Hamburg-Altona depot

Coordinates: 53 ° 33 ′ 41.1 ″  N , 9 ° 56 ′ 3.7 ″  E

Altona railway water tower on the site of the former depot

The Hamburg-Altona railway depot (abbreviated: Bw Hmb-Altona ) existed from 1895 to 1982 and was located in the Hamburg-Altona-Nord district . It was west of the Harkortstraße (formerly Rainweg) and directly adjoining the southern terminal station Hamburg-Altona .

The depot was built from 1890 by the Prussian State Railways or their Royal Prussian Railway Directorate Altona (from 1922 RBD Altona - Reichsbahndirektion ) during the renovation of the station facilities in the then independent city of Altona / Elbe . After the city of Altona became part of the State of Hamburg through the Greater Hamburg Act in 1937 , the name changed to RBD Hamburg . This went on in 1949 in the Hamburg Federal Railway Directorate.

prehistory

The later Bw Hamburg-Altona emerged from the expansion and relocation of the Altona terminus of the Altona-Kieler Eisenbahn from 1890. In 1844 the terminus of a line via Neumünster to Kiel near the banks of the Elbe was built in the then Danish town of Altona. The associated railway depot, in which the steam locomotives were serviced and equipped with operating materials, was to the north of it, roughly at the height of today's Altona Theater . It was generously dimensioned for the times and quickly became very popular. Since the town of Altona to the east and Ottensen to the west grew strongly at that time, the Bw, which was initially built on meadows and pastures, was quickly surrounded by residential and industrial buildings and could no longer be enlarged.

With the end of the German-Danish War in 1864, the city of Altona and the duchies of Schleswig , Holstein and Lauenburg were initially jointly administered by the two victorious powers Prussia and Austria ; In 1866 they became part of the Kingdom of Prussia. The construction of the connecting line (1866), which connected the stations of the city of Hamburg with the line to Kiel , and the construction of the branch line to Blankenese (today part of the S-Bahn line S1) in 1867 brought more traffic to the station on the Palmaille . At the beginning of the 1880s, the Prussian railways were nationalized; the administration of Altona and the surrounding routes was taken over by the Royal Prussian Railway Directorate Altona , founded in 1884 . From 1890, plans were made to relocate and enlarge the station. They planned to relocate the station about 500 meters north to its current location. At the same time, the existing freight facilities were to be significantly expanded and a new depot built.

In the course of this planning, the connecting railway was moved from street level to a railway embankment , in the Altona area the route along the customs border between Altona and Ottensen was abandoned and Herderstraße, now Haubachstraße, was created there. The new railway line led a little further north, crossed the line to Kiel and led in a wide arc to the new station building in Altona . The extensive route was possible because there was no urban development at this point and meadows and fields determined the softness. The Altona freight yard was built in the area east of the line to Kiel ; the new Altona depot was built in the western area up to the arch of the connecting line. With the opening in 1895, the original facilities of the station and the Bw were shut down. The abandoned area was used, together with the strip of land previously occupied by railroad tracks, for the creation of a representative park with representative peripheral development; the former reception building was converted into a town hall for Altona.

The Altona depot from 1895

From the opening in 1895 on, Hamburg-Altona was one of the largest railway depots in the German Empire . It was equipped with a 57-permanent double roundhouse (23 plus 34 seats) with two 16.50-meter turntables, which was built directly on the arch of the connecting railway. There were also several small rectangular engine sheds. In 1899 the Prussian parliament ratified plans to create a central Hamburg train station , which went into operation in 1906. Since there was not enough space there for the creation of a separate depot for the long-distance train locomotives, the Altona depot also took over the supply of these locomotives. A 12-meter turntable, which distributed short machines for on-site operation to a four-position locomotive shed, was located in the triangle of the suburban railway to Blankenese and the connecting railway. When electric suburban traffic began in 1908, the sheds, windows and treatment facilities became superfluous and torn down. A fourth turntable was located in the central station apron, between the large roundhouse in the west and the local freight facility in the east. It originated from the time of the Altona-Kiel Railway, supplied a 16-hour roundhouse, in which locomotives for the shunting service and the port railway were stationed, and had to give way to the expansion of the freight halls at the end of the 1920s. The coaling of the locomotives was initially done by hand, as was common at the time: In the coal bunker, wicker baskets were filled with coal, which workers carried to the locomotives and poured into the tenders from a 1.10 m high platform next to the supply track. The removal of the slag and the emptying of the smoke chamber were also purely manual work. These materials also had to be removed from the track area and transported away by freight wagons. This, too, was originally done entirely by hand.

The first major technical improvements were made around 1911. The main focus was on accelerating the treatment of the locomotive, i.e. the coaling and sanding as well as the removal of the slag. For this purpose, for the first time in German depots, the experience from American depots for large locomotives, in particular the systems of the McKees Rocks depot of the Pittsburgh and Lake Erie Railroad , was used and mechanically instead of the ground-level, manually operated coaling and purification systems loaded high bunkers and loading facilities for slag disposal in the freight wagons. This construction method proved itself and was subsequently introduced in most of the large depots of the Reichsbahn until the beginning of the Second World War. Around 1924, however, the purification systems were rebuilt again; Two pits were created into which the slag was emptied and extinguished with water. If necessary, the pit was emptied into freight wagons provided with a mobile gantry crane.

The Altona depot was initially home to the Prussian G 3 , Prussian G 4.2 and Prussian T 3 , after 1920 the BR 04 on an experimental basis . For the long-distance express train FD 25/26, the Bw with BR 05 .

Two special features should be mentioned: On the one hand, due to the location of the depot in the Hamburg Altona terminus station, the tender locomotives were usually driven backwards into and out of the depot: The position of the platform tracks did not allow any other direction of travel, as steam locomotives with tenders only travel at high speeds forwards reached before their trains. On the other hand, contrary to the usual order, the machines were first purged and only then freshly charred before the machines were switched off. Slag pulling, i.e. the removal of the ash and combustion residue from the boiler and smoke chamber, went hand in hand with the removal of the main fire that was needed to power the machines. Instead, only a quiet fire was set up in the boiler, which was also operated in the shed when it was shut down and prevented the machine from cooling down completely and requiring an excessive amount of time to heat up before the next use. That is why the slag drawing was normally carried out as the last work step before putting it down. It is not known why this was done differently in Altona.

After the transition of the former regional railways to the German Reich on April 30, 1920 and the enactment of the Greater Hamburg Act on April 1, 1937, the BW Altona was assigned to the Reichsbahndirektion Hamburg .

The double turntable

Another structural feature was the double turntable, which was only available in this form in Germany in Hamburg-Altona.

In the early days of the railways, locomotives were relatively short and could be turned on turntables powered by muscle power. With the introduction of standardized machines, the locomotives also became more powerful - and longer. So the turntables also had to grow. The first length standardization for turntables of the Prussian State Railways is known from 1889: With the introduction of the S 1 series , the required turntable length was set at 14.07 m. As early as 1892, when the S 3 series was introduced , the standard was expanded to 16.14 m; In 1895, when the Altona depot was opened, the standard was 16.50 m.

The later double turntable consisted of two such turntables in 1895, which supplied the almost completely enclosed roundhouse. Since the locomotives continued to grow in length and Altona, as an express train depot, also had to be able to turn long express train locomotives, an extension of the turntables was imperative. After the main station went into operation and the associated increase in the number of locomotives to be supplied in Altona, a conversion could no longer be avoided. In 1907 the western turntable was therefore extended to 18.20 m stage length, the eastern one to the standard of 20 m that has been in effect since 1906. The different lengths avoided the need to merge both pits, because since the round locomotive shed encompassed both turntables and the structural conditions - the railway embankment in the north and west, the main line and the local goods facility in the east, the city that has grown around the railway facilities - none If the shed was to be changed, the centers of the turntables had to be retained. With the further increase in the length of the locomotives and the stationing of high-quality express locomotives in Altona, this solution had to be abandoned in 1927: Both platforms were lengthened to 23 meters and the pits had to overlap in the middle. The turntables remained in this form until the stages were demolished around the year 2000.

A changeover circuit ensured that only one of the two platforms could ever be moved in order to avoid a collision. The danger of locomotives rolling into the pit, however, could not be avoided and became a reality several times. If a crane was then required to recover the crashed machine, one had to be brought in from the Oldenburg depot several hours away, as there was no own crane in Altona and the surrounding area. In the meantime, access to the large locomotive shed was blocked for arriving and departing locomotives. Often it was enough to pull the damaged ship out of the pit with one or two of the shunting locomotives also stationed in Altona.

Express railcar use

With the introduction of express railcars , initially between Hamburg and Berlin, maintenance options for the diesel railcars became necessary. In 1931/32 this led to the construction of a workshop with inspection pits and a large portal crane so that the heavy diesel engines, which were then mounted directly in the bogies, could be installed and removed. The hall, like its successor buildings erected after the Second World War, was located west of the steam locomotive treatment tracks and east of the main track to Kiel, approximately at the level of the track triangle with the junction to Blankenese. The SVT 877 railcar, known as the “Fliegender Hamburger”, was serviced here from 1932, and from 1939 it was based here. Another express railcar, the SVT 137 228, had already made its home here in 1935; further railcars for connections to Dresden, Frankfurt and Berlin followed. When the war broke out, however, these services were discontinued and the railcars were parked in safe places or used for trips by the Wehrmacht.

Effects of World War II

During the air raids on Hamburg in World War II , the building was only slightly damaged. However, the two water towers were hit; the eastern of the two towers, erected in 1893, was temporarily repaired as a makeshift water tower with a wooden structure, the western one from 1895 could be made operational again with little effort. Both towers stood between the large round shed and the arch to the connecting railway, were in use until the new water tower was commissioned in 1955 and were then demolished. The railcar shed was completely destroyed in 1943.

After the Second World War

Altona had built two long railcar halls with three or two hall tracks in addition to the new water tower when the Bw was modernized between 1952 and 1956. Also in 1956 a large diesel filling station was set up at the northern foot of the water tower; the associated tank systems were built in the Gleisdreieck of the S-Bahn to Blankenese. While these fuel tanks were dismantled around 1974, the diesel filling station still exists in June 2018 in a significantly reduced size. Here, in particular, trains that are temporarily parked on the march line are supplied.

In 1953 the first long-distance multiple units VT 08.5 moved in . They were used in ferry traffic on the Vogelfluglinie from 1963 . The articulated trains of the DB class VT 10.5 were based in Altona. In 1975 the TEE series  601 and 602 multiple units were brought together here. In 1981 they left Altona because their time had run out due to the introduction of two-class Intercity .

For steam locomotives, the schedule of the Hamburg-Altona depot provided for high-quality train coverings, so the 39 series 03 machines that were based here from 1962 initially drove to Bebra and Göttingen . With the electrification of the Hanover – Hamburg railway line and the line to Osnabrück shortly afterwards, which was carried out in 1965 , the Altona depot's steam locomotive operation lost the two most important routes to the south and south-west. Until 1972 there was still a steam locomotive service with the DR class 01.10 in front of express and express trains on the march railway to Westerland .

Shutdown

After the Hamburg-Altona depot was dissolved on December 31, 1982, the Hamburg-Eidelstedt depot took over its function. Until 1991, the systems were still used to park locomotives.

As early as 1982, 90 years after its construction, the double-ring locomotive shed had to be demolished to re-route the S-Bahn tracks . The vacant railcar hangars on the southwestern edge of the depot were removed in 2015. The railway water tower built in 1954/55 is protected as an industrial monument and will be preserved even after the railway facilities have been demolished. 15 other buildings and facilities of the former railway depot and the former local goods facility adjacent to the east , especially on the parallel Harkortstrasse (historical name "Rainweg") are listed. Until 1991, the sidings of the demolished roundhouse were used to park locomotives; then the double turntable was taken out of service. The revolving platforms were removed around 2000 and the associated revolving pits leveled at the beginning of 2016. The diesel filling station north of the water tower is still in operation today (2020) and supplies the local trains of the Marschbahn to the North Sea coast , which are parked here on a switch . As part of the Neue Mitte Altona project, the site is intended to be developed with residential and small-scale buildings, as they were already in operation on the site of the former Altona freight station .

literature

• Wolfgang Klee: Railways in Hamburg (= Eisenbahn Journal special. 5/97). 1997, ISBN 3-89610-020-3 , pp. 40-53.
• Benno Wesmüller, Joachim Lawrenz: Always up to date. The Hamburg-Altona depot. In: Bahnbetriebswerke. Lane EXTRA 6/2002, ISSN  0937-7174 , pp. 48-57.
• City district archive Ottensen: Attention! Train departs. Railway history in Altona and Ottensen. Hamburg 2014, ISBN 978-3-9808925-6-8 .
• Martin Weltner: Bahnbetriebswerke - history, technology, track plans. Geramond Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7654-7278-7 , pp. 42-51.

Web links

• Portrait of the Hamburg-Altona depot at bahnbetriebswerke.de
• Track plan of the freight yard and depot before 1910 (north = right, at the bottom the freight shipping shed from 1890, above the receiving shed from 1895)
• Track plan of the Altona station from 1967 (north = above, on the left the passenger station and the railway depot tracks, on the upper right the freight station tracks and loading facilities, the curve to the right leads to the connecting railway or Hamburg main station)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ See map Altona 1894th
2. ↑ All standard lengths of turntables and their definition according to Martin Weltner: Bahnbetriebswerke - history, technology, track plans. Geramond Verlag, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-7654-7278-7 , pp. 34-37.
3. ↑ Image: mobablog - Model replica of the former railcar hangar
4. ↑ Frank Muth: Versatile end point Altona . In: railway magazine . No. 2 , 2015, ISSN  0342-1902 , p. 41 .
5. ↑ Hamburg-Altona Monument List , ID 38881 and others.