Electric trackless railway Ahrweiler
| Electric trackless railway Ahrweiler | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Route length: | 5.5 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Power system : | 550 volts = | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Top speed: | 22 km / h | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The electric trackless Ahrweiler railway operated from 1906 to 1917 within what is now the city of Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler . It connected the core town of Ahrweiler with the Walporzheim district in the southwest and with the Neuenahr districts of Hemmessen and Wadenheim in the east. The operating company was the Electric Trackless Railway Ahrweiler GmbH of the same name .
history
The railway connection ( Ahr Valley Railway ), which had been in existence since 1880, no longer met the growing need for transport between the district town of Ahrweiler and the spa town of Neuenahr (since 1927 "Bad"), which is only about three kilometers away. Instead of introducing an expensive tram , in 1904 the Saxon Society for Trackless Railways Max Schiemann & Co. was commissioned to build an electric bus line based on their Schiemann system . The means of transport, then still called trackless railway , was a forerunner of today's trolleybuses .
In December 1905 the city of Ahrweiler founded the Elektro Gleislose Bahn Ahrweiler GmbH with a share capital of 140,000 Reichsmarks. On May 23, 1906, operations were opened on a 5.5-kilometer route. It led from Neuenahr train station to Ahrweiler with stops at the train station, at the Niedertor and at the market. The terminus was in the Walporzheim district, where the car shed was also located at the train station .
The journey time was 29 minutes at a top speed of 22 km / h - in the local area of 10 km / h. The three motor vehicles were supplied with a voltage of 550 volts by an overhead line. They were able to take one of the two existing trailers with them, the number of which was increased by another in 1909. Normal operation took place over a season of seven months, as there was only school traffic in winter. Initially, the twelve stops were served every 40 minutes from 5:50 a.m. to 10:00 p.m., but then, due to the good demand, they switched to every half hour. In the first year of operation, 88,000 passengers could be carried, in further peace years up to 130,000 passengers. The fare was 30 pfennigs.
The beginning of the First World War led to a severe reduction in the number of timetables due to the lack of staff. While in 1915 it was still possible to drive every hour, in 1916 only the church wagons for church services ran on Sundays. On April 1, 1917 operations had to be stopped. The state authorities then demanded the dismantling of the catenary , the copper of which, with a total weight of 5.8 tons, was needed as a raw material essential to the war effort. This made it so difficult to resume operations after the war that the company - also in view of the general economic crisis - dissolved as early as 1919.
literature
- Raymond Dhur : The development of urban traffic in Bad Neuenahr-Ahrweiler, in the magazine "Stadtverkehr", year 1980, issue 5/6.
- Heinz Schönewald: The history of the Ahr Valley Railway, Eifel-Verlag, Jünkerath 2016
Web links
- Description of the track on the website of the Heimatverein “Alt-Ahrweiler” e. V.
- Ludger Kenning: Documentation of the Gleislose Bahn Ahrweiler on www.drehscheibe-online.de
- Günther Schmitt: Public transport without rails - the war slowed down the trackless. In: General-Anzeiger (Bonn). December 23, 2016.