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Constituent railways

Köping–Hults Järnväg (KHJ)

The railway between Köping and Örebro over Frövi is the result of one of the first plans for a Swedish railway network. In 1845, Adolf Eugène von Rosen, a Swede who had made a fortune in railway stocks at the London Stock Exchange, was given a permission to build railways from Gävle via Stockholm and Södermanland to Gothenburg and Ystad on the condition that the detailed plans had to be finished by 1847. The project failed after von Rosen had lost most of his capital in a bubble burst in 1846, but he continued to make plans with the help of British financers. Together with John Rennie he proposed a railway from Stockholm to Gothenburg over Uppsala, Västerås, Köping and Örebro. The main benefit of the new route was that the central part could be built first, to connect with steamers on the lakes of Mälaren and Vänern. The suggested endpoint at lake Vänern was at Hult, possibly because an early proponent of the railway owned industries in nearby Bäckhammar.

The "Royal Swedish company for a railway between Köping and Hult" was formed in 1852 and was granted economical support from the state, provided the railway was completed before 1855. Most of the capital was nevertheless British, as were six of the twelve members of the board of directors, which included the swindler John Sadleir.

A certain Georg Burke was contracted to oversee the construction, which was to begin in 1852, but he made small efforts to start the work and rarely visited Sweden. He often failed to pay his employees, so that the railway company had to do so instead, and in March 1854 he declared that he would only pay if the company allowed him to slow down the work, which was seriously delayed already. The contract was cancelled later that year. Some months later the British financers stopped sending money to Sweden; what they did send was engineers, sometimes of questionable competence, whose salaries had to be paid by the Swedish board members. Sadleir, who had been selling forged shares in the railway, finally committed suicide on 17 February 1856 and left the company in complete disarray.

Despite the problems, regular traffic started from Örebro to Dylta on 5 June 1856 and from Dylta to Arboga on 26 August 1857. By then, the Swedish State Railways were building their own line between Stockholm and Gothenburg under directions from Nils Ericson, who wanted a more direct route via Katrineholm and Hallsberg; it was clear that KHJ would never be part of this line, although the company attempted twice to sell their railway to the Swedish government. The railway from Örebro to Hult was no longer needed, as various state-owned lines were serving the same area, but a local railway was later built along parts of the proposed route. The financial resources were now exhausted, and the line from Arboga to Köping had to be built by a nominally separate company, although it was operated by and later merged into KHJ. Stockholm–Västerås–Bergslagens Järnväg (SWB) opened between Köping and Västerås in 1875, and the two companies started cooperating closely. Stockholm was reached the year after. However, KHJ continued to have financial problems until taken over by TGO.

Frövi–Ludvika Järnväg (FLJ)

A connecting railway from Frövi to Lindesberg was suggested already in 1853, and Claes Adelsköld surveyed a route from Frövi to Ludvika in the late 1850s. The area had rich natural resources, most notably iron, but all freight had to be carried by road to either Frövi or Strömsholm Canal. There had been various projects for canals or horse-drawn railways from Lindesberg, and the opening of KHJ had spurred improvements on the road leading to Frövi, but a railway would allow the iron to be taken directly to the harbour in Arboga. Several attempts were made to secure a loan from the state to help the project, with the remaining part funded by British interests, but the results were not encouraging: the government always recommended against such a loan, and King Charles XV warned the railway proponents to "beware of the Englishmen".

In 1869 two employees at the British Embassy in Stockholm applied to build a railway from Frövi to Ludvika without financial support from the state, and permission was finally given, but only after they had promised to extend the line to Falun once it had started to make a profit. The permit was soon made over to a British-registered company, The Swedish Central Railway Co., Ltd. Construction of the railway was contracted to the firm of Wythes & Longridge and began at midsummer 1870. The company made itself unpopular by demanding to get land, wood products and ballast free of charge from the landowners and municipalities along the line, as well as royalty payments on all iron shipped from the area during the next ten years. Relations with the workers were also tense, leading to a strike and some violence. The first section of the line was opened in November 1871 and the last one in September 1873. The alignment was "unfavourable", with many curves and gradients to avoid cuttings.

In 1871 the Swedish Central Railway applied to build the promised extension to Falun, but the application was denied. Another company, Bergslagernas Järnvägar (BJ), had received permission to build a railway from Gothenburg to Falun, including a section parallel with the Swedish Central Railway from Ställdalen to Ludvika and an onward line from Ludvika to Falun. Attempts at cooperation between the companies failed, possibly because their respective owners were competing with each other in several fields of business. The railway was renamed to Frövi–Ludvika Järnväg in 1875. It suffered economical problems in the 1870s, but the situation improved in the 1880s.

Oxelösund–Flen–Västmanlands Järnväg (OFWJ)

A railway from lake Mälaren to Oxelösund was suggested several times in the 1860s, but there were doubts about its economical viability. The line would connect Eskilstuna and Nyköping to the Western Mainline at Flen, while also enabling exports from Bergslagen over Oxelösund, where it was possible to create a good harbour. Some plans were for a narrow-gauge railway, to keep the cost down, but interest from German and British financers meant that the plans changed to standard gauge. The line had two branches, separating at Rekarne north of Eskilstuna: one to Valskog station on KHJ, the other to Kolbäck on the SWB line between Västerås and Köping. Both OFWJ and SWB wanted to build a line from Kolbäck to Ramnäs station on another branch of SWB; OFWJ hoped that the traffic from industries in Surahammar and Hallstahammar would be routed over Oxelösund, but SWB won that struggle.

The company was formed in December 1872. The towns and municipalities along the route were very interested in the project, but most of the shares were bought by British financers also involved in the Swedish Central Railway. Both the railway and the harbour at Oxelösund were inaugurated in 1877, and a first test shipment of iron ore via Oxelösund was made the year after. The main export during the first years was however wood products, as it was too difficult to transport iron on the small sailing ships that visited the harbour, and regular steamship routes had not been established yet. Despite this, OFWJ was seen as a potentially very useful route for iron, particularly to Germany, and the Köln-Mindener Eisenbahn approached the company to suggest cooperation in transporting iron from Sweden to Germany and coal in the opposite direction.

OFWJ was badly hit by the economical problems in the late 1870s and early 1880s. The company had large loans from creditors represented by Stockholms Handelsbank and Skandinaviska kreditaktiebolaget, who were worried that they would loose the capital and decided to take control over the railway. Bankruptcy was believed by be imminent, and shares nominally worth 100 Swedish crowns were valued at only 50 öre. To save the company the owners promised to work to increase the iron ore transports via Oxelösund, an event that would eventually lead to the formation of Trafikaktiebolaget Grängesberg–Oxelösund. In 1884 KHJ agreed that freight wagons from FLJ and OFWJ could run over all three railways without transshipment, and traffic increased drastically, so that the iron had to be transported in separate trains on OFWJ from 1887 rather than in the ordinary freight trains.

Minor railways

A number of short side lines to mines and industries in Bergslagen were built by separate companies but operated by FLJ and later TGOJ. Storå–Guldsmedshyttans Järnväg was built in 1873, electrified in 1961 and lifted in 1992; the industry at Guldsmedshyttan owned a number of freight wagons, which were registered with TGOJ. Bånghammar–Klotens Järnväg, opened in 1875 and closed in 1934, also had some rolling stock of its own, including the first bogie carriages in Sweden. A line from Silverhöjden to Högfors was opened in 1903 and extended to Mossgruvan in 1919. Much of the track was lifted in 1936 but replaced in 1949 and electrified in 1956; the last part was lifted for the second time in 1987. The last of these railways, Storå–Stråssa Järnväg, was opened in 1915 and nominally closed in 1935, but traffic continued and the line was electrified in 1959.

A one-kilometre track between Skogstorp station on OFWJ and lake Hjälmaren was nominally also a separate company. The state-owned line from Eskilstuna to Nybybruk was operated by TGOJ from 1936 and purchased in 1968.

References

Category:Defunct railway companies of Sweden