Cologne-Minden trunk line

In fact, Friedrich Harkort (“father of the Ruhr”) had proposed the construction of a railway line from Cologne to Minden in 1825.

A route through the Bergisches Land had been dropped was due to the high cost of the engineering structures that would have been required on the advice of the Aachen merchant and banker David Hansemann (1790-1864), who was then briefly Prussian Minister of Finance.

It ran from Deutz (now a suburb of Cologne) further north through Mülheim am Rhein, Düsseldorf, Duisburg, Oberhausen, Altenessen, Gelsenkirchen, Wanne, Herne and Castrop-Rauxel to Dortmund and on to Hamm, Oelde, Rheda, Bielefeld and Herford to Minden.

On 15 October 1847, the last section was opened to Minden, thus completing the entire 263 kilometre long, single track railway.

The opening of several hundred kilometres of railway lines in September and October 1847 together with other lines opened in the previous few years, created a continuous rail link from the Rhine via Brunswick, Oschersleben, Magdeburg, Dresden and Wrocław to the Vistula river.

Cologne-Minden Railway Company network (nationalised in 1879), Cologne-Minden trunk line in dark red
Mainline of the Cologne-Minden Railway Company from the 1849 German railway map
Railway Map of Germany and neighboring countries in 1849. Thin lines represent lines that were projected or under construction.