Lübeck-Büchen railway

The Lübeck-Büchen Railway (German: Lübeck-Büchener Eisenbahn, LBE) was a German railway company that built railway lines from Lübeck to Büchen and to Hamburg in the 19th century.

The first plans to build a direct rail link between Hamburg and Lübeck were put forward in 1831 by the Lübeck merchant Emil Müller and his father Nicholas Hermann Müller. After the French occupation of Lübeck, Nicholas Hermann Muller had been committed to improving its transport links. He established the first steamship company in Lübeck, operating regular service between Lübeck and Copenhagen.

Emil Müller proposed in 1831 the construction of a railway line between Hamburg and Lübeck, connecting the North and the Baltic Seas, but finding little support in Lübeck, he travelled to London in 1833, where he eventually found investors. Müller recruited as senior engineer Francis Giles, the Chief Engineer of the Newcastle and Carlisle Railway (1829–1836). Marc Isambard Brunel and his son Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the designer of London's Thames Tunnel (1825–1843) also offered their services to Müller. In September 1833, Giles' assistant William Lindley travelled to Hamburg. He would later lead the successful construction of the Berlin-Hamburg Railway and the Hamburg urban drainage scheme. He began surveying the line on 6 November 1833. Although the line would have to run through Holstein-Glückstadt, which was ruled by the King of Denmark, Lindley decided not to submit an application to the Danish authorities for approval for this survey work prior to carrying it out in order to save time.

1834 Giles went to Copenhagen, where on 10 August he submitted the projected railway for approval. Only on this occasion, did he inform the King of Denmark of the survey work that had taken place; this upset the court and affected the simultaneous negotiations on the construction of the Hamburg–Lübeck highway. The railway company was established and investors were sought (with the intention of issuing 15,000 shares at £ 20 sterling each), but share subscription was slow and in 1839 Müller abandoned the project, dissolving the first Lübeck railway company.

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