The history of rail transport in Luxembourg began in 1846 and continues to the present day.
Origins
The Grand Duchy of Luxembourg belonged to the German Confederation from 1815 to 1866 as a sovereign state. The relevant treaties still remained in force after 1871 when the German Empire was founded: the Grand Duchy therefore remained a member of the German Zollverein and connected to the German Empire through a currency union, until 1918. However, until 1890, so in the period during which most of the railways were built, the Grand Duchy was connected in personal union to the Dutch monarchy. Luxembourg's neighbour, Belgium, had definitively split off from the Netherlands in 1839 with the Treaty of London. Close economic ties continued to remain between Belgium and Luxembourg.
The first half of the 19th century was strongly marked by the steam engine, the invention that allowed humans to multiply, to an unexpected extent, their capacities for production, construction, and transportation, without depending on seasonal and atmospheric conditions. Thus, the need was felt for the Grand Duchy, and especially its capital city, to be connected to neighbouring countries by the new revolutionary mode of transportation which was the railway.
Ideas for building the lines to serve the Grand Duchy were abundant at the time, and the plans and projects that emerged were not free from bias or hidden agendas.
In addition to the Luxembourgish ties with Belgium, there were British economic interests in the area. Thus, British companies and banks also studied the feasibility of railway projects that affected Luxembourg from around 1845. The Grand Duchy's finances and its financial sector were at the time too weak, to undertake railway projects itself. There was the additional problem that the city of Luxembourg was a German federal fortress, and that therefore the Prussian military stationed there prohibited the construction of a railway into the city itself.
In 1827 a company, the Société anonyme de Luxembourg was founded in Brussels with the goal of building a navigable canal between the Maas and Moselle, a project that was already abandoned in 1830 however. From this company, and supported by British creditors, the Great Luxembourg Company / Grande Compagnie Luxembourgoise was founded in 1845, with the goal of connecting Luxembourg to its three neighbouring countries through railways. A preliminary agreement was signed on 4 June 1846,Publications de la société pour la recherche et la conservation des monuments historiques dans le Grand-Duché de Luxembourg, XXII, année 1866, imprimerie-librairie V. Buck, Luxembourg, 1867. p.127 (full text) (retrieved 17 May 2011). but did not immediately bear fruit, as the government and the company could not reach a final agreement. A few years later, by the law of 7 January 1850, the government was authorized to negotiate with private companies. The law provided a guarantee of a minimum interest of 3%.
In 1853, the Luxembourger François-Émile Majerus, who had worked for a long time in Mexico as an engineer and geologist, published a pamphlet showing the great economic advantages for agriculture, trade and the Luxembourgish steel industry which would result from a Luxembourgish railway network connected to neighbouring countries.
In this context, in the mid-1850s it was necessary to take a decision. In 1854, the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Strasbourg, which would later become the Compagnie des Chemins de fer de l’Est (EST), opened the Metz–Thionville railway line. A decision had to be taken how it should be extended to the north: via Luxembourg or via Longwy.
In the second half of the 19th century, there were three diverging transport interests in Luxembourg:
Luxembourg City, the capital and largest city of the country, lies at the crossroads of several European routes. In terms of railways, the railway station of Luxembourg City today forms the main intersection. The steel industry – primarily in the south and south-west of the country – required efficient railway lines for the transport of ore, coal and steel. The country as a whole, despite its small size, had a need for countrywide transportation, which could not be met by a network centred on Luxembourg City; also because the city is located in the south of the country's geographical centre.
To resolve these transport needs and interests, which were not all compatible with each other, several railway companies came into being, which each pursued their own goals.
With the northwards expansion of the Thionville line, the Longwy route was in the interest of Belgian and Lotharingian industrialists, who wanted to link up iron ore mines and the steel industry in the French-Luxembourgish border area. Due to strategic military interests of the French government, however, the decision was taken to extend the Thionville line towards Luxembourg. Prussia on the other hand wanted a railway connection towards the east, to its own sovereign territory.
The Grande Compagnie Luxembourgoise had talks in 1853 with the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Strasbourg over the construction of railways in Luxembourg, and the Crédit immobilier de Paris bank declared its willingness to finance the project. (The Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Strasbourg became the Compagnie des Chemins de fer de l’Est (EST) that same year.) With this, the extension of the cross-border segment of the Thionville–Luxembourg line seemed secure. Since EST was pursuing the competing project in parallel of a railway towards Belgium circumventing Luxembourg, however, the Grande Compagnie Luxembourgoise turned its back on railway construction in Luxembourg.
Guillaume-Luxembourg
Company In this context, M. Daval approached the Luxembourgish government about building three railway lines, which were to lead from Luxembourg to Arlon, Thionville and Trier. Daval had founded a company for this purpose with the banker Adolphe Favier and the engineer Stéphane Jouve. After the Luxembourgish government realised that the Grande Compagnie Luxembourgoise had pulled out, EST was being reluctant due to the competing project via Longwy, and another, Prussian company that had been in talks could not bring up the funds, it started talks with Daval. This resulted in an agreement on 9 November 1855, through which the company was awarded the name of the Dutch King and Grand Duke of Luxembourg William II, as the Société royale Grand-Ducale de Guillaume-Luxembourg (), also Compagnie Guillaume-Luxembourg or just Guillaume-Luxembourg (GL). While the company paid the deposit, construction did not begin yet. There was then a further contract on 2 March 1857, when French funds had been secured. In the end, the Guillaume-Luxembourg lines were financed exclusively through French capital. The company became embroiled in a financial scandal, and was forced to ask the Luxembourgish government for help.
Construction of lines It therefore took until 11 August 1859, before the route to Thionville went into operation, as Luxembourg's first railway line. On that same day, a "pleasure train" with 600 passengers travelled to Paris. The same year, on 4 and 5 October, the route to Arlon was opened.
In the following years until 1867, Guillaume-Luxembourg opened the vast majority of the main lines of Luxembourg's network, which are still operational today.
Four main lines were built: Luxembourg – Bettembourg – France (11 August 1859) Luxembourg – Kleinbettingen – Belgium (15 September 1859) Luxembourg – Wasserbillig – Germany (29 August 1861) Luxembourg – Ettelbrück (21 July 1862), Ettelbrück – Kautenbach (15 December 1866), Ettelbrück – Diekirch (16 November 1862), Kautenbach – Troisvierges – Belgium (20 February 1867) Two smaller lines were built to transport the iron ore to the blast furnaces at Dommeldange: Bettembourg – Esch-Alzette (came into service 23 April 1859)150 Joer Eisebunn zu Lëtzebuerg 1859-2009 Noertzange – Rumelange – Ottange (1 June 1860) Due to the opposition of the local population, the lines were not laid through villages and vineyards.
The law of 7 May 1856 mandated the construction of a new direct railway line to Saarbrücken, without going via Trier. This project, the law notwithstanding, was never executed.
Conflicts Operationally, the situation was challenging. There was a conflict between the GL and the Grande Compagnie du Luxembourg, which operated railways in the adjacent Belgian province of Luxembourg. The GL's lines on the other side of the border were operated by the EST railway company, which had French interests behind it. Additionally, the political situation was complex, caught between Prussia, France, and Belgium (which was supported by British interests). In 1867, the Luxembourg Crisis occurred: Napoleon III attempted to purchase Luxembourg from King William III of the Netherlands. The public in the Grand Duchy and other areas of the German Confederation protested vehemently against the plan. The crisis culminated in the Second Treaty of London in 1867, in which Luxembourg was declared "permanently neutral" on one hand, but on the other hand, the fortress of Luxembourg was abandoned and dismantled.
In 1862 the operation of the lines from Kleinbettingen to Luxembourg and from Luxembourg to Wasserbillig passed, once again, from the EST to the Belgian Grande Compagnie du Luxembourg, as part of an exchange for the operation on the Luxembourg–Spa railway line. However, in 1869, the EST took back control of the two aforementioned lines.
Another problem was that the network that had developed until 1867 led from larger cities abroad to the city of Luxembourg, in a star shape. However, the Luxembourg steel industry wanted connections between its supply and production sites and also found the tariffs of the GL to be too high. Out of this dissatisfaction, the initiative emerged to establish the Prince-Henri railway network.
Guillaume-Luxembourg was administered until 10 May 1871 by the French Compagnie des chemins de fer de l'Est. After this, the Prussians, having just won the Franco-Prussian War and subsequently having annexed the Alsace, transferred the French rights into a new Compagnie EL (Reichseisenbahn Elsass-Lothringen).
Operation Guillaume-Luxembourg was purely a financing, construction, and railway infrastructure company that never operated a public railway itself. Even before the completion of the first line on 6 June 1857, the operation of the lines it built was leased to the Compagnie du chemin de fer de Paris à Strasbourg, later known as the Compagnie des Chemins de fer de l'Est (EST), which acted as a railway operator here.
After the Franco-German War, the EST, since it now lay in the German Imperial Territory of Alsace-Lorraine, became the property of the German Empire, which reorganised this network into the Imperial Railways in Alsace-Lorraine (EL). After persistent resistance from Luxembourg, the EL then, under a treaty, took over the operating rights of the EST on the GL in Luxembourg in 1872.
From 1919 onwards, the Administration des chemins de fer d’Alsace et de Lorraine (AL) took over the operating rights on the GL network, succeeding the EL, after Alsace and Lorraine had reverted to France following the First World War. In 1938, all rights of the AL were transferred to the newly established SNCF. During the Second World War, Germany occupied the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and integrated all railways there into the Deutsche Reichsbahn. Since the establishment of the state-owned Société Nationale des Chemins de Fer Luxembourgeois (CFL) in 1946, the former GL network has been part of the CFL.
Luxembourg City