page_title: Rhenish Railway Company
section_title: West Rhine line and Cologne Central Station
hierarchical_section_title: Rhenish Railway Company / Construction of lines / West Rhine line and Cologne Central Station
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: de:Eschweiler Hauptbahnhof, Blick vom Ichenberger Tunnel im Winter
context_page_description: The Rhenish Railway Company was along with the Cologne-Minden Railway Company and the Bergisch-Märkische Railway Company one of the railway companies that in the mid-19th century built the first railways in the Ruhr and large parts of today's North Rhine-Westphalia.
context_section_description: On 1 January 1857, the Company acquired the Bonn-Cologne Railway Company (Bonn-Cölner Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, BCE) for 1.05 million Prussian thalers along with its 45 km long route from Cologne (St. Pantaleon station) to Bonn and Rolandseck, beginning its development of railways along the Rhine. By 1859, it had extended the West Rhine line (or Left Rhine line, Linke Rheinstrecke) 107 kilometres via Koblenz to Bingerbrück, where it connected with the Hessian Ludwig Railway to Mainz and Ludwigshafen as well as the Nahe Valley Railway to Saarbrücken and its coal mines. In addition, in 1864 the Pfaffendorf bridge was built over Rhine at Koblenz and connected with the Nassau State Railways in Oberlahnstein. The Prussian state helped finance the construction of the Pfaffendorf bridge and its connection with the Nassau State Railways.
  After the takeover of the BCE, Hermann Otto Pflaume completed plans for a new RhE Central Station in Cologne. The station and the Cathedral Bridge (Dombrücke) were opened in 1859. The Central Station was a combined terminal and through station: it included four terminal tracks for the RhE running to the west, while the CME had two through tracks connecting to its line on the eastern side of the Rhine by the Cathedral Bridge.
caption: View from the Ichenberg tunnel towards Eschweiler Hbf between Düren and Aachen
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