Sea on Danish-only territory, for fiscal reasons.

Finance was raised as follows in 1844:

The English engineer George W. Buck was commissioned to plan the route. He came to the conclusion that in order to avoid hills the line should not pass through Segeberg but should instead run via Barmstedt and Neumünster. As a result of the influence of Klaus Panje, Elmshorn offered to increase its shares in the enterprise if the line took a more westerly course, which a general meeting of the company agreed to in May 1842. Christian VIII issued the company a license for the line on 28 June 1842. The line’s termini would be built close to the respective ports. In the plan of 1844, other stations would be built in Pinneberg, Tornesch, Elmshorn, Wrist, Neumünster and Bordesholm; and there would be halts in Stellingen, Eidelstedt, Halstenbek, Priesdorf, Horst, Dauenhof, Siebenecksknöll, Brockstedt, Pahdenstedt, Fohrde and Meimersdorf.

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