Qualla: Düren-Neuss railway

Düren-Neuss railway: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Zauberfee88, CC BY-SA 3.0 de. On the evening of 27 May 1995, the last passenger train pulled into Düren station from Bedburg. The platform loudspeaker did not pause for the occasion. It simply announced: Düren, hier Bahnhof Düren, Gleis 19. Verspätet eingefahrener Nahverkehrszug endet hier. Late-arrived commuter train ends here. Twenty-five kilometres up the line, at Bedburg and Elsdorf, the same train had passed through to cheering crowds, speeches, and the kind of emotional public farewell Rhinelanders give to things they have loved for generations. A few months later, the rails between Düren and Bedburg came up, and within a few years a great deal of the land they had crossed was gone, dug away by one of the largest lignite mines in Europe.

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Image: Zauberfee88 | CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Düren-Neuss railway: The Cross-Connection

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit OpenStreetMap contributors, CC BY-SA 2.0. The Neuss-Düren line opened on 1 September 1869, built by the privately owned Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (the company would be nationalised in 1880). Its purpose was practical: link the two main Aachen-bound lines, the northern route from Düsseldorf through Mönchengladbach...

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Image: OpenStreetMap contributors | CC BY-SA 2.0

Düren-Neuss railway: An Accident That Shouldn't Be Forgotten

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Christian Liebscher, CC BY-SA 4.0. Early on the morning of 5 September 1937, a special pilgrim train left Rommerskirchen carrying eight hundred people bound for Kevelaer, one of the great Marian shrines of the Lower Rhine. The train derailed in Holzheim station. Seventeen pilgrims were killed. Eighteen more were s...

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Image: Christian Liebscher | CC BY-SA 4.0

Düren-Neuss railway: Forty Years of Compromise

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Hawlisch (LosHawlos), CC BY-SA 3.0. After the war the timetable was rebuilt slowly, but the Düren-Neuss line was always slightly inconvenient. It was mostly single-track. Two stations between Bedburg and Grevenbroich were regularly skipped not for speed but to let trains clear sections before opposing services arri...

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Image: Martin Hawlisch (LosHawlos) | CC BY-SA 3.0

Düren-Neuss railway: The Mine Takes the Line

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Stefan von der Ruhren, CC BY-SA 4.0. The end of the southern half came not from declining passenger numbers but from coal. Beneath the Rhenish lowlands lie enormous lignite seams, sometimes 150 metres thick, and from the 1960s onward the Garzweiler and Hambach open-cast mines began to grow. Lignite extraction is bru...

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Image: Stefan von der Ruhren | CC BY-SA 4.0

Düren-Neuss railway: What Survives

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Hawlisch (LosHawlos), CC BY-SA 3.0. From Bedburg north to Neuss the line still works, parts of it now run as the hourly RB 38 between Cologne and Bedburg, with class 628 diesel railcars usually coupled in four-carriage sets. Neusser Eisenbahn freight trains still carry gypsum, lime and brown coal dust between Neuss...

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Image: Martin Hawlisch (LosHawlos) | CC BY-SA 3.0