The Weil am Rhine–Lörrach railway (

timetable A schedule (, ) or a timetable, as a basic time-management tool, consists of a list of times at which possible tasks, events, or actions are intended to take place, or of a sequence of events in the chronological order in which such things ...

line 734), also known as the Gartenbahn ("Garden Railway"), is a 4.836 km long electrified, single-track main line railway in the German state of

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg ( ; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a states of Germany, German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million i ...

, near

Basel Basel ( ; ), also known as Basle ( ), ; ; ; . is a city in northwestern Switzerland on the river Rhine (at the transition from the High Rhine, High to the Upper Rhine). Basel is Switzerland's List of cities in Switzerland, third-most-populo ...

. It runs from

Weil am Rhein Weil am Rhein (, ; High Alemannic German, High Alemannic: ''Wiil am Rhii'') is a German town and commune. It is on the east bank of the River Rhine, and extends to the tripoint of Switzerland, France, and Germany. It is the most southwesterly tow ...

on the

Rhine Valley Railway The Rhine ( ) is one of the major rivers in Europe. The river begins in the Swiss canton of Graubünden in the southeastern Swiss Alps. It forms part of the Swiss-Liechtenstein border, then part of the Swiss-Austrian border. From Lake Const ...

through Tüllinger Berg (Tüllingen mountain) to

Lörrach Lörrach () is a city in southwest Germany, in the valley of the Wiese, close to the French and the Swiss borders. It is the district seat of the district of Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg. It is the home of a number of large employers, inclu ...

-Stetten on the

Wiese Valley Railway The Wiese Valley Railway () is a 27.2 km long, electrified main line in German Baden-Württemberg in the tri-national area of Germany, Switzerland and France near the Swiss city of Basel. It is part of the Basel trinational S-Bahn and refer ...

. The continuation of the former bypass of Switzerland was the now disused Wehra Valley Railway () from a branch near

Schopfheim Schopfheim () is a town in the Lörrach (district), district of Lörrach in Baden-Württemberg, Germany. It is situated on the river Wiese (river), Wiese, 10 km north of Rheinfelden (Baden), Rheinfelden, and 13 km east of Lörrach. The ...

on the Wiese Valley Railway to

Bad Säckingen Bad Säckingen (; High Alemannic: ''Bad Säckinge'') is a rural town in the administrative district of Waldshut in the state of Baden-Württemberg in Germany. It is famous as the "Trumpeter's City" because of the book ''Der Trompeter von Säckin ...

on the

High Rhine Railway The High Rhine Railway () is a Deutsche Bahn railway line from in the city of Basel to on Lake Constance. It was built by the Grand Duchy of Baden State Railways as part of the Baden Mainline, which follows the Rhine upstream from Mannheim ...

(''Hochrheinbahn'').

History

The Weil am Rhine–Lörrach railway was opened on 20 May 1890 by the

Grand Duchy of Baden State Railways Grand Duchy of Baden had its own state-owned railway company, the Grand Duchy of Baden State Railways (''Großherzoglich Badische Staatseisenbahnen or G.Bad.St.E.''), which was founded in 1840. At the time when it was integrated into the Deutsche ...

(''Großherzoglich Badische Staatseisenbahnen'', G.Bad.St.E.), as a

strategic railway A strategic railway is a railway proposed or constructed primarily for military strategic purposes, as opposed to the usual purpose of a railway, which is the transport of civilian passengers or freight. Although the archetypal strategic rail ...

to bypass Switzerland. The first stage in the development of the line so that it could be integrated in the

Basel trinational S-Bahn The Basel S-Bahn (, ) has provided an S-Bahn-style rail service connecting the Basel metropolitan area since 1997 in Switzerland, Germany and France. It consists of eight suburban train lines, including four that operate across borders. The S-Ba ...

(''Trinationale S-Bahn Basel'') was carried out in 1999 with the opening of stations at Weil am Rhein Gartenstadt (literally “Weil on Rhine Garden City”) and Weil am Rhein Pfädlistraße. Since 15 June 2003, SBB GmbH, a subsidiary of the

Swiss Federal Railways Swiss Federal Railways (, SBB; , CFF; , FFS) is the national railway company of Switzerland. The company was founded in 1902 and is headquartered in Bern. It used to be a State-owned enterprise, government institution, but since 1999 it has be ...

(SBB), responsible for passenger transport operations is Germany, has operated services on the line. Passenger services on the Weil am Rhine–Lörrach railway are now incorporated into the network as line S5 of the S-Bahn.

DB Netz DB Netz () was a major subsidiary of that owned and operated a majority of the German railway system. It was one of the largest railway infrastructure managers by length (33,291 km as of 2019) and transport volume of its network. On 1 Janu ...

AG is still responsible for maintaining the railway infrastructure. At the timetable change of 12 December 2004, line S5 was also extended via Lörrach Hauptbahnhof to Steinen. The new halt of Lörrach Dammstraße was opened on 12 June 2005. The line has been served since the autumn of 2005 by

Stadler FLIRT Stadler FLIRT (, ) is a passenger multiple unit trainset made by Stadler Rail of Switzerland. The baseline design of FLIRT is an electric multiple unit Articulated car, articulated trainset that can come in units of two to twelve cars with two t ...

multiple units (Swiss class RABe 521, German class 429), which replaced NPZ sets modified for operation in Germany ( class RBDe 561), which had been used as an interim solution. The last of these were withdrawn in March 2006.

References

External links

Photographs of Tunnel portals on line 4410
on eisenbahn-tunnelportale.de {{DEFAULTSORT:Weil am Rhein-Lorrach railway Railway lines in Baden-Württemberg Railway lines opened in 1890 1890 establishments in Germany Buildings and structures in Lörrach (district)