Route
From Ludwigshafen to Schifferstadt the line runs directly toward the southwest, it then turns right and runs in a straight line until just before Neustadt-Böbig; it then leaves the Upper Rhine Plain and begins to climb the Haardt range. From there, it has the character of a mountain railway line.
After Neustadt an der Weinstraße it passes through the Palatinate Forest, running through 12 tunnels. First, it passes through the Wolfsberg Tunnel. After Lambrecht is the branch of the Cuckoo Railway (Kuckucksbähnel), which is a preserved railway running to Elmstein. Then, the line passes through more tunnels on the way to Kaiserslautern (Lichtensteiner-Kopf, Retschbach, Schoenberg-Langeck, Mainzer Berg, Gipp, Köpfle, Eisenkehl, Kehre, Schlossberg, Franzosenwoog and Heiligenberg tunnels). In the 33.5 km long section between Neustadt and Kaiserslautern the line climbs 109 metres.
A few kilometres west of Kaiserslautern, the line leaves the Palatinate Forest behind and runs almost straight through the West Palatinate lowland moor (Westpfälzische Moorniederung) through Landstuhl to Homburg.
After Homburg the line divides into two branches: one runs as a branch over the original line of the Ludwig railway via Bexbach to Neunkirchen (now called the Homburg–Neunkirchen railway) and the other runs through Sankt Ingbert to Saarbrücken. A junction after Homburg connects to the Blies Valley Railway.
The line then passes the former Limbach-Altstadt station, which was a customs post on the 19th century border of Bavaria and Prussia. It then crosses the Blies river, winds through the St. Ingbert-Kirkel forest to the densely populated valley of Rohrbach and continues to its finish in Saarbrücken.
Read more about this topic: Palatine Ludwig Railway
Famous quotes containing the word route:
“A Route of Evanescence
With a revolving Wheel—”
—Emily Dickinson (1830–1886)
“A route differs from a road not only because it is solely intended for vehicles, but also because it is merely a line that connects one point with another. A route has no meaning in itself; its meaning derives entirely from the two points that it connects. A road is a tribute to space. Every stretch of road has meaning in itself and invites us to stop. A route is the triumphant devaluation of space, which thanks to it has been reduced to a mere obstacle to human movement and a waste of time.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“By a route obscure and lonely,
Haunted by ill angels only,
Where an eidolon, named Night,
On a black throne reigns upright,
I have reached these lands but newly
From an ultimate dim Thule—
From a wild weird clime that lieth, sublime,
Out of space—out of time.”
—Edgar Allan Poe (1809–1849)