The –WüNuremberg–Würzburg Railway is a German trunk line railway in northern Bavaria, connecting the city of Nuremberg with Würzburg, the two largest cities in Franconia, and passing through Fürth, Neustadt an der Aisch and Kitzingen. In addition to hourly Regional-Express trains and numerous freight trains, it is served by Intercity-Express trains during the day at half-hourly intervals with some gaps.
Route description
On its total length of just over , the railway line has a total of 18 stations. The two endpoints of the line, Nuremberg Hbf and Würzburg Hbf, are served by fast long-distance services.
The line runs through more than 80 curves in a landscape of low ranges.
History
The stretch from Fürth to Rottendorf near Würzburg was built in as a shortcut between the Ludwig South-North Railway in Nuremberg and Ludwig's Western Railway line in Wurzburg. This shortened the -long indirect route via Bamberg and Schweinfurt. The state railway initially had little interest in the connection, so initially private Committees considered plans for such a route. At first, in 1857, a proposal via Siegelsdorf, Windsheim, Marktbreit and Ochsenfurt had been favoured, which led to an alternative route being put forward from the Neustadt and Kitzingen area, which ultimately prevailed.
Initially, short sections were built as sections of other rail lines: 1 July 1854: Rottendorf–Würzburg, 8.0 km long, as part of the Ludwig Western Railway 1 October 1862: Nürnberg–Fürth, long, with the partial relocation of the Ludwig South-North Railway on this section 1 July 1864: the entrance to the new Würzburg station with the closing of the old Ludwig station.
Construction began in 1861 and was completed in 1864. Only the viaduct in Emskirchen was not finished due to the difficult ground conditions. The Nuremberg–Würzburg railway was finally completed with opening of the 86.6 kilometre-long Fürth–Rottendorf section on 19 June 1865. At the same time the eight km-long section between Rottendorf and Würzburg was duplicated. In the summer of 1985 a third track was added to this section.
On 1 July 1886, a heavy head-on collision of two trains took place between Würzburg and Rottendorf, causing the death of 16 people.
On 8 December 1889, the Bavarian State Parliament approved the doubling of the single-track line between Fürth and Rottendorf, which was completed by 1891.
On 10 June 1928 at 02:30, the locomotive of the night train D 47, a class S3/6, derailed while crossing the Zenngrund bridge shortly before the entry to Siegelsdorf station. The locomotive crashed down the embankment and the carriages followed it. This killed 24 people.
The Aurach viaduct in Emskirchen was renovated 1939, with the previous “fish-bellied” bridge (having lens-shaped iron trusses, similar to the Royal Albert Bridge) replaced by a steel box construction.
In the Nazi period, the first preliminary work began to connect the line from Mainbernheim via a wye with the Würzburg–Treuchtlingen railway (near Marktbreit). Because of the Second World War, this project, which had already been considered in 1868 by the Royal Bavarian War Ministry, remained unfinished.
Despite being bombed in February 1945, the bridge over the Main in Kitzingen was passable, but Wehrmacht soldiers blew it up along with the neighbouring bridge on the Kitzingen–Schweinfurt railway. Some wagons of a coal train that had broken loose fell into the Main. The northern abutment of the Aurach Bridge in Emskirchen was also blown up. The line was probably back in traffic from 15 October 1945.
The electrification of the line began on 8 August 1952 with the installation of the first catenary mast in Neustadt (Aisch) station and it was formally opened on 2 October 1954 with a special train.
A pilot installation of train radio, which had been approved in 1959, was introduced in 1962; this culminated in the nationwide introduction of the ZBF 70 system in 1974.
In the 1960s, a number of level crossings were abolished or replaced by bridges and underpasses. Between 1965 and 1968, the previous push-button interlockings were replaced by automatic block signaling. As a result, the hand-operated block and junction signal boxes at Kohlenhof, Rothenburger Straße and Neusünderbühl on the Nuremberg–Fürth section were replaced. Subsequently, the branches were remotely controlled from Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof. The investment of DM 900,000 produced a return of 40 percent with the saving three old signal boxes and 15 signalmen.
The stations of Sickershausen, Mainbernheim, Markt Einersheim and Hellmitzheim were closed for passenger operations in 1982 and Langenfeld station was closed in 1992.