Description
Flieden station is a station in the town of Flieden in the German state of Hesse, where the Flieden–Gemünden railway branches off the Kinzig Valley Railway. The station is classified by Deutsche Bahn (DB) as a category 5 station.HistoryFlieden station was opened on 15 December 1868 along with the Neuhof–Steinau (Straße) section of the Kinzig Valley Railway. Between the Fulda valley and the Kinzig valley is the Hessischer Landrücken (“Hessian land ridge”) that the line had to cross between Flieden and Schlüchtern. At the time tunnelling techniques were not sufficiently advanced to build a tunnel of the length required for a crossing of the ridge, and a direct crossing would have required the grades on the climbs to be too steep. Therefore, a zig zag turn was built at Elm. This solution was operationally complicated: the locomotives had to run into the zig zag and an additional locomotive was required to attach to the other end of heavy freight trains to help haul them out of the zig zag over the still steep ascents. Therefore, the Flieden station also had an attached depot, for the storage and maintenance of the required locomotives.Due to the high cost of operating the zig zag, construction began in 1909 of the Schlüchtern tunnel to Distelrasen in order to shorten the line. The new tunnel was opened on 1 May 1914. The Kinzig Valley Railway now branched in Flieden from the line to Elm opened in 1879, which became a secondary route to Gemünden. As a result Flieden station was separated from the Kinzig Valley Railway and lost much of its operational importance.
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