page_title: Glan Valley Railway
section_title: Plans for a strategic railway and the opening of the Lauterecken–Staudernheim section
hierarchical_section_title: Glan Valley Railway / History / Plans for a strategic railway and the opening of the Lauterecken–Staudernheim section
caption_attribution_description: Deutsch: Meisenheimer Tunnel vor dem zweigleisigen Ausbau der Strecke
context_page_description: The Glan Valley Railway is a non-electrified line along the Glan river, in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate. It consists of the Glan-Münchweiler–Altenglan section, which was built as part of the Landstuhl–Kusel railway and sections that were built later for military reasons: Homburg–Glan-Münchweiler, Altenglan–Staudernheim and Odernheim–Bad Münster am Stein. The line had strategic importance, otherwise traffic was rather low, except on the Glan Munchweiler–Altenglan section.
  The line runs right next to the river for 60 km of its 85 km length from Homburg to Bad Münster. The line is closed, except for the ten km section from Glan-Münchweiler to Altenglan that forms part of the Landstuhl–Kusel line. It is used for tourism and draisine rides have been offered on the section between Altenglan and Staudernheim since 2000. In contrast, the Waldmohr–Glan-Münchweiler section has been dismantled.
context_section_description: The granting of the concession in the 1860s to build the Kusel-Landstuhl railway, which was opened in 1868 and follows the course of the Glan from Glan Munchweiler to Altenglan, gave new life to the proposal to build a line through the rest of the Glan valley. A company was founded in 1865 in Meisenheim to carry out the planning of this line. However, several wars in the following years at first prevented the completion of the project.
  As Alsace and Lorraine were incorporated in the German Empire in 1871 as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, the fear that France would start another war in order to regain Alsace-Lorraine developed in Germany. To prevent this, the primary interest in new railways in south-western Germany towards the end of the 19th century was in railways intended mainly for military purposes. In the Palatinate and Prussia planning started on the strategic railway, which would branch from the Palatine Ludwig Railway in Homburg and follow the Glan river, sharing the Kusel-Landstuhl railway between Glan-Münchweiler and Altenglan. On 7 September 1871, a committee met in Meisenheim to consider the plans developed by engineers for such a line. The committee issued a memorandum on 27 January 1871 that highlighted the economic and the military importance of a railway along the Glan.
  However, the opposition of Bavaria prevented the project for the time being; this attitude was due to the high construction costs expected. Because of the border, which would also hinder the construction, there were at the time plans for a branch line from Altenglan to St Julian, which would run exclusively through Bavarian Palatinate.
  In 1891, Bavaria and Prussia signed a treaty that included the construction and operation of a line from Lauterecken to Staudernheim as a direct continuation of the Lauterbrunnen Valley Railway of the Palatine Northern Railway Company from Kaiserslautern to Lauterecken; preparatory work for its construction had already begun in 1886. Moreover, the railway entrepreneur Karl Jakob von Lavale had agreed that the Board would be responsible for half the land acquisition costs. The section between Lauterecken and Meisenheim was open on 16 June 1896 and the Lauterecken-Odernheim section was opened in October 1896. Construction work on closing the gap to Staudernheim began on 2 November, but on the same day a flood scoured the embankment at Odenbach and interrupted traffic. The remaining line to Staudernheim on the Nahe Valley Railway was finally taken into operation on 1 July 1897.
caption: Meisenheim Tunnel towards the end of the 19th century
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