Orphan tunnel
The Waisentunnel is an underground tunnel in the Berlin district of Mitte between the U8 and U5 lines that is only used for business trips .
course
The tunnel begins south of the Jannowitzbrücke underground station and ends in the turning system west of the Alexanderplatz underground station . The so-called " Klostertunnel " branches off from the Waisentunnel to the underground line U2 .
The length of the orphan tunnel is 865 meters. In the southern area there is a 120 meter long siding. The tunnel begins roughly at the junction between Märkisches Ufer and Brückenstraße, crosses under the Spree and then follows Littenstraße until it joins route E under Rathausstraße . The name of the tunnel is derived from the Waisenbrücke and Waisenstrasse, which the tunnel briefly touches on the northern bank of the Spree.
history
The AEG company pushed ahead with the planning for this underground line . She wanted to build a large profile line between Gesundbrunnen and Neukölln . The contract for the construction was signed with the city of Berlin in 1912. Completion was scheduled for 1918. Due to the First World War , the construction could not be completed profitably and AEG abandoned the construction project. Some sections had already been completed. The Spreetunnel had already been built and under Littenstrasse was the shell of a subway station with the planning name Stralauer Strasse .
When the city of Berlin resumed construction work on the route between Gesundbrunnen and Neukölln in 1926, the route in the central area was changed. The route now followed the Brückenstraße under the Jannowitzbrücke , then swiveled into Dircksenstraße and thus had better connections to the other lines at Alexanderplatz . The partially completed two-track tunnel of the AEG was built on as a single track and put into operation as a connecting track to the former line E at the beginning of the 1930s.
During the Second World War , the orphan tunnel in the area of the Stralauer Straße station was converted into an air raid shelter . This is 260 meters long and has a usable area of 1200 m².
The vehicles of type E III , which were used in the former eastern part of the city on line E ( today: U5 ), cannot drive through this connecting tunnel because of the car dimensions. This means that the vehicles still available from the AGU (Arbeitsgemeinschaft Berliner U-Bahn) cannot be used for special trips on the other large-profile routes.
Rehabilitation of the Spree underpass
The tunnel section under the Spree showed leaks from the start. A first attempt at renovation was made in 1930 by installing a thin inner shell in the tunnel. The ingress of water could not be completely eliminated.
After more and more cracks appeared at the beginning of 2017, the inner shell had to be temporarily supported. The track blocked as a result is already out of service due to the renovation work started in 2016 in the northern section of the tunnel. Subsequently, the tunnel ceiling is to be demolished in an approximately 200-meter-long section under the Spree and a new tunnel is to be created using prefabricated segments within the remaining tunnel. The prefabricated parts should be floated in and lowered under water.
The tunnel as part of an escape from East Berlin
On February 8, 1980 an interlocking foreman of the VEB Kombinat Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe , Dieter Wendt, fled with his wife and the family of his cousin through the orphan tunnel to West Berlin :
From the generally accessible Klosterstrasse underground station , they walked unnoticed through the Klostertunnel and the Waisentunnel to a bulkhead just before the tunnel in which the West Berlin trains on line 8 passed through the eastern part of the city without stopping. The bulkhead, which was supposed to protect the tunnels against any flooding of the Spree, had a chamber above (which now accommodated four people), but it was closed from the side of the tunnel on line 8.
Signalman Dieter Wendt now walked back the way and then through the streets of Berlin to the Jannowitzbrücke underground station , where he registered for necessary work on the route. He now freed his wife and his cousin's family from the tunnel on Line 8. Then he gave a red flashlight dimmed stop signal to the next subway train, for which he precaution also located near train stop was triggered.
The driver of the West Berlin subway, who had strict instructions to avoid any stop, not only stopped because of the red signals, but also hid the refugees in the driver's cab of his subway train: It was in the plan especially for this no guarantee in advance. However, he instructed the five people to lie on their stomachs in the narrow cabin, and in this way passed the border station of the Heinrich-Heine-Strasse subway unnoticed by the border guards and took them to West Berlin.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b BVG builds a tube within a tube. In: Der Tagesspiegel . April 18, 2017. Retrieved May 8, 2017 .
- ↑ Gerhard Sälters, Tina Schaller: Escape attempts through the S-Bahn and U-Bahn tunnels. In: Gerhard Sälters, Tina Schaller: Grenz- und Geisterbahnhöfe im divided Berlin , Ch. Links Verlag, Berlin 2014 (2nd edition), ISBN 978-3-86153-723-6 , pp. 104-106.
Coordinates: 52 ° 31 '2.5 " N , 13 ° 24' 50.7" E