Frankfurt-Offenbach Tramway Company

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Around 1890: A FOTG car on Mathildenplatz in Offenbach

The Frankfurt-Offenbacher Trambahn-Gesellschaft , abbreviated FOTG , was a transport company founded in 1882 and at the same time a former municipal energy supplier . From 1884 it operated one of the first electric trams in Germany .

history

There have been various attempts to set up a railway line for local traffic between the two cities . In 1872 the concession for a steam tram was refused because steam and dust had devalued the streets it traveled through.

On June 12, 1882, an Offenbach consortium , consisting of the Kommerzienrat Weintraut, the banker Weymann and the Merzbach bank, put the authorities in Offenbach and Frankfurt in charge of the elaboration of the project “an electric tram between the terminus Deutschherrn-Quai next to the Alte Brücke and the Mathildenplatz in Offenbach ”. This was preceded by coordination with Siemens & Halske , which should technically implement this project.

On October 20, 1883, the two cities granted the chairman of the consortium, the “Kaufmann GRA Weymann in Offenbach”, a 25-year concession to operate an electric tram on the route applied for. The Frankfurt-Offenbacher Trambahn-Gesellschaft was founded to support the company , and construction began in the same year. The first section between the Old Bridge in Sachsenhausen and Buchrainplatz in Oberrad was opened on February 18, 1884 as a meter- gauge narrow - gauge railway. The continuation to Offenbach's Mathildenplatz followed on April 10 of the same year. This reached the total length of 6.7 kilometers.

On January 13, 1905 was line adopted by the cities of Frankfurt and Offenbach and gradually to the in Frankfurt tram usual standard gauge umgespurt . This enabled tram line 16 to be extended from the local train station to Offenbach. On October 28, 1906, the tram popularly known as Knochemiehl ( bone mill ) drove for the last time.

Railway technology

The FOTG route was the fourth electric tram system in the world. The technology of the drive with an electric motor and external power supply was still at the beginning of its development. In contrast to most of today's electric rail vehicles, the overhead contact line was bipolar like the overhead line bus . The overhead line at that time was not yet a contact wire and the pantograph was not yet pressed on from below; The first pantographs in lyre and rod form did not appear until 1887 and 1889. Instead, the catenary system in 1883 opened was mödling and hinterbrühl tram in Vienna used. It consisted of two copper pipes with a small diameter and a slot on the underside, the so-called slotted pipe contact line . In this two contact carts ran , which were pulled by the railcars . At the FOTG, the slotted pipe contact line was suspended at a height of five meters. Air turnouts coupled with the track turnouts were used at the passing points .

The current was not fed back via the wheels and the tracks , as it is today , but via the second overhead line. So that the wheels of the railcar could not conduct electricity , they were made of wood and were held together by a steel wheel tire . Direct current with a voltage of 300 volts was used as the driving current .

  • Contact trolley at one of the poles of the slotted pipe contact line

  • Switch of a slotted pipeline in the Frankfurt Transport Museum

  • Connection of the railcar with the two poles of the slotted pipe contact line

route

The route in the FOTG timetable valid from June 21, 1885

The single-track line had three switches at the Deutschherrnmühle in Sachsenhausen, at the Schöne Aussicht in Oberrad and at the Löwenruhe in Offenbach. It began at the southern end of the Old Bridge, which was the most important traffic connection between Frankfurt and Sachsenhausen at the time, and led on the Deutschherrn-Quai to the Obermainbrücke . There was a connection to the Frankfurt tram. After passing the new slaughterhouse, the line crossed the tracks of the Frankfurt-Offenbach local railway at the same level . Then the viaduct of the Hanau – Frankfurt line of the Bebra Railway was passed. Via Offenbacher Landstrasse and the Mühlberg, it went through Sachsenhauser Ostend to Oberrad to the Offenbach city limits.

In Offenbach am Main, the line ran on Frankfurter Strasse from Dreieich-Park via the Ludwigstrasse stations, past the German Leather Museum , Luisenstrasse and Kaiserstrasse into Offenbach city center. After the Musikhaus André , the stations at Herrnstrasse and Marktplatz followed, and via Wilhelmsplatz the train reached the Mathildenplatz terminus at the “Alten Friedhof” in Offenbach's Ostend. The later planned continuation to Bürgel and Rumpenheim was prevented by the poor economic situation of the FOTG.

business

Due to the not yet fully developed technology, breakdowns often occurred while driving. The contact boats often fell out of the copper pipes and had to be laboriously reinserted by hand. For this purpose, each railcar carried a ladder so that the boats could be attached again. The track systems and the drive were not yet fully developed either. A half-hour break in operation had to be taken every day between 11 a.m. and 12 p.m. in order to be able to lubricate the vehicles with car grease.

The train ran between 6:00 a.m. and 10:40 p.m. The journey time was 25 minutes. The fare for the entire route was 20 pfennigs on weekdays and 25 pfennigs on Sundays  , sections of the route cost ten and 15 pfennigs. One million passengers were counted in the first year .

Resources

power plant

At Buchrainplatz in Oberrad, a small depot was built on the company premises with a workshop, company office and all other company buildings. This included the railway's own coal-fired power station to generate electricity for the route.

vehicles

The FOTG vehicle fleet consisted of ten railcars and seven sidecars . They were created by the Cologne company Herbrand & Cie. Siemens & Halske supplied the electrical equipment. The trains reached a speed of about 20 kilometers per hour. The railcars had an electric motor with an output of eleven kilowatts, weighed 3.9 tons and had a total of 24 seats and standing places. The sidecars weighed between 2.0 and 2.2 tons and had space for between 24 and 27 people to sit or stand. The seats were arranged on longitudinal benches. The engine was built into the chassis and drove the wheels by means of gear wheels . The gear drive and the lack of suspension led to uneven running characteristics.

Railcar number 8 and sidecar number 13 were preserved as museum vehicles, while the remaining vehicles were scrapped or converted into sidecars for the city ​​tram . The railcar 8 is today the world's oldest surviving tram railcar. The two vehicles were parked in the Eckenheim tram depot for many years . Today they can be viewed at the Frankfurt am Main Transport Museum in Schwanheim .

aftermath

From 1888, the electricity generated by the power plant was used for the newly installed light bulbs next to the tram route. In addition, the surplus electricity was offered to businesses and households in Oberrad . The FOTG power station thus also became the first power station for Oberrad. Ultimately, this connection was groundbreaking for the combined task of municipal energy supply companies , which operated power plants for power generation and electric railways for local public transport . In Frankfurt, this was the last of the Stadtwerke Frankfurt am Main , the later legal successor of FOTG. Today, the tasks of municipal sponsorship in the field of energy generation are performed by Mainova AG and in the field of transport companies by Stadtwerke Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main (VGF).

In the Frankfurt city area, tram line 16 still serves the former FOTG route to a large extent today. The lines of the Offenbach municipal tram , however, were completely shut down by 1996.

Even today, under the umbrella of Siemens AG, there are business areas that deal with the manufacture of energy generation products ( Power Generation Division of Siemens Energy ) and rail transport technology ( Siemens Mobility ).

  • Railcar 7 in Oberrad, 1884

  • Railcar 8 in the Frankfurt Transport Museum

  • Sidecar 13 in the Frankfurt Transport Museum

  • Wooden disc wheel with steel tire on the railcar 8

  • Spoked wheel on sidecar 13

Trivia

In 2009 the Romanian Post issued a stamp pad with individual stamps showing the oldest trams in the world. The special stamps include trams from London , Vienna , Berlin , Brăila , Bucharest and Frankfurt am Main. A FOTG railcar can be seen on the Frankfurt special stamp together with the Frankfurt coat of arms. In addition, the overhead line with the contact carts is shown. The railcar on the brand bears the number 11, which was actually assigned to a sidecar. The stamp with the value of 0.80  Leu bears the inscriptions "1884 - Primul tramvai electric din Frankfurt" and "Linia 11: Frankfurt - Offenbach" .

Replica

A scaled-down replica of the railcar with a track width of 600 millimeters has been used for the Palmen-Express park railway in the Palmengarten Frankfurt since 2012. The route had to be rebuilt because of the redesign around the Papageno Music Theater . Since then she has needed bidirectional vehicles because the previous turning loop was no longer available. The vehicle does not use overhead lines, but draws its traction current from batteries , like the Western locomotive used up to now .

See also

literature

  • Dieter Höltge, Günter H. Köhler: Trams and light rail vehicles in Germany . 2nd Edition. 1: Hessen. EK-Verlag , Freiburg 1992, ISBN 3-88255-335-9 .
  • Horst Michelke, Claude Jeanmaire: One hundred years of Frankfurt trams: 1872 - 1899 - 1972 = Tramways of Frankfurt am Main (Western Germany) . 1st edition. Villigen AG: Verlag Eisenbahn, book publisher for railway and tramway literature, Brugg / Switzerland 1972, ISBN 3-85649-018-3 .
  • Helmut Roggenkamp: The oldest electric has to work . In: Eisenbahn Magazin . No. 6 . Alba-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1996.
  • Alexander Piesenecker: You drive electrically! - 125 years of electric trams in Frankfurt am Main and Offenbach . In: Tram magazine . No. 6 . GeraMond Verlag , Munich 2009, p. 12-23 .
  • Bernd Conrads, Dana Vietta: 125 years of buses and trains between Frankfurt and Offenbach . Verkehrsgesellschaft Frankfurt am Main mbH (VGF) , Frankfurt am Main 2009, p. 4-11 .

Web links

Commons : Frankfurt-Offenbacher Trambahn-Gesellschaft  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c d e f Verkehrsmuseum Frankfurt am Main (ed.): 125 years of buses and trains between Frankfurt and Offenbach . Exhibition for the 125th anniversary of the first commercially operated electric tram in 2009. Historic tram of the City of Frankfurt am Main eV (HSF), Frankfurt am Main 2009.
  2. ^ Bürgererverein Oberrad eV: The "heyday" of Oberrad. (No longer available online.) 2018, archived from the original on October 23, 2018 ; accessed on October 23, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.buergerverein-oberrad.de
  3. ^ Bürgererverein Oberrad eV: Chronicle of Oberrad. (No longer available online.) 2018, archived from the original on October 23, 2018 ; accessed on October 23, 2018 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.buergerverein-oberrad.de
  4. ↑ a b Dr. Frank Wittendorfer: The early years of the electric tram in Frankfurt a. M. - Oberrad - Offenbach . Lecture on the 125th anniversary of the first commercially operated electric tram on February 18, 2009. Siemens AG , Munich 2009.
  5. ↑ in Fahrt - magazine for employees of VGF , October / November 2009, page 21
  6. ↑ Notification from the Parkbahn ( Memento of the original from October 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in the section “Make new out of old” or: The new train looks pretty old. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.palmen-express.de