Grand Duchy of Baden State Railway

The Grand Duchy of Baden was an independent state in what is now southwestern Germany until the creation of the German Empire in 1871.

Not until the foundation of a railway company in the neighbouring French province of Alsace, for the construction of a line from Basel to Strasbourg in 1837, did any serious planning begin for the building of a railway in Baden in order to avoid the loss of trade routes to Alsace.

At an extraordinary meeting of the state parliament, the Baden legislature passed three laws on 29 March 1838 for the construction of the first route between Mannheim and the Swiss border at Basel, as well as a stub line to Baden-Baden and a branch to Strasbourg.

This was not achieved until the bridge at Waldshut over the river Rhine, built by Robert Gerwig, was completed on 18 August 1859.

Negotiations for a route to Württemberg were particularly difficult because both states were competing for traffic between Germany and the Alpine passes.

The subsequent expansion of Baden's railway network was either aimed at opening up the regions or carried out from a military perspective.

The most important conversions were: The newly built Heidelberg central station could not be completed due to the start of the First World War.

Several routes in Baden were built by private concerns, but operated by the State Railways and, in most cases, subsequently taken over.

For example, the city of Mannheim built a direct railway line to Karlsruhe without having to go via Heidelberg, in order to step out of the shadows into which they had fallen when the Badische Haupt Railway was married up at Friedrichsfeld and Heidelberg with the Main-Neckar Line that ran on northwards.

In a countermove the city of Heidelberg pressed for the construction of the Heidelberg–Schwetzingen–Speyer route, in order to secure its importance as a transport hub.

The foundation of the Reichsbahn meant that a wish list of routes in Baden was cancelled and only four new lines were built: Construction work on a railway connexion from Bretten to Kürnbach (with a planned junction to the Zabergäu Railway (Zabergäubahn) at Leonbronn) was begun, but the line was never completed.

The electrification of the Wiesen valley line was mainly done in order to trial electric traction; it had no great significance in terms of traffic.

No further expansion of electric services was carried out after the First World War due to the serious economic situation and it was not until 1952 that the electrification of Baden's railway network was begun in earnest.

At the end of the First World War the vehicle inventory included 915 locomotives, 27,600 goods wagons and 2,500 passenger coaches, of which 106 locomotives, 7,307 goods wagons and 400 passenger coaches had to be given to the victorious powers as reparations in accordance with the Versailles Treaty.

The Baden State Railways fostered the growth of an indigenous railway vehicle industry in Baden, because they preferred to buy from local firms such as the engineering works of Kessler and Martiensen in Karlsruhe, which later became the Maschinengesellschaft Karlsruhe ('Karlsruhe Engineering Company').