Wanne-Eickel–Hamburg railway
| Wanne-Eickel–Hamburg railway | |
|---|---|
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| Overview | |
| Locale | North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Bremen and Hamburg, Germany |
| Line number | 2200 |
| Technical | |
| Line length | 355 km (221 mi) |
| Track gauge | 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge |
| Electrification | 15 kV/16.7 Hz AC overhead catenary |
| Operating speed | 200 km/h (124.3 mph) (maximum) |
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Source: German railway atlas
The Wanne-Eickel–Hamburg railway is the shortest railway link between the Ruhr and the Hamburg Metropolitan Region and hence one of the most important railway lines in northwest Germany. It links the cities of Münster (Westfalen), Osnabrück and Bremen.
It was built between 1870 and 1874 by the Cologne-Minden Railway Company (CME) based in Wanne-Eickel, and branched off their main (Cologne-)Deutz–Minden route as part of the Hamburg-Venlo railway. Today it is an electrified main line which has a minimum of two tracks throughout. Parts of the route are equipped with Linienzugbeeinflussung train control which enables speeds of up to 200 km/h to be attained.
Due to its constant use by goods and passenger trains rolling along the line, day and night, it has been given the nickname Rollbahn ("Rolling Line").
The railway was built by the Cologne-Minden Railway Company (CME) under contract to the Prussian state as the eastern element of a line from Hamburg to Paris (Paris-Hamburg railway). The western terminus of this line was to be the town of Venlo on the Dutch railway network and it therefore went under the name of the Hamburg-Venlo railway.
In order to form a junction between this line and their existing railway network, the CME extracted a concession from the Prussian state to make Wanne station, a station which lay on the CME's main route from Cologne to Minden, the branch-off point for the line to Hamburg, in order to be able to build the line to Venlo from Haltern about 25 km to the north (see Haltern–Venlo railway).
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