History of rail transport in Denmark

This article is part of the history of rail transport by country series

The history of rail transport in Denmark began in 1847 with the opening of a railway line between Copenhagen and Roskilde. The Kiel-Altona line in Holstein was completed three years earlier, but the region had been lost to the German Confederation in the Second War of Schleswig.

The Danish national railway company, DSB, was established in 1885. Until recently, DSB took care of most aspects of rail operation, but the liberalisation efforts during the 1990s have resulted in several tasks being branched off into other companies.

Early steps

In the 1830s, England and North Germany planned to construct a railway line between the cities of Hamburg and Lübeck to ease transport between the North Sea and the Baltic Sea. The Copenhagen government frowned on this, as they wanted to retain waterway traffic through Oresund, but to preempt these efforts, the Danish government set up the first Danish railway commission in 1835 to establish the layout of a railway line through the Duchy of Holstein. Consequently, the railway between Altona and Kiel was opened by King Christian VIII on September 18, 1844. However, the Duchy of Holstein was only in personal union with Denmark, with the King of Denmark being Duke of Holstein, and as a result of the Second War of Schleswig, Holstein was ceded to the German Confederation in 1864. The railway line was not the first in what constituted Denmark at the time (as Holstein was part of the German Confederation), but it was nonetheless the first to be built under the Danish monarchy.

In 1840, technician Søren Hjorth and accountant Johan Christian Gustav Schram published the paper Jærnbane mellem Kjøbenhavn og Roeskilde, in which they argued that a railway between Copenhagen and Roskilde would be profitable. However, there was no further interest in this project until 1841, when cooperation with Industriforeningen had been established. In 1843, after substantial financial recalculations, they applied for a concession to construct a railway from Copenhagen via Roskilde to a coastal town on West Zealand. This was granted about a year later, albeit not with the same level of governmental economic support as the Kiel-Altona line.

On July 2, 1844, Det sjællandske Jernbaneselskab (The Railway Company of Zealand) was established with Hjorth and Schram among the board of directors. Amidst considerable resistance from landowners, trouble with unstable labour and excessive expenditures, the economic resources necessary to complete the line were provided, and the Copenhagen-Roskilde line was opened, as the first in Denmark, on June 26, 1847. English engineer William Radford led construction. Sharp Brothers and Company, in Manchester, England built the initial batch of locomotives, the first of which was named 'Odin'.

Expanding the main lines

Following ratification of the Danish Constitution in 1849, there was political will to improve trade routes to England and provide better connections between Copenhagen and the rest of the country. The primary means for this was to extend the Copenhagen-Roskilde line to Korsør, on the west coast of Zealand. During the 1850s, sufficient funding to extend the line to Korsør was secured, and the new segment was opened on April 26, 1856.

Before the First War of Schleswig, plans had been made in Schleswig to construct a railway from Flensburg, via Husum, to Tönning to limit German influence on trade. However, these plans were hampered by the war and the new political system. In 1852, the construction company Peto, Brassey and Betts (represented in Scandinavia by Samuel Morton Peto) was granted concession to build the line, which opened on October 6, 1854. The railway was very successful, carrying English transit goods until 1857, when the Oresund toll was abolished.

Zealand

The railway lines on Zealand had been constructed by the private "Det Sjællandske Jernbaneselskab" (lit.: The Zealandic Railway Company) until this company was taken over by the state in 1880. This had not been without issues, and in several cases the company refused to build additional lines or make necessary upgrades without financial guaranties. The last lines to be built by this company was “Nordvestbanen” (roughly “The Northwest Line” - Roskilde – Holbæk - Kalundborg), and “Sydbanen” (roughly “The South Line” – Roskilde – Køge – Næstved – Vordingborg – Nykøbing Falster (this last bit on the island of Falster was sold almost as soon as it opened for traffic)).

Jutland and Funen

In Jutland and on Funen, the state decided on a somewhat different approach to built the railways. Here the state financed and owned the lines and infrastructure right from the start, whilst trusting the daily administration of lines and trains to the private company of “Det danske Jernbanedriftsselskab” (lit.: The Danish Railway Operations Company). In 1862, the first line in Jutland was inaugurated, connecting the towns of Aarhus and Randers. Other lines criss-crossing Jutland north-south and east-west - including the island of Funen -, soon followed. The last railways to be laid, before major changes were made, connected the north–south mainline on the east coast known as “Den Østjydske Længdebane” (lit.: The East Jutlandic Longitude Line) and the north-south mainline on the west coast known as "Den Vestjydske Længdebane" (lit.: The West Jutlandic Longitude Line). The line connected the towns of Lunderskov and the new port of Esbjerg specifically.

By 1880, all major railway lines and companies had been bought up by the company of “De Jydsk-Fynske Statsbaner” (lit.: the Jutlandic – Fuenic State Railways) owned by the state and the company of “De Sjællandske Statsbaner” on private hands. In 1885 these two companies merged to form the state owned company of “De Danske Statsbaner” (it.: the Danish State Railways) also known as DSB.

References

Koed, Jan (1997). Danmarks Jernbaner i 150 år. Forlaget Kunst og Kultur. ISBN 87-7600-199-7.

External links

Danish railway history from Banedanmark (in Danish)
DSB: History and nostalgia (in Danish)
Winchester, Clarence, ed. (1936), "Denmark's modern transport", Railway Wonders of the World, pp. 1369–1374 illustrated description of Denmark's railways in the 1930s