he Dortmund - Hanover railway line is one of the most important railway lines in Lower Saxony and Germany. It connects the Lower Saxony state capital Hanover via Wunstorf, Stadthagen and Bückeburg with Minden, Osnabrück, Amsterdam and the Ruhr area. On the Seelze-Wunstorf section, the line runs parallel to the Hanover freight bypass line. It is part of the main line from Cologne-Deutz to Minden built by the Cologne-Minden Railway Company (CME), after which the company was named. It was opened in 1847 and has been modernized and expanded several times since then. The two current lines with the VzG line numbers 1700 (passenger traffic) and 2990 (freight traffic) form the longest four-track line section in Germany. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- route details: Length of track: 207,4 km Track gauge: 1435 mm (standard gauge) Track class: D4 Power system: 15 kV 16.7 Hz ~ Maximum speed: 200/160 km/h Double track: (throughout) train control Dortmund - Hamm: PZB, LZB, CE I train control Hamm - Hannover: PZB, LZB --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Story: The line was opened on October 15, 1847 by the Royal Hanoverian State Railways. It primarily opened up the Principality of Schaumburg-Lippe and its residential town of Bückeburg, and provided a continuous connection from Hanover to the Rhineland. On December 12, 1847, the Wunstorf–Bremen railway line, which branched off from what was then the Wunstorf island station, was opened. Since then, it has also been one of the most important railway lines in Germany throughout its history, as it connects the Bremen ports with southern Germany. Other connecting and junction lines are or were the Stadthagen–Stolzenau railway line, the Nienburg–Minden railway line, the main line of the Cologne-Minden Railway Company as a continuation of the line to the Rhineland, the Rinteln–Stadthagen railway line, the Minden district railways and the Bad Eilsen narrow-gauge railway from Bückeburg to Bad Eilsen and briefly via the suburb of Meißen to Minden. On 29 September 1968, after the electrification work had been completed, electric operations officially began; the Hanover - Wunstorf section had already been electrified since 1964. For the traffic expected for EXPO 2000, two additional tracks for the S-Bahn were built between Hanover and Seelze on a subgrade that had been partially kept clear since 1912. All platforms were given a height of 76 cm and a minimum length of 210 m. The line is now six-track in the Hanover-Nordstadt - Seelze area, four-track between Hanover Central Station and Hanover-Nordstadt using separate S-Bahn tracks, four-track between Seelze and Wunstorf using the freight bypass line, and two-track in the Wunstorf-Minden area. Freight traffic therefore has to repeatedly use the sidings in this area to allow faster passenger trains to pass. With the reorganization of traffic after reunification and the orientation towards east-west traffic, this west-east main line is one of the most heavily used rail routes of the Deutsche Bahn (more than 100,000 trains in 2005). The pair of routes was electrified in the mid-1960s. The first test train pulled by the electric locomotive E 10 438 ran on September 25, 1968; the official opening special train was pulled by the electric locomotive 112 498-1 on September 29, 1968. Since that day, the section between Hamm and Wunstorf has been equipped with overhead lines and the important connection between the Ruhr area and Hanover can be traveled electrically throughout. Just a few weeks later, on February 9, 1846, the second section to Duisburg was completed; the provisional end point was the "Cologne-Minden station" built on the site of today's Duisburg main station, the first of what would later be three stations at the same location. For the next section via Oberhausen, Altenessen, Gelsenkirchen, Wanne, Herne and Dortmund to Hamm, a conscious decision was made not to route the line near the coal mines on the northern bank of the Ruhr, and to go for a route that was less hilly and therefore easier to build. Nevertheless, it took well over a year before this section could go into operation on May 15, 1847. In the same year, on October 15, 1847, the last section to Minden and thus the entire 263-kilometer-long, single-track line was completed. On the same day, the Royal Hanoverian State Railways opened its Hanover–Minden railway line. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Expansion to a high-speed line The first Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan (1973) listed the Dortmund–Hanover–Braunschweig expansion line as one of eight planned expansion projects in the area of rail routes. The project was also included in the 1980 Federal Transport Infrastructure Plan. In 1984, operations began on a 23.5-kilometer section between Bückeburg and Haste with scheduled speeds of 200 km/h. This was followed in 1985 by a 13.0-kilometer section between Hanover and Wunstorf. This means that the 6.9-kilometer section between Haste and Wunstorf is not designed for 200 km/h. As a change in regulations meant that only 160 km/h could be driven on level crossings and the waiting times for road traffic were very long due to the large number of train journeys, the level crossings were gradually replaced by overpasses or underpasses, between Haste and Rehren in 2015. In mid-1985, a test train from the Federal Railway Central Office in Minden, pulled by a 103 003 with a special gear ratio, set a speed record on German rails on the route between Brackwede and Neubeckum with a speed of 283 km/h. On November 26, 1985, at 11:29 a.m., the InterCityExperimental, fully loaded with passengers, reached a speed of 317 km/h on the Gütersloh-Hamm section. The ICE thus set a new German record for wheel/rail vehicles and a world record for three-phase rail vehicles. The record-breaking journey, like the previous high-speed journeys, was carried out under considerable safety precautions: for each journey, all signals in the test section were set to go (green) and the adjacent track was closed. After each journey, the rails were checked by a test train using ultrasound, and a railcar was on standby to repair the overhead line. During the record-breaking journey, a fear locomotive drove ahead of the train, and another followed the ICE precursor train. All bridges and stations on the route were also guarded - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Service: The route is served every hour by the Intercity Express line 10 from Cologne via Duisburg, Essen, Hanover to Berlin and mostly every two hours by InterCity lines or other ICE trains, see also List of Intercity Express stations or List of Intercity stations. In regional transport, the regional express lines RE 1 "NRW-Express", RE 3 "Rhein-Emscher-Express" and RE 6 "Rhein-Weser-Express" as well as the RE 11 "Rhein-Hellweg-Express" run every hour; ([obsolete]) due to construction work in Dortmund Central Station, the RE11 will be diverted via Unna and Soest from July 2, 2021 for an expected period of one and a half years. The RE 1 and RE 11 lines serve some of the intermediate stops, with the RE 6 line only stopping in Kamen (see also the list of local public transport lines in North Rhine-Westphalia). Local passenger transport is operated (as of December 10, 2020) by Abellio Rail NRW (lines RE 1 and RE 11), National Express (line RE 6) and Eurobahn (line RE 3). Following the insolvency of Abellio, the operational management of the RE 1 and RE 11 lines was transferred to National Express on February 1, 2022 as part of an emergency contract. Station Dortmund Central - Station: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hamm (Westphalia) Central Station: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Bielefeld Central Station: - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Hannover Central Station: I would be very happy if the track appeared for the TS Classic. Best regards BR430
