{"id":148189,"date":"1865-09-08T12:00:00","date_gmt":"1865-09-08T10:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/aalten-achteruit\/north-south-line\/"},"modified":"2026-10-08T23:38:00","modified_gmt":"2026-10-08T21:38:00","slug":"north-south-line","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/north-south-line\/","title":{"rendered":"North-South Line"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Aalten is situated on the Arnhem\u2013Winterswijk railway line, which traverses the municipality from west to east (or vice versa, if you prefer). However, in the second half of the 19th century, there were also various plans to construct alternative routes running in a (more or less) north-south direction. <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Below is some information regarding these plans. It is perhaps superfluous to mention that none of these projects ever came to fruition. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Zutphen\u2013Aalten<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Railway\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Arnhemsche Courant, 8 September 1865<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

In the mid-19th century, there were no railways in the Achterhoek yet. However, in 1865, plans were drawn up to build a railway line from Zutphen to the ‘Prussian borders’. The line was intended to run via Vorden, Hengelo, Zelhem, and Aalten. This route would be the shortest and, moreover, offered the advantages that the ground was ‘firm, level, and inexpensive, and no major engineering works would be required’. It is unknown to us why these plans were never executed. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n

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Gelsenkirchen\u2013Aalten\u2013Zutphen<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n

In het voorjaar van 1872 meldde een ingenieur van de Duitse Eisenbahn-gesellschaft uit Berlijn zich op het Aaltense gemeentehuis<\/a> om informatie in te winnen voor de mogelijke aanleg van een spoorlijn van Gelsenkirchen, via Bocholt en Aalten, naar Zutphen. Blijkens nevenstaand krantartikel waren er op hetzelfde moment ook al plannen voor een spoorlijn van Winterswijk in westelijke richting, langs Aalten.<\/p>\n\n

“Should one of these lines come into being, this village, one of the largest in the county, will very swiftly attain a high degree of prosperity, particularly as an unparalleled desire for progress in every field is observed here among the core of the populace.”<\/em><\/p>\n\n

However, these plans were never carried out. This was likely due to the fact that the Nederlandsch-Westfaalsche Spoorweg-Maatschappij (NWS) had only just been founded, having already been granted the concession to build the Zutphen\u2013Winterswijk railway line on 27 March. A year later, the Bergisch-M\u00e4rkische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft received the concession for the Winterswijk\u2013Borken\u2013Gelsenkirchen railway line, which would connect to the Dutch line. <\/p>\n\n

\"Railway\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Zutphensche Courant, 18 April 1872<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n
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Rees\u2013Aalten<\/h2>\n\n\n\n\n\n
\"Railway\n\t\t\t\n\t\t\t\t\n\t\t\t<\/svg>\n\t\t<\/button>
Zutphensche Courant, 5 June 1885<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n

In 1885, there was once again talk of the potential construction of a railway line that would pass Aalten in a north-south direction. This time, the planned route ran from Rees, via Isselburg and Dinxperlo to Aalten. Later, we also found Groenlo added to this list. It was, incidentally, also considered as a steam tramway. At the end of the year, however, the Graafschapbode reported that the preparatory work had been halted due to a disagreement between the German and Dutch sides regarding the location of the Dinxperlo-Suderwick station. <\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In the 19th century, there were various plans for railway lines via Aalten<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":140782,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-148189","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148189","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=148189"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148189\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":199957,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/148189\/revisions\/199957"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140782"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/oldaalten.nl\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=148189"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}