The SEG As The Bachstein Railway
The majority of shares were owned by the Bank für Handel und Industrie in Darmstadt. In 1908 this share was bought out by Hugo Stinnes and other industrialists, who founded the Rhine Westphalia Railway Company (Rheinisch-Westfälische Bahn-GmbH or RWB) in 1909, in order to bring together the numerous tramway operations of the Ruhrgebiet. Major shareholders in the RWB included the city of Essen (48%), the district of Essen (27%) and the Rheinisch-Westfälische Elektrizitätswerk or RWE (25%).
The SEG was formed by Herrmann Bachstein with the aim of reorganising the railways in the states of Baden and Hesse that were part of the Hermann Bachstein Branch Line Central Organisation (Centralverwaltung für Secundärbahnen Herrmann Bachstein).
Of these, Bachstein initially brought the following Hessian railways into the new company in 1895:
- Osthofen – Westhofen
- Reinheim – Reichelsheim
- Sprendlingen – Wöllstein (extended to Fürfeld in 1898)
- Worms – Offstein (Lower Eis Valley Railway).
Also included were the steam tramways in Darmstadt, Mainz and Wiesbaden-Biebrich, that provided suburban services, as well as the electric tramway in Essen on the Ruhr, the Pferdebahn in Mainz and the Nerobergbahn in Wiesbaden.
Three lines in Thuringia also now belonged to the SEG:
- Arnstadt-Ichtershausen Railway
- Hohenebra-Ebeleben Railway and the
- Ilmenau-Großbreitenbach Railway.
However these were operated by the Branch Line Central Organisation not by the SEG itself.
On 8 December 1897, the SEG was expanded again with the following Bachstein railways the Grand Duchy of Baden:
- Mannheim - Heidelberg – Weinheim triangle railway (later the OEG)
- Karlsruhe branch line
- Breg Valley Railway, Donaueschingen – Furtwangen
- Kaiserstuhl Railway, Breisach – Endingen am Kaiserstuhl – Gottenheim and the
- Upper Wiesen Valley Railway, Zell – Todtnau.
After the Mainz Tramway had been sold to the city in 1904, the electric tramway networks in Essen and Wiesbaden remained with the SEG.
In the same year the railway network grew with the addition of the:
- Hetzbach–Beerfelden Railway and the
- Selz Valley Railway, Ingelheim – Jugenheim - Partenheim.
On the other hand several railways were hived off by the SEG to other newly founded companies in the following years as follows:
- In 1911 the "Triangle Railway" to the Oberrheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (OEG), with the SEG retaining a 26% share, and
- In 1912 the suburban lines of Darmstadt to the Hessian Railway (Hessische Eisenbahn-AG, into which the city tramways were merged (SEG share 38%).
- In 1914 the Karlsruhe branch lines were sold.
- In 1915 the Central Organisation gave its share to the SEG and Herrmann Bachstein left the Board of Directors.
Read more about this topic: South German Railway Company
Famous quotes containing the word railway:
“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)