Spyck–Welle train ferry
| Spyck-Welle train ferry | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Locale | North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Line length | 18.8 km (11.7 mi) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Spyck–Welle train ferry was a train ferry on the Rhine between Spyck on the left (southern) bank and Welle on the right bank in the lower Rhine region of the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia. It was established in 1865 by the Rhenish Railway Company on the Lower Left Rhine line from Cologne to Neuss, Krefeld, Cleves, Elten, Zevenaar and the Dutch North Sea ports.
On 5 July 1862 the (German: Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, RhE) and the Dutch Rhine Railway Company (Dutch: Nederlandsche Rhijnspoorweg-Maatschappij, NRS) signed an agreement in Cologne to connect the two railways within Germany. Although preliminary talks in Berlin on a route near the border had indicated that an agreement could be reached, the Prussian military was opposed to a fixed bridge over the Rhine and only agreed to a ferry.
In 1865, the RhE extended its line from Kleve to Griethausen, where it built a 100-meter-long truss bridge (the Griethausen railway bridge) over an old course of the Rhine, which still stands today. This was followed by a 314 m-long approach structure with 20 spans. The line then ran across the Rhine island of Salmorth to the Rhine in Spyck where a marshalling yard with four tracks was built for the breaking up and assembling of trains for the train ferry operation. The crossing to the right bank of Welle is one of the narrowest points of the lower Rhine where currents make it possible for a ferry to cross. A similar marshalling yard was built on the line to Elten, which crossed the small Wild river with a 130 m-long bridge with seven spans. It then connected with the Emmerich–Zevenaar line to run to the Dutch border. NRS had already completed its 5.10 km-long section of the line from there to Zevenaar on 9 March 1864.
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Wikipedia