Prince William Railway Company
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The Prince William Railway Company (German: Prinz-Wilhelm-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft, PWE) was an early horse-drawn railway in Germany. It was founded as the Deil Valley Railway Company (Deilthaler Eisenbahn Aktiengesellschaft) in 1828 and renamed in 1831. It built a 820 mm (2 ft 8+9⁄32 in) narrow gauge line that ran for a Prussian mile (7,532 metres or 8,237 yards) along the Deilbach valley from a point near Kupferdreh Old Station in Hinsbeck, a suburb of Kupferdreh (now part of Essen), to Nierenhof near Langenberg (now part of Velbert). This route is now part of the Wuppertal-Vohwinkel–Essen-Überruhr railway and served by Rhine-Ruhr S-Bahn line S9 trains.
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On 20 September 1831 the railway was opened by Prince William, the brother of the King of Prussia at the time, and renamed in honour of the prince. It operated as a horse-drawn railway carrying coal until 1844, but from 1833 it also carried passengers. In 1847, it was converted to 1,435 mm (4 ft 8+1⁄2 in) standard gauge, extended north to Steele Süd and south to Vohwinkel (in Wuppertal), converted to steam operation and renamed the Steele-Vohwinkler Eisenbahn.