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Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light Railway

transport company

Layered newspapers, civic records and oral-history reels arranged as chronological evidence
History and societyInterpretive dossier study · Crown Archives visual atlas
Record originEnglish Wikipedia
Text licenseCC BY-SA 4.0
Source revisionNov 4, 2024
Entity authorityQ1746314 ↗
Source-derived summary

The Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light Railway (German: Kleinbahn Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster GmbH) was until 1908 a publicly owned company run by the district of Celle in North Germany and was originally named the Garßen–Bergen Light Railway (Kleinbahn Garßen-Bergen).

It was the builder and operator of the Celle–Soltau railway and its branch line from Beckedorf to Munster.

The initiative to build a railway to Bergen came from Celle district, who opened the first section from Garßen via Beckedorf to Bergen on 23 April 1902. The terminus had to be built at Garßen because no agreement could be reached with the town of Celle about the routing of the line within the town limits. With the permission of the Celle–Wittingen Light Railway a solution was found in the shape of a junction on their line. It was more than two years later, on 13 December 1904, that direct services from Bergen to Celle became possible when the line to Celle-Vorstadt on the Celle–Wittingen railway was opened. As a result, passenger trains no longer stopped at Garßen and goods trains (transferred to the state railway) followed suit on 1 September 1910. The railway facilities in Garßen were not dismantled until the 1930s.

In 1905 joint operations were agreed with the Celle-Wittingen Light Railway.

On 23 April 1910 the railway was extended from Bergen to Soltau and from Beckedorf to Munster.

Editorial summary

“Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light Railway” enters the record as transport company. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster and Light can confirm, complicate or overturn.

Editorial reviewMost valuable as an event-and-institution map that identifies actors, dates and record creators for deeper historical inquiry. The current lead gives the account dated anchors—1908, 1902, 1904, 1910—that can be checked directly. The selected authority fields contribute no independent date. Its strongest next move is a source search built around Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster and Light.
Editorial analysis

Why this record matters

“Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light Railway” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster and Light provides the most credible route into that argument.

Evidence profile

Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Nov 4, 2024. The linked authority identifier is Q1746314. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1908, 1902, 1904 and 1910.

Critical limits

Institutional narratives can privilege the records that survived while minimizing voices that were never formally collected. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.

How to read it

Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.

Best used for
  • Event chronology
  • Institutional context
  • Locating named record creators
Verify next

Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.

Three-step research path

  1. Establish the record: confirm the title “Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light Railway”, its source revision and the description used here.
  2. Expand the search: follow Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light Railway primary sources, Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light Railway archive and Celle-Soltau research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
  3. Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.

Questions for further research

  1. Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light Railway”?
  2. Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
  3. What chronology connects this entry to wider political or social change?
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Source & attribution

This entry incorporates text from “Celle-Soltau, Celle-Munster Light 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.