Palatinate Railway

Former coat of arms of the Palatinate

The Palatinate Railway or Pfalzbahn was an early German railway company in the period of the German Empire prior to the First World War. It was formed on 1 January 1870, as the United Palatinate Railway based in Ludwigshafen, by the amalgamation of the following railway companies:

• The Palatine Ludwig Railway Company (Pfälzische Ludwigsbahn) with 181 km (112 mi) of line
• The Palatine Maximilian Railway Company (Pfälzische Maximiliansbahn) with 70 km (43 mi) of line
• The Palatine Northern Railway Company (Gesellschaft der Pfälzischen Nordbahnen) with 42 km (26 mi) of route: this included the line belonging to the Neustadt - Dürkheim Railway Company (Neustadt-Dürkheimer Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft) whose shares had been taken over by the North Palatinate Railway.

By Spring 1889, the railway network had grown to 664 km (413 mi); of which 12 km (7.5 mi) was in Alsace-Lorraine and 8 km (5.0 mi) in Prussian Rhineland. It handled through traffic from north and south Germany into the southern Rhineland, to Lorraine and France, as well as from north Germany into Alsace, Switzerland and to Italy.

The three united private railways remained officially independent until they were nationalised on 1 January 1909, and merged into the Royal Bavarian State Railways.

Sources

• Based on a translation of the de.wikipedia article at Pfalzbahn

See also

• Palatinate (region)
• List of Bavarian locomotives and railbuses
• List of Palatine locomotives and railbuses