Railway Construction
Passenger services began operating on the first railway line in eastern Bavaria on 3 November 1858. This line ran from the state capital, Munich, via Freising to the Lower Bavarian capital of Landshut, a total of 71 kilometres. Goods services started up 12 days later. In Munich, the Ostbahn had its own station on the site of the present-day Starnberg station. One year later, on 12 December 1859, the route was extended via Neufahrn and Geiselhöring to Straubing on the Danube (57 km). From Geiselhöring a branch also ran in the direction of Regensburg and on through the Upper Palatinate via Schwandorf, Amberg and Neukirchen to Hersbruck (left of the Pegnitz River)—a total of 133 km of line. The Hersbruck–Nuremberg section (28 km) was already being worked from 9 May 1859. The Straubing–Plattling–Passau line, 77 km long, was opened by the Ostbahn on 20 September 1860. In Landshut and Regensburg, terminal stations were built that were converted to intermediate stations in 1880 and 1873 respectively.
For the businessmen participating in the Ostbahn the continuation of historical trade links across the borders to Austria and Bohemia, albeit using the faster railways, was extremely important. As a result the first link to the Austrian railway network was made as early as 1 September 1861 at Passau via a junction with the Empress Elisabeth Railway. In the same year a connexion with the Bohemian Western Railway to Pilsen followed. This line ran from Schwandorf via Cham (reached on 7 January) and Furth im Wald (20 September) to the border (15 October). Inside five years 446 kilometres of track had been built for the railway network authorised in the first concession of 1856.
Schwandorf station soon became the railway hub in central Upper Palatinate. At Irrenlohe station—situated 4 km north of Schwandorf on the line to Nuremberg—the 40 km line to Weiden was started, which ran along the Naab valley. There it divided into two branches: the one to Bayreuth (58 km) being completed on 1 December 1863 and the second to Mitterteich (39 km) on 15 August 1864. From there the junction at Eger in Bohemia was reached on 15 October 1865, establishing a third link, 21 km long, with the Austrian/Bohemian railway network. The construction of two short harbour railways to the Danube docks in Regensburg and Passau on 1 October 1865 brought the second construction phase, approved by a concession of 3 January 1862, to a close.
After a pause in investment of several years, a further concession was granted on 3 August 1869 under which problems and detours in the network from the early years were ironed out between 1871 and 1873, so that the largest cities of the region could be connected by the shortest routes, for example Nuremberg with Regensburg via Neumarkt, Regensburg with Straubing via Radldorf, and Regensburg with Landshut via Neufahrn. These roughly 160 kilometre long links, together with a stub line from Wiesau to Tirschenreuth, went into service in 1872/73. Operation of the direct route from Nuremberg to Regensburg via the Franconian/Upper Palatine Jura mountains, that shortened the distance by about 40 kilometres, was only possible with the use of powerful new locomotives. Also in this construction programme were the 81 km long Mühldorf (Obb)–Neumarkt (Rott)–Pilsting–Plattling route, opened on 15 October 1875, and the Weiden–Neukirchen bei Sulzbach line, 51.5 km long, that was opened the same day.
A fourth, 72 kilometre long, railway connexion running over the border from Plattling via Deggendorf and Zwiesel to Bayerisch Eisenstein (the so-called Bavarian Forest Railway) with its junction to the Pilsen-Priesen-Komotau railway, for which the Ostbahn had been granted a concession in 1872, was still under construction when nationalisation occurred. It was opened in 1877 by the Royal Bavarian State Railways. The same was true for the 41.6 km long link line from Landshut to Pilsting, opened on 15 May 1880, with a junction to the Mühldorf (Obb)–Plattling line.
Read more about this topic: Bavarian Eastern Railway Company
Famous quotes containing the words railway and/or construction:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)