It is not a newly built railway line, but a project to upgrade the existing railway line which was opened in by the Rhenish Railway Company. When it was continued into Belgium in , it became the world's first international railway line. The line inside Germany has a length of about 70 kilometres 43 mi. Separate tracks have been built parallel to the high-speed tracks for local S-Bahn traffic. In Belgium, the high-speed line is continued as HSL 3.
Plans for the construction of a railway between Cologne and the Belgian border began in December with the issue of concession to the Cologne Railway Committee, which was to develop a line under the direction of Cologne Lord Mayor Johann Adolph Steinberger and the entrepreneur Ludolf Camphausen.
(mh=A-X-pxia75ZI-KCc)0.jpg "Anal Girl Neuss")
Prussian king Frederick William III decided on 12 February that the line would run through Aachen and thus ended the railway dispute. In June , the Aachen and Cologne representatives agreed to the merger of the two committees of their cities and founded the Rhenish Railway Company Rheinische Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft , [ 4 ] which received a concession to build the line from Cologne to the Belgian border in Herbesthal.
Construction of the line began on 11 April But due to the difficult route, construction costs increased to 21 million marks. The additional costs of 12 million marks were raised by issuing additional shares worth 4. The Belgian government alone acquired bonds for 3 million marks. With the connection of the line from Belgium, a special train ran from Antwerp to Cologne on 15 October The Belgian railways were connected to the French railway network in , [ 10 ] so the Cologne-Aachen line handled traffic to and from France.
After the line on the Belgian side had been duplicated, the Rhenish Railway Company decided to duplicate the entire line in The passenger traffic was one of the largest in Prussia and the freight traffic was "the highest of all continental railways". Numerous factories were soon established along the line and coal mining was also important from the start. As a result of the opening of the line, the EBV's transport costs fell by two-thirds and contracts were also concluded with the Rhenish Railway Company for coal deliveries to supply its steam locomotives.
