Hilter) comes from 1460. With the beginning of industrialisation at the beginning of the 19th century coal mining steadily increased. The coal was taken by horse and cart from Borgloh to Osnabrück. The horse-drawn wagons could not cope with the increasing coal traffic. The construction of a railway like those being built in England was considered as a solution. Other municipalities near Borgloh also supported the construction of a railway. On 25 July 1878, the engineer Mackensen and the government architect Richard planned a railway line from Osnabrück to Brackwede, which would connect the villages of Borgloh, Rothenfelde and Oesede to the German railway network. The plans envisaged that the line would be built as a 750 mm gauge railway. This would have reduced the cost of the structures on the line. The disadvantage was that the freight would have had to be transhipped at the terminal stations, which is why the line was ultimately built to standard gauge. One problem that became clear during the planning was the differences in altitude in the Teutoburg forest. Because it was decided to avoid a tunnel for cost reasons, tight bends were required on a grade of 1:40 on this section. It was estimated that the construction of the railway line would cost 2.5 million marks. In a cost comparison it was calculated that the line would yield a surplus of 127,000 marks a year. The Prussian government rejected the project on 8 June 1879, as it was first focussing on the construction of main lines. The explanatory report continued to serve as a template for its possible construction. On 10 May 1880, a railway committee was founded in Bad Oeynhausen to campaign for the construction of a railway from Osnabrück to Brackwede. It basically adopted the route of the explanatory report, but the line would be able to be extended to Detmold and Bergheim. Eleven people were constantly involved with the railway committee, including Mayor Brüning of Osnabrück and Mayor Huber of Bielefeld. On the very day of the founding of the committee, it wrote a letter to the Royal Ministry of Public Works (Königliche Staatsministerium für öffentliche Arbeiten). In this letter, it again described the necessity of building the railway. The responsible railway administration now endorsed the project but demanded a grant of 10,000 marks per kilometre for the construction of the line. It was subsequently agreed that the payment