Elz Valley Railway
railway line
The Elz Valley Railway (German: Elztalbahn) is a 19.3 km (12.0 mi) long, single-tracked, standard gauge branch line in the Black Forest area of the German state of Baden-Württemberg. The line branches off the Freiburg im Breisgau to Offenburg section of the Rhine Valley Railway at Denzlingen and runs up the valley of the River Elz to Waldkirch and Elzach.
Whilst the track is owned by DB Netz AG, passenger services on the Elztalbahn are provided by the Breisgau S-Bahn, whose trains continue over the Upper Rhine Valley line to Freiburg Central Station. Typical service is two trains per hour from Freiburg to Waldkirch, with one train continuing to Elzach.
History
Because no private investors were willing to finance a connection to the Elz Valley, the town of Waldkirch took the initiative and had the 7.1 kilometre-long line from Waldkirch to Denzlingen built as a private railway. The Baden government established the legal basis for the construction on 30 March 1872 and a concession for it was granted on 29 August of the same year. Operation of the line, which was opened on 1 January 1875, was transferred to the Grand Duchy of Baden State Railways (Großherzoglich Badische Staatseisenbahnen) in 1887.
Extension to Elzach
Although traffic—especially passenger transport—developed satisfactorily, the financial burden for the town of Waldkirch was too high in the long run. So it gratefully accepted the offer of the state to purchase the railway on 1 April 1886. The Elz Valley Railway was extended by twelve kilometres to its current terminus in Elzach in 20 August 1901.
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This entry incorporates text from “Elz Valley Railway” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.