Former Signal Box Ws, Willich

You can see straight away where you are driving, namely on an old railway line.

Along the old railway line between Krefeld and Mönchengladbach

This is the former signal box Ws of Willich station.The Krefeld-Rheydt railway line is a largely disused railway line. It ran from Krefeld main station via Neersen and Mönchengladbach to the Rheydt freight station. (...) The sections that are still in operation are now single-track.Starting from Krefeld station on the left bank of the Lower Rhine, the Rhenish Railway Company (RhE) built its own line towards Mönchengladbach.
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On November 15, 1877, the line was opened along its entire length from Krefeld to Rheydt.
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Towards the end of the Second World War in 1944, the Wehrmacht blew up a railway bridge to slow down the military advance of the Western Allies. Since then, the line between Mönchengladbach-Neuwerk and Mönchengladbach main station could no longer be used. The connection was not restored after the end of the war; from then on, passenger trains only ran between Krefeld and Neuwerk.On May 22, 1982, passenger traffic on the line was completely stopped; the last line to be used was battery-powered railcars of the 515 series. In the following years, until May 28, 1994, freight trains carrying gravel ran from Krefeld to a depot on Süchtelner Strasse in Mönchengladbach. The connection to the main station and the connecting section from Süchtelner Strasse to the Eicken junction had already been dismantled at that time; the three bridges over Süchtelner Strasse and the bridge over Eickener Strasse were demolished in the second half of the 1980s. In 1997, the Krefeld–Mönchengladbach-Neuwerk section was closed.
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The railway line is now only in operation up to the Krefeld Stahlwerk junction and is used for local freight traffic. The rest of the original line is completely closed and partially dismantled. (...) Since 2011, further sections north of Neersen station have been dismantled in order to create a railway cycle path here. This has been completed since autumn 2012, so that the former Willich train station, which is now privately owned, can once again be viewed from the platform side. A section of track about 250 metres long still exists at Willich-Wekeln, Klein Kempen road northwards, as well as other longer sections north of the L 361 road and between the Neersen and Mönchengladbach-Neuwerk train stations. Source and link to the full article:de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bahnstrecke_Krefeld%E2%80%93Rheydt