Taunus Railway

The Taunus Railway (German: Taunus-Eisenbahn) is a double-track electrified railway line, which connects Frankfurt and Wiesbaden, Germany. It is 41.2 km long and follows the course of the Main on its north side, in some parts quite close to it. Its first stage was opened in September 1839 and is thus the oldest railway line in the German state of Hesse and one of the oldest in Germany. Today it is used by RegionalExpress trains between Frankfurt and Wiesbaden and the trains of Line 1 of the Rhine-Main S-Bahn between Frankfurt-Höchst and Wiesbaden. Between Frankfurt Hbf (Frankfurt central station) and Frankfurt-Höchst, they run on the former Hessian Ludwig Railway line.

History

The building of the line was preceded by many years of negotiations between three sovereigns states, through which the planned line ran: the Free City of Frankfurt, the Duchy of Nassau (of which Wiesbaden was capital) and the Grand Duchy of Hesse for the section in Mainz-Kastel, a suburb of Mainz on the eastern bank of the Rhine. In particular the Grand Duchy opposed its building, because it feared a loss of traffic to the port of Mainz as a result of the connection with the other two states and demanded instead rail connections between Frankfurt and its own cities of Darmstadt, Mainz and Offenbach. In the end they agreed on the current route.

In 1835, a committee established for the construction of the line sold shares, which were immediately oversubscribed 40 times. Work began in 1837, although the final concession was not approved until 1838: on 8 May by the City of Frankfurt, on 11 May by the Grand Duchy of Hessen and on 13 June by Nassau. The Taunus railway company was established on 12 August 1838 in Frankfurt/Main. Paul Camille von Denis, a Frenchman brought up in Mainz who had worked on the first German railway, the Bavarian Ludwigsbahn between Nuremberg and Fürth (opened in 1835), designed the route.

Operations

The first stage was opened on 26 September 1839 from the Taunus station in Gallusanlage (now Willy-Brandt-Platz), Frankfurt by the Mainz masterbuilder, Ignaz Opfermann, in the then small Nassau town of Höchst am Main. The railway reached Hattersheim am Main on 24 November 1839 and Mainz-Kastel on 13 April 1840. The extension to the Wiesbaden Taunus station on the Rheinstraße was opened 19 May 1840. It was the ninth railway line opened in Germany.

The director of the company from 1840 to 1852 was Johann Adam Beil, a Hessian privy councillor and former Frankfurt senator.

The line was originally 43.4 kilometers long. A 6.6 kilometers branch from Höchst to Bad Soden (the Soden Railway) opened in 1863 – the first German branch-line.

Originally the railway operated six locomotives from the factory of George and Robert Stephenson, 87 carriages and 44 wagons. The first engine drivers were British.

Ownership change

The Taunus Railway suffered from competition from the Frankfurt–Mainz line (opened on the south bank of the Main in 1863) and it decided to sell its company to the Hessian Ludwig Railway in 1871. The Ludwig Railway took over the enterprise with effect from 1 January 1872, but it sold it on to the Prussian state railways, which took it over on 3 May 1872.

In 1888, the line in Frankfurt was shortened by about a kilometer when it was diverted from its old railway terminal to the new Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. The same happened 1906 at the Wiesbaden end, where the current Wiesbaden Hbf replaced the old Taunus station.

In 1920 the line was taken over by the Deutsche Reichsbahn. It attained great importance for long distance, regional and suburban traffic. Including its extension, the East Rhine Railway, it is today part of Regionalexpress line RE 10 of the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund, which runs from Frankfurt to Koblenz. Not much long-distance passenger traffic uses it any more, but it is well connected to Frankfurt Hbf and Frankfurt Airport long distance station (via Frankfurt Airport regional station), which both have excellent long distance connections.

Sources

• Eisenbahnatlas Deutschland –2005/2006 edition, Schweers + Wall, 2005, ISBN 3-89494-134-0
• Eisenbahn in Hessen. Kulturdenkmäler in Hessen. Denkmaltopographie Bundesrepublik Deutschland, hrsg. vom Landesamt für Denkmalpflege Hessen, Theiss Verlag Stuttgart, 2005, 3 volumes, 1.448 S., ISBN 3-8062-1917-6 (German)