History of rail transport in Luxembourg
The first half of the 19th century was strongly marked by the steam engine, the invention that allowed humans to multiply, to an unexpected extent, their capacities for production, construction, and transportation, without depending on seasonal and atmospheric conditions.
Thus, the need was felt for the Grand Duchy, and especially its capital city, to be connected to neighbouring countries by the new revolutionary mode of transportation which was the railway.
Ideas for building the lines to serve the Grand Duchy were abundant at the time, and the plans and projects that emerged were not free from bias or hidden agendas.
[1]: 242, 247 In 1827 a company, the Société anonyme de Luxembourg was founded in Brussels with the goal of building a navigable canal between the Maas and Moselle, a project that was already abandoned in 1830 however.
[1]: 244 In 1853, the Luxembourger François-Émile Majerus, who had worked for a long time in Mexico as an engineer and geologist, published a pamphlet showing the great economic advantages for agriculture, trade and the Luxembourgish steel industry which would result from a Luxembourgish railway network connected to neighbouring countries.
With the northwards expansion of the Thionville line, the Longwy route was in the interest of Belgian and Lotharingian industrialists, who wanted to link up iron ore mines and the steel industry in the French-Luxembourgish border area.
[1]: 244 Due to strategic military interests of the French government, however, the decision was taken to extend the Thionville line towards Luxembourg.
[1]: 244 In this context, M. Daval approached the Luxembourgish government about building three railway lines, which were to lead from Luxembourg to Arlon, Thionville and Trier.
[1]: 245 In the following years until 1867, Guillaume-Luxembourg opened the vast majority of the main lines of Luxembourg's network, which are still operational today.
Additionally, the political situation was complex, caught between Prussia, France, and Belgium (which was supported by British interests).
However, the Luxembourg steel industry wanted connections between its supply and production sites and also found the tariffs of the GL to be too high.
After this, the Prussians, having just won the Franco-Prussian War and subsequently having annexed the Alsace, transferred the French rights into a new Compagnie EL (Reichseisenbahn Elsass-Lothringen).
During the Second World War, Germany occupied the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and integrated all railways there into the Deutsche Reichsbahn.
On 4 October 1859, at the celebrations for the first train to depart from Luxembourg, the patriotic song "Feierwon" was sung for the first time on the steps of the town hall.
[citation needed] From 1864 several prominent figures put their support behind the idea of constructing a second railway line (Gürtelbahn).
It was to go from Wasserbillig, along the Sauer, via Ettelbrück, along the Attert and the Belgian border, via Kleinbettingen to Pétange, where the centre of the new network was to be located.
On 19 March 1869, to realise this project, a law created the Société des chemins de fer Prince-Henri ("Prince Henry Railway Company").
[1]: 249 This company established a network of lines, primarily radiating from Pétange, and included another line, which — albeit utilising sections of the GL network — extended in a wide arc north of the city of Luxembourg and along the eastern border of the Grand Duchy from Diekirch via Echternach and Wasserbillig to Grevenmacher.
From 1 August 1873, the first trains ran on the new PH network: 1873–1874: From Diekirch, along the Sauer, a new project was started, the Ettelbrück-Wasserbillig line.
The shareholders of the Société des chemins de fer Prince-Henri, which was dissolved, regrouped and founded the Société luxembourgoise des chemins de fer et minières Prince-Henri ("Luxembourgish Prince Henry Railway and Mine Company") in the same year.
On 4 November 1904, an industrial narrow-gauge line (1.000 mm) started operating from Grundhof to the stone quarries on the hill over Dillingen.
The Minette tram of the "Syndicat des Tramways Intercommunaux du Canton d'Esch" (TICE), founded in 1914 by the communes of Esch-Alzette, started service.
While the Guillaume-Luxembourg and the Prince-Henri companies had constructed the high-traffic routes by around 1880, parts of the country with less traffic remained without rail connections.
Thus, the Luxembourg government enlisted a subsidiary of the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works (SLM), which initially built the Luxemburg–Remich and Cruchten–Fels lines as narrow-gauge railways in metre gauge and put them into operation in 1882.
From this beginning, the Société anonyme des chemins de fer secondaires luxembourgois ("Luxembourg Secondary Railway Company") emerged,[1]: 249 but it showed no interest in constructing further lines.
In this way, three lines were established:[1]: 249 The illegal occupation of neutral Luxembourg by the German Empire at the beginning of World War I and the subsequent use of its railway network such as in Troisvierges on Aug 1 1914, the de facto seizure of the Luxembourg railways by the victorious Allies, and the downfall of the EL, which had operated the GL routes, left behind an administrative chaos that took several years to sort out.
It was concluded with a Franco-Luxembourgish treaty in 1925 – although some aspects remained subject to legal disputes until 1933 – establishing the status quo and confirming that the French Administration des chemins de fer d'Alsace et de Lorraine (AL), which succeeded the EL in the former Reichsland Elsaß-Lothringen, also assumed its rights and duties in Luxembourg.
To avoid a repetition of the chaotic conditions that had arisen after the First World War, the state took advantage of the situation that the three entities that had previously operated railways in the Grand Duchy had been unified under the Reichsbahn.
This railway power is also used on the line to Germany, where there is a system changeover point to the German network (15 kV / 16 2/3 Hz) at Wasserbillig.
On 28 September 1956, the era of the electric railway started, with the electrification of the transit route Kleinbettingen-border – Bettembourg-border via Luxembourg City.
