Dill Railway

The Dill Railway (German: Dillstrecke) is a 73 km-long double-track electrified railway line, which runs from Giessen in Hesse to Siegen in North Rhine-Westphalia. Until 2002 InterRegio trains operated the connection to Düsseldorf, Norddeich, and Münster. Nowadays the line is only worked by regional trains, including diesel multiples of the DreiLänderBahn, but there is one exception. The EuroCity Line 112/113 from Siegen to Klagenfurt via Frankfurt, Stuttgart, München and Salzburg with a destination coach to Zagreb. This train starts every day from Siegen in the morning at 6:17 pm, the train from Klagenfurt arrives at 9:57 am at Siegen. The southern section between Haiger and Gießen was built by the Cologne-Minden Railway Company in 1862 as part of its line from Deutz and is one of the oldest railways in Germany. The section from Haiger to Siegen was opened in 1915 by the Prussian state railways. The Dill line consists historically in two parts. The southern section was built about 50 years before the northern section. The southern part is the south-western section of the Deutz–Gießen line built by the Cologne-Minden Railway Company and completed originally as a single-track in January 1862 from Köln-Deutz to Gießen. The population of the rural areas along the Dill river was initially largely hostile to the construction of the railway, although it contributed to the prosperity of the region. It quickly gained great importance for the movement of professionals between home and work. The town of Wetzlar had to accept the remote location of its station, as it was located near a curve in the Dill line built for the junction with the Lahntal railway, which was opened a year later. The route soon became an important line and was almost fully duplicated by1870. The central section of the Deutz–Giessen line ran from Betzdorf via Burbach and Würgendorf to Haiger, the route of the current Heller Valley Railway. Due to the difficult terrain, construction of a direct connection from Siegen to the Dill line was too expensive at the time.