Cologne–Kleve Section The Left Lower Rhine line was opened between Cologne and Neuss by the
Cologne-Crefeld Railway Company (originally spelt in German as the
Cöln-Crefelder Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, CCE) on 15 November 1855 and extended to
Krefeld—on the original direct route via
Fischeln—on 26 January 1856. The current route via Krefeld-Oppum was opened on 23 August 1866. The
Rhenish Railway Company (
Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, RhE) entered into a contract with the
Cologne-Crefelder Railway Company on 11 November 1859 to take over its route from Cologne to Krefeld on 1 July 1860, making it possible to extend the Left Lower Rhine line to the north with a connection to the Dutch rail network and the Dutch ports. The section to Kleve opened on 1 March 1863.
Kleve–Netherlands section A ten-kilometre continuation of the line over the Griethausen railway bridge and the
Spyck–Welle train ferry to the Dutch border was opened on 19 April 1865 for freight and on 21 April 1865 for passengers. At the same time the RhE encouraged the
Dutch Rhine Railway Company (, NRS) to extend its railway, which already ran from
Rotterdam and
Amsterdam to
Utrecht and
Arnhem, to the Dutch–German border. In 1856 the
Cologne-Minden Railway Company (
Cöln-Mindener Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, CME) had opened its line to
Emmerich via Oberhausen (the
Holland route), but it lacked rail connections to southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. This prompted the NRS to discuss a rail link via Cleves with the
Rhenish railway, which had extended its
West Rhine line to
Bingen in 1859 to create a connection with the southern German rail network. Both companies attempted to persuade the Dutch government to grant a concession to the Rhenish railway for the construction of a route from Kleve to Nijmegen and Arnhem but failed to change the Dutch government's policy. Even an offer by the Rhenish railway to build at its own expense the big bridges that would have been required over the
Waal and the Rhine had no effect. Probably the major concern for the Dutch government was the protection of navigation on the Rhine in the Netherlands and the fact that the majority of the capital of the NRS was controlled by English investors. Until the nationalisation of the company in 1880, all RhE freight and passenger trains ran to the Dutch North Sea ports via the Kleve–Zevenaar route. In 1912, the tracks to the ramps on both sides of the train ferry were closed. Passengers were instead transferred by steamboat. During
World War I the line was reduced to two pairs of trains per day. After the war, the Dutch railways (later formally amalgamated as
Nederlandse Spoorwegen, NS) and the
German State Railways signed an agreement in relation to the operation of rail and ferry services up to 31 August 1926. Around 1930 the tracks between Welle and Elten on the right (northern) bank were dismantled. In contrast, on the left bank passenger services continued until 1960 and freight ran directly to a vegetable oil mill on the Rhine in Spyck until 1987. At that time, the line from Kleve was closed. On 9 September 1865 a further link from Cleves to Nijmegen was put into operation. In 1879 this line was connected to the Dutch rail network in
Arnhem. From 18 September 1965 the section between Kleve and the border was reduced from double track to single track. No passenger trains have run on the line to Nijmegen since 1991 and the line has been out of service since 1999. Freight operations have been closed between Kleve and Kranenburg since 31 December 1991. Since 27 April 2008, the section from Kleve via Kranenburg to Groesbeek has been used for the operation of
draisines for entertainment.
S-Bahn Line S 11 of the
Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn was put into operation from
Cologne Hbf to
Köln-Chorweiler on 1 June 1975 as the first
S-Bahn line in Cologne. On 22 May 1977, a new section was opened to
Köln-Chorweiler Nord, running underground through
Chorweiler. In June 1985 this was extended to
Köln-Worringen, where the S-Bahn line has a grade-separated connection with the main line, and line S 11 continues to Neuss. This was the beginning of the integration of the Rhine-Ruhr and the Rhine-Sieg S-Bahn networks.
Crossing lines From west to east, the Left Lower Rhine line was crossed by now disused railways in
Goch,
Geldern and
Kempen. The
North Brabant-German Railway Company (Dutch:
Noord-Brabantsch-Duitsche Spoorweg-Maatschappij, NBDS) built a line for long-distance trains running from
London to
Berlin and London to
Hamburg from
Boxtel in the Netherlands via
Gennep and Goch to
Wesel (the
Boxtel Railway). The
Haltern–Venlo section of the
Paris-Hamburg Railway, which ran from Venlo via Wesel to Hamburg, crossed in Geldern; this was opened by the
Cologne-Minden Railway Company in 1874. The
Rhenish Railway Company opened
a line from Kempen to Venlo via
Kaldenkirchen in 1867. The
narrow gauge Geldern District Railway (
Geldernsche Kreisbahn) was opened in 1901 and 1902 from Kempen via
Straelen to
Kevelaer to improve access to the agricultural land west of the Left Lower Rhine line; it was closed in 1934. ==Current operations==