The runway, which has been connecting the Ruhr area near Wanne-Eickel with the port of Hamburg in the shortest possible route since 1873, is one of the most important and busiest railway lines in Germany. In the past, ores were transported from the port of Hamburg to the Ruhr area and coal and finished products to the port of Hamburg, but today you can mainly see car transport and container trains on their way to Hamburg. With the loss of the Ruhr area as a mining and production location, the goods have changed, but the amount of traffic has (fortunately) remained.
The line connects four federal states: North Rhine-Westphalia, Lower Saxony, Bremen and Hamburg. The largest cities that are passed through and at the same time are the main component of our add-on are Münster in Westphalia, Osnabrück in Lower Saxony and Bremen. All three are important traffic hubs on the runway, as several other routes enter or cross here.
In our section, the runway crosses the Teutoburg Forest near Lengerich, where there is the only tunnel on the line (and at the same time the northernmost tunnel in Germany) and the Wiehengebirge near Ostercappeln. At important bodies of water, the Dortmund-Ems Canal is crossed near Münster, the Mittelland Canal at Bohmte and the Weser off Bremen.
Even before the Second World War, there were plans by the Reichsbahn to expand the runway to four tracks, which failed and came to a standstill due to the Great Depression of 1929 and ultimately the Second World War. Attempts from the 70s to equip the line with a third track came to nothing. For this purpose, large parts of the line have been equipped with LZB since 1978 and upgraded for operation up to 200 km/h. Ultimately, however, this does not increase the permeability of the line, because a fast train forces all slow trains in the stations to the side.
Until well into the 60s of the last century, the runway was the domicile of the large steam locomotives of the classes 01, 03, 41, 44 and 50. In September 1966, the section between Münster and Osnabrück was electrified, and in September 1968 the runway was fully electrified with the commissioning of the section from Osnabrück to Hamburg.
With the cessation of coal mining and the disappearance of large parts of the coal and steel industry in the Ruhr area, whose structural change had already begun with the coal crisis in 1957, the image of the runway has also changed. Several larger and smaller stations (e.g. Vehrte, Ostercappeln) were abandoned or significantly reduced. Their facilities disappeared under birch forests and other vegetation. This is clearly visible in the add-on at the stations of Bremen-Hemelingen, Bassum, Diepholz, Drentwede and others, where track field luminaires illuminate the fresh vegetation at night. Many of the signal boxes along the line have also become non-functional due to centralization, have tin-plated windows and are sprayed with graffiti from top to bottom.
With the discontinuation of general cargo traffic on the railway as early as 1998, the goods shed at the station became obsolete as a railway structure. There are still many at the train stations, in Lengerich, for example. There has been a supermarket there since 2013 (supplied by truck). The goods sheds are also documented in the add-on. However, all old buildings, no matter in what condition they are presented in the add-on, testify to a different time, when many more people were involved in the railway business. Stokers, switch attendants, signal workers, barrier attendants, ticket sellers, van conductors, platform conductors, platform supervisors, mail coach attendants, turntable attendants. All disappeared job profiles. Of a time when it was not trucks that clogged the highways, but freight trains that dominated the freight yards and the railway lines.
But the longer rotations of the electric locomotives compared to the steam age have also changed the image of the line. The large depot in Osnabrück (below) with its two turntables no longer has a railway function. Kirchweyhe with its locomotive depot now serves as the operations centre of a tank car rental company. Only fragments remain of the roundhouse in Bremen, Kirchweyhe and Osnabrück depots, which remind us of more significant times. The depot in Münster is a wasteland, only the floor slabs remain of the architecturally interesting shed on Hafenstraße. All facilities for (steam) locomotive treatment have disappeared. Only a few diesel filling stations remain.
Many branch lines branch off from the taxiway, in Lengerich the TWE (Teutoburg Forest Railway), in Bohmte the Wittlager District Railway, to name just two. Here, associations take care of new life on old tracks, which can be seen in Lengerich at the intact sheds and the old TWE station. The branch tracks are only hinted at in the add-on, their connections end after a few hundred meters to the left or right of the runway.
Our choice to set the time of the add-on to the year 2009 makes sense in that much of the previous infrastructure has not yet been demolished, modernized or changed. So you can still feel the old days a bit. Many station buildings – most of which have certainly become non-functional – stand on the house platforms in the clinker red typical of the area. In Münster, the main station from the 50s of the last century still stands. This has now been replaced by a new building. Signals along the line have been replaced by Ks signals and the few still working track diagram interlockings by electronic interlockings. It is a matter of time before the old signal boxes disappear completely.
The times when the 44 jumbos dragged their ore trains up the Wiehen Mountains, groaning loudly, hissing and puffing and chasing their steam plumes into the sky, are long gone. Our add-on with its buildings is intended to remind us of this a little. So let's think of the many drops of heater sweat that the inclines have cost when the current meter tiredly shows a few more amperes. Let us remember that the new times are always inherent in the old.
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