Talk:Köln-Düsseldorfer

The famous KD steamer line operated on the Rhine River both with connecting steamers and tourist boats. The Lorelei rock was a famed outing.

The KD can trace its history back to 1853 when two earlier companies, the Preussisch-Rheinischen Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft (PRDG), the "Koln" company and the Dampfschiffahrtsgesellschaft fur den Nieder- und Mittelrhein (DGNM), the "Dusseldorf" company, merged at a time of intense competition and the in response to the loss of much of the freight and passenger traffic along the Rhine following the expansion of the railways along its banks.

Despite the merger, the two companies, which were established in 1826 and 1836 respectively, maintained semi-independent operations ordering their own vessels which were known as "Koln" or "Dusseldorf" boats. Although other companies operated vessels during this period, especially in the more northerly and southerly stretches of the river, the KD came to dominate and absorb the competitors, such as the Mulheim Company (MDAG), with the exception of the Dutch Steamboat Company (NSM/NSR), which traced its inception back to 1823, when steam was first intoduced for passenger and goods transport. The KD operated 38 paddlers at the outbreak of World War I and 20 at the outbreak of World War II and although the latter war in particular brought severe losses, it was still felt suitable to raise and rebuilt wrecked vessels for further service. The last survivor, Goethe, returned to service in heavily rebuilt form in 1952, and for the 1953 season, there ware 14 large paddlers on the roster. In 1969 this had been reduced to 6 although the shortfall in capacity had been made up by the introduction of similar sized motor vessels. After 1974, with the withdrawal of Cecilie and Bismarck, three paddlers remained, all of which survive. Goethe remains the only vessel now serving with the KD and has been the last example of paddle propulsion

The former KD Rhein paddler Mainz serves as a floating industrial museum on the River Neckar at Mannheim near the Kurpfalzbrucke. Built in 1929 and operational until 1980, she was disposed of from the KD reserve fleet in 1984 and opened in her new use in 1986. Her machinery remains intact

PS Goethe Built at Cologne in 1913 by Sachsenberg at Koln-Deutz Length : 83 metres - 272 feet (extended from 77.8 m after 1951-2 rebuild) Engines : Compound Diagonal, built by Sachsenberg at Rosslau —Preceding unsigned comment added by Sfsorrow2 (talk • contribs) 05:18, 1 August 2008 (UTC)

Goethe
The paddler Goethe has been reengined in 2009 with Diesel-Engines, see de:wiki. -- 95.88.48.82 (talk) 14:02, 1 April 2010 (UTC)

1911 Britannica

The introduction of steam has greatly increased the shipping on the Rhine; and small steamers ply also on the Main, the Neckar, the Maas and the Mosel. The first Rhine steamer was launched in 1817; and now the river is regularly traversed by upwards of a hundred, from the small tug up to the passenger saloon-steamer. The steamboat traffic has especially encouraged the influx of tourists, and the number of passing travellers may now be reckoned as between one and two millions annually. The river is navigable without interruption from Basel to its mouth, a distance of 550 miles, of which 450 lie within Germany. Above Spires, however, the river craft are comparatively small, but lower down vessels of 500 and 600 tons burden find no difficulty in plying. Between Basel and Strassburg the depth of water is sometimes not more than 3 ft.; between Strassburg and Mainz it varies from 5 to 25 ft.; while below Mainz it is never less than 9 or 10 ft. The deepest point is opposite the Lorelei (Lurlei) Rock near St Goar, where it is 75 ft. in depth; at Düsseldorf the depth is about 50 ft.

London, Hamburg, Bremen and the chief Baltic ports as far as Riga and St Petersburg participate in the traffic on the Rhine. The boats which ply up and down the river itself, without venturing upon the open sea, are mostly craft of 100 to 200 tons, owned in the great majority of cases by their captains, men principally of German or Dutch nationality. This fleet is computed to number some 8500 craft, with an aggregate capacity of over 2 million tons, of which about one-tenth are steamships. The traffic at the chief German ports of the river aggregated 4,489,000 tons in 1870, but by 1900 this had grown to a total of 17,000,000 tons, thus distributed: Ruhrort, 6,512,000 tons; Duisburg, 3,000,000 tons; Cologne, 1,422,000 tons; and Mannheim, 6,021,000 tons. These are not the only ports on the river; a large trade is also done at Kehl, Maxau (for Karlsruhe), Ludwigshafen, Mainz, Bonn, Rotterdam and a host of smaller places. The amount of traffic which passed the town of Emmerich near the Dutch frontier, both ways, increased from an annual average of about 6 million tons in 1881-85 to over 21½ million tons in 1899. Notwithstanding the inherent difficulties of construction caused by the great variations in the level of the stream, amounting sometimes to 20 ft. or more, the chief ports of the Rhine are admirably constructed, and well equipped with modern contrivances for loading and unloading vessels. Boats carrying as much as 600 tons are often able to proceed as far up stream as Strassburg, and smaller craft get as far as Hüningen, a little above Basel. Large passenger boats ply regularly between Mainz and Düsseldorf, and sometimes extend their journeys as high up as Mannheim, and as far in the other direction as Rotterdam. The efforts of the river authorities are being directed to the deepening and improvement of the navigable channel from the sea to Strassburg, the low-water depths aimed at being 10 ft. from Rotterdam to the German frontier, and 10 ft. thence to Cologne; 8 ft. 3 in. from Cologne to St Goar, and 6 ft. 6 in. from St Goar to Mannheim. At present the Rhine in Holland has a depth of about 9 ft. and a width of 1200 to 1300 ft., though the Merwede branch exceeds this depth by 8 in. Altogether a sum approaching £2,500,000 was spent in Holland within the latter part of the 19th century on the improvement of the Rhine and its principal arteries. Above Mannheim the depth of the stream is always less than 5 ft., and generally varies between that figure and 4 ft. 6 in. The difficulty of ascending the rapids near Bingen is usually surmounted by the help of steam hauling machinery placed on the bank, though powerful tugs have also come into use for this purpose. The work of blasting out the rocks which at that spot projected in the bed of the river, begun in 1830, was continued down to the year 1887, so that now there are two navigable channels of sufficient depth for all vessels which ply up and down that part of the stream. One of the most interesting features of the Rhine navigation is afforded by the huge rafts of timber that are floated down the river. Single tree trunks sent down to the Rhine by the various tributaries are united into small rafts as they reach the main stream; and these again are fastened together to form one large raft about Andernach. Though not so large as formerly, these timber rafts are still sometimes 400 or 500 ft. in length, and are navigated by 200 to 400 men, who live in little huts on the raft, forming actual floating villages. On reaching Dort the rafts are broken up and sold, a single raft sometimes producing as much as £30,000. The voyage from Bingen to Dort takes from one to six weeks, and the huge unwieldy structures require to be navigated with great care. The commerce carried on by the river itself is supplemented by the numerous railways, which skirt its banks and converge to its principal towns. Before the introduction of railways there were no permanent bridges across the Rhine below Basel; but now trains cross it at about a dozen different points in Germany and Holland. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 174.7.23.169 (talk) 19:27, 13 January 2011 (UTC)