LOWA ET50

ET / EB 50, ET / EB 54
Tw 29 of the Naumburg tram in its original condition, 2010
Numbering:	various
Number:	248 railcars (ET) 443 sidecars (EB)
Manufacturer:	VVB LOWA Werdau (ET / EB 50) , VEB Waggonbau Gotha (ET / EB 54)
Year of construction (s):	1950-1956
Gauge :	various
Length:	10,500 mm (car body)
Height:	2990 mm (ET / EB 50) 3033 mm (ET / EB 54)
Width:	2180 mm
Fixed wheelbase:	3000 mm
Empty mass:	12.5 t (ET 50) , 13.5 t (ET 54) , 07.5 t (EB 50)
Top speed:	50 km / h
Hourly output :	2 × 60 kW
Wheel diameter:	760 mm
Power system :	600 V =
Power transmission:	Overhead line
Number of traction motors:	2 × EM 60/600
Coupling type:	various
Seats:	22nd
Standing room:	60 (ET) , 80 (EB) (for 8 people / m²)
Floor height:	690 mm

Under the type designation ET / EB 50 , VVB LOWA manufactured a series of railcars and sidecars at the Werdau plant that were delivered to several tram operators in the German Democratic Republic . In 1954 VEB Waggonbau Gotha took over the production of the wagons and continued production under the type designation ET / EB 54 until 1956.

The vehicles represented the GDR's first standard tram types and are considered to be the forerunners of the Gothawagen constructed from 1957 . Of the two-axle vehicles, a total of 249 multiple units and 438 sidecars were produced. The delivery was made to all companies in the GDR with the exception of the trams in Bad Schandau , Eisenach , Erfurt , Mühlhausen and Woltersdorf . Other vehicles were also exported to the People's Republic of Poland and the Soviet Union .

Type designation

Officially, the vehicles were as ET 50 and EB 50 or ET 54 and EB 54 ( E inheits- T railcars / B eiwagen Year 19 50 ). Most of the establishments also used this designation. In Leipzig, the Werause railcars were designated as Type 30 , the Gothaer as Type 30a and the sidecar as Type 62 . In Berlin, the cars ran as B 50 and B 51 according to the BVG type code . The latter had already been produced by the Gotha plant and had the same structure as the EB 54. The Warsaw EB 50 sidecar were in use as type P18 .

Since both types of vehicle differ only slightly from each other, the common designation LOWA-Wagen or LOWA-Tramcar is often found.

history

In the first few years after the end of World War II , the tram companies in the Soviet occupation zone tried to restore the damaged fleet. In addition to the conventional repairs, body wagons were manufactured in various wagon factories with existing bogies or floor frames from vehicles destroyed in the war . However, these cars were only delivered to those companies whose fleet was almost completely destroyed during the war.

Annual production

year	ET	EB
1950	0	31
1951	59	135
1952	4th	9
1953	12	6th
1954	35	18th
1955	84	103
1956	69	130

Even before the war there were plans for a standard tram car in two, three and four-axle versions, of which only 30 sidecars were made. From 1948 these plans were taken up again and revised accordingly. The Werdau plant of the Association of Nationally Owned Enterprises of Locomotive and Wagon Construction (VVB LOWA) was chosen as the manufacturer.

The first sidecars were manufactured in 1950 for Berlin , Halle and Potsdam . At the spring trade fair in 1951, the first train built for the Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe , consisting of railcar 1601 and sidecar 801, was presented to the public. Both cars were first mover carriage with bus seats arranged in the direction of travel and without wind protection walls at the entrances. Only the Werzeit wagons for the LVB were delivered in this form, all others were constructively bidirectional wagons with seats in compartment form. In the wagons for Leipzig, however, the doors were left out on one side. In the same year the first vehicles were exported abroad. There were 16 sidecars for the Warsaw tram , which were delivered to Szczecin (Stettin) in 1954 .

The first LOWA railcar 1601 for Leipzig, 1952

At the end of 1953, production was relocated to VEB Waggonbau Gotha , where, after minor changes, production of the successor ET / EB 54 was started. In addition to the operations in the GDR, ten meter-gauge operations in the Soviet Union were supplied, as well as the Tallinn Cape-gauge tram . The last two Leipzig railcars 1614 and 1615, which were originally intended for the Naumburg tram and had already been worked on, were therefore delivered with only one driver's cab, but with doors on both sides. The left doors were blocked in the closed position with the handles removed. In the case of car 1615, they were removed as part of an accident repair.

Over the years, the cars in the GDR underwent some structural changes. Most of the vehicles were fitted with Scharfenberg couplings if they were not already available from the factory . This made it possible to use the train with the younger Gothawagen . The introduction of OS operation and the associated construction of reversing loops at the ends of the route made the area-wide use of bidirectional cars superfluous. The main workshop Heiterblick the Leipzig Transport and the Raw "Roman Chwalek" Berlin-Schöneweide therefore built many of the car during the overdue principal Search in mover carriage to. The electrical equipment and design of the interior were adapted to the Gothawagen. In accordance with the regulations of BOStrab , the wagons also received automatic door locking devices , direction indicators , emergency brakes and door area lighting. Larger companies such as Potsdam or Dresden carried out this work in their own workshops.

During the history of operation, a total of nine railcars were converted into sidecars. The motor coaches 10 to 12 of the Stralsund tram were converted into the sidecars 230, 238 and 239 by the main workshop Heiterblick while still using the bogies and handed over to the Gera tram . The Heiterblick main workshop converted the six Leipzig railcars 1310 to 1315 of the type 30a in 1971/72 into the side cars 832 to 837 of the type 62. The car bodies, which had been rebuilt because of their poor condition, only had three windows between the entrances. The bogies were omitted, the workshop adapted the floor frames to the bogie-free construction of the series sidecars. At the same time, the doors on the left side of the car that were never used were removed from the previous car 1614. Another eight sidecars of the Dresden tram were reclassified from Dresden city (1450 mm) to meter gauge after they were handed over to the Gera tram.

In some cities, like here in Naumburg, LOWA wagons were used in regular passenger traffic until after the fall of the Wall in 1990.

In the later 1960s and early 1970s, the first transport companies began to phase out their LOWA vehicles. On the one hand, the measure served to streamline types, on the other hand, the companies received Tatra large- capacity and later articulated cars from Czechoslovak production, which made the use of two-axle vehicles superfluous. Occasionally the LOWA wagons were also used in the work car park .

At the time of German reunification, there were still some LOWA cars in use, for example in Brandenburg , Rostock and Gera. In 1993 the last vehicles were withdrawn from passenger traffic. Since 2010, however, railcar 29 has been in regular service again on weekends in Naumburg. Built in 1955, it is the oldest tram car in Germany that is still in regular use.

technical description

Running frame

Historic sidecar 1 of the Naumburg tram during the reconstruction, 2007

The railcars have a bogie, the frame of which consists of welded double T-beams. The wheel sets with external bearings for all gauges are guided in axle holders, the suspension springs are arranged under the axle bearings. Both wheel sets are driven by traction motors in a pivot bearing arrangement. The devices for the mechanical and magnetic rail brakes are also built into the bogie . The car body is supported on the bogie via rubber spring elements, the bogie in turn via leaf and additional rubber springs on the wheel sets mounted in roller bearings. In the standard- gauge vehicles, the handbrake acts on a brake disc attached to the axle shaft, whereas the narrow-gauge vehicles are block braked. The sidecars do not have a separate bogie. Axle suspensions and brakes are attached directly to the floor frame. A solenoid and hand brakes act as brakes on the axles via brake disks.

Car body

With the exception of the Leipzig wagons, all vehicles are designed as bidirectional vehicles . The side walls are made of welded folded profiles with wooden cladding, while the sub-floor is made of rolled profiles. The use of different profiles meant that the platforms tended to lower and the door spars tore, which was revised for the ET / EB 54. This increased their empty mass a little. The barrel roof is made of wood and has a central line number box at each end as well as two ventilation gills.

EB 54 from 1956 in the Halle Tram Museum as sidecar 328

The closed platforms have a double sliding door on each side. In between there are four side windows with ventilation flaps in the upper area. The passenger compartment is separated from the platforms by narrow partition walls without doors. The running wheels protrude into the interior of the car, the cutouts are covered with sheet metal. This meant that the floor of the car could be made relatively low. The floor of the platforms is a little lower, the transition is stepless with ramps. In the interior, the motor coaches and sidecars alike have 22 built-in compartment-shaped seats. The driver's cabs have a permanently installed driver's seat; they are separated from the platform by a glazed wall. The front and rear windows are usually made in one piece and offer a good view of the route. Target sign boxes are installed above this. The sidecars built in 1950/51 also had these, but were only used initially.

In standard-gauge wagons, the car body is cut out around the axle bearings, so the axle bearing housings are visible from the outside.

Electrical equipment

The drive takes place via two drive motors of the unit type EM 60/600 of the LEW "Hans Beimler" Hennigsdorf , which have an hourly output of 60 kilowatts with 600 volts DC voltage . The STNfB 1 drive switches were supplied by the same manufacturer. The magnetic rail brake is supplied with contact wire voltage via a built-in series resistor .

Jena and Staßfurt were the only companies to receive ET54s with pantographs . At the end of the 1950s, Jena converted its cars to pantographs , while operations in Staßfurt were shut down in 1957.

The car, which was built up to 1952, was illuminated with overhead line voltage and lamps connected in series ; the circuit consisted of three light circuits with five light bulbs each and two heaters with 750 watts of power. A low-voltage system is installed on the younger cars, which enables lighting that is independent of the contact wire voltage. At the same time, the interior lighting was switched to fluorescent tubes .

The brake solenoids of the sidecars are fed via connections from the resistance brakes of the railcars. At the ends of the car there are further contact connections for powering the sidecar. In the wagons equipped with an automatic Scharfenberg coupling, these are already integrated into the coupling. Typical of the Berlin sidecars was a circular opening in the upper front window through which the cable connections were inserted. The railcars are equipped with a converter for charging the batteries in the train. With some ET 54 a compressor system for door closing is operated via this converter.

Special designs

ET / EB 198 03 and 04

Railcar 23 of the Naumburg tram ran in Klingenthal until 1964

Presentation of LOWA products at the Leipzig trade fair in 1951, including the prototypes of the four-axle large-capacity railcar and the three-axle sidecar

In 1956, two railcars differing from the series were manufactured for the narrow-gauge railway Klingenthal – Sachsenberg-Georgenthal of the Deutsche Reichsbahn as ET 198 03 and 04. As a special feature, the vehicles had a typhon in addition to their bell in accordance with the operating regulations of the Deutsche Reichsbahn. In addition, the Klingenthal narrow-gauge railway received two trailer cars, which were run as EB 198 03 and 04. After the line was closed in 1964, the vehicles came to the Plauen tram . Then both railcars came to Naumburg and drove there under the numbers 22 and 23. While railcar 22 was scrapped in 1984, car 23 is privately owned and is stored in the depot of the Naumburg tram.

Three and four-axle vehicles

As with the ESW, a three- and four-axle variant were also planned for the LOWA wagons in addition to the two-axle version. In 1951, a steering three- axle sidecar and a four-axle large-capacity train with multiple units and sidecars were built in Werdau .

The three-axle sidecar was used as type BEL 50 under number 1750 ^II in Berlin. In 1957 the car was given the number 1749 ^II before it was handed over to Potsdam in 1961. There it drove under number 256 until it was retired. The car was 11.4 meters long and had end entrances.

The type TDE 52 / BDE 52 large-capacity train 8001 ^II / 3001 ^{II was} presented at the Leipzig Spring Fair in 1952 and was then also used in Berlin. Because of its width of 2.50 meters, it could only be used on line 86 between Grünau S-Bahn station and Alt-Schmöckwitz . In 1969 both cars were retired and scrapped.

Vehicle overview

ET54 as railcar 22 in Kishinev, 1955

The following table lists all tram companies that received LOWA cars ex works. Replacements and the conversion of powered cars to sidecars are not taken into account. In some cases, other figures are given, especially for the companies in the Soviet Union, so the table does not claim to be complete.

Vehicle overview

Country	place	Gauge	ET 50	EB 50	ET 54	EB 54	Σ ET	Σ EB	Σ ET + EB
GDR	Berlin	1435 mm	0	20th	0	20th	0	40	40
	Brandenburg	1000 mm	3	3	3	3	6th	5	11
	Chemnitz / Karl-Marx-Stadt	0925 mm	0	4th	0	3	0	7th	7th
	cottbus	1000 mm	0	2	2	0	2	2	4th
	Dessau	1435 mm	1	1	3	0	4th	1	5
	Dresden	1450 mm	4th	10	16	30th	20th	40	60
	Frankfurt (Oder)	1000 mm	1	0	2	7th	3	7th	10
	Gera	1000 mm	3	2	2	5	5	7th	12
	Goerlitz	1000 mm	0	0	3	6th	3	6th	9
	Gotha	1000 mm	3	0	0	3	3	3	6th
	Halberstadt	1000 mm	1	2	1	0	2	2	4th
	Halle (Saale)	1000 mm	8th	22nd	6th	10	14th	32	46
	Hohenstein-Ernstthal	1000 mm	0	2	0	0	0	2	2
	Jena	1000 mm	2	6th	2	2	4th	8th	12
	Klingenthal ( DR )	1000 mm	0	0	2	2	2	2	4th
	Leipzig	1458 mm	9	34	6th	52	15th	86	101
	Magdeburg	1435 mm	7th	11	4th	3	11	14th	25th
	Naumburg	1000 mm	2	0	3	0	5	0	5
	Nordhausen	1000 mm	2	0	0	0	2	0	2
	Plauen	1000 mm	3	0	4th	0	7th	0	7th
	Potsdam	1435 mm	11	17th	3	7th	14th	24	38
	Rostock	1440 mm	3	11	11	16	14th	27	41
	Beautiful oak	1000 mm	0	0	0	3	0	3	3
	Schwerin	1435 mm	4th	0	0	0	4th	0	4th
	Staßfurt	1000 mm	0	0	1	0	1	0	1
	Stralsund	1000 mm	3	0	1	0	4th	0	4th
	Zwickau	1000 mm	3	6th	4th	0	7th	6th	13
VR Poland	Warsaw	1435 mm	0	16	0	0	0	16	16
USSR	Kishinev	1000 mm	0	0	5	5	5	5	10
	Kaliningrad	1000 mm	0	0	28	37	28	37	65
	Lwow	1000 mm	0	0	6th	6th	6th	6th	12
	Nikolayev	1000 mm	0	0	4th	4th	4th	4th	8th
	Pyatigorsk	1000 mm	0	0	11	10	11	10	21st
	Simferopol	1000 mm	0	0	4th	4th	4th	4th	8th
	Tallinn	1067 mm	0	0	20th	20th	20th	20th	40
	Tashkent	1000 mm	0	0	8th	9	8th	9	17th
	Vinnitsa	1000 mm	0	0	1	1	1	1	2
	Vyborg	1000 mm	0	0	9	6th	9	6th	15th
Total:			73	169	175	274	248	443	691

Historic vehicles

Sidecar 1707 LOWA type B 50 of the BVG .

In several cities, individual wagons and complete trains have been preserved as historical vehicles, depending on their condition in an exhibition or running condition. The Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe owns the oldest ET 50 with railcar 1601, where it forms a permanent team with sidecar 803. The 505 (ET 50) railcar and the 328 (EB 54) side car have been preserved in the Halle Tram Museum. The DVN Berlin oversees the sidecar 1707 ^II of the Berlin public transport. Other cars have been preserved in Gera, Naumburg (Saale) and Dresden, among others. In Rostock, too, there are three motorcars and one sidecar and are located in the depot12 of Rostock's local transport fans.

Remarks

1. ↑ ^{a b} Taking into account the different information, the total is 249 railcars and 438 trailer cars.
2. ↑ According to other sources, Kaliningrad received 29 railcars and 32 sidecars.
3. ↑ According to other sources, Pyatigorsk received ten railcars.
4. ↑ According to other sources, Tashkent received nine railcars.

literature

• Peter Kalbe, Frank Möller, Volker Vondran: The LOWA tram cars of the types ET 50/54 and EB 50/54 . Verlag Dirk Endisch, 2012, ISBN 978-3-936893-69-4 .
• Volker Vondran: The LOWA tram cars . In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter . No. 6, 1981.
• Henry Wille: The LOWA type B50 / B51 sidecar . In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter . Issue 7, 1979.

Web links

Commons : ET / EB 50  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Commons : ET / EB 54  - collection of images, videos and audio files

• Robert Leichsenring: LOWA two-axle vehicle. In: www.tram2000.de. Retrieved February 21, 2017 . 

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b} Vehicle fleet list Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe GmbH (LVB). (No longer available online.) In: tram-info. Archived from the original on February 26, 2013 ; Retrieved October 3, 2012 . 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.  
2. ↑ ^{a b c} Sigurd Hilkenbach, Wolfgang Kramer: The tram traffic Berlin (BVG-Ost / BVB) 1949-1991 . 2nd Edition. transpress, Stuttgart, ISBN 3-613-71063-3 , pp. 25-31 .
3. ↑ TABOR HISTORYCZNY. In: TRAMWAJE WARSZAWSKIE. Retrieved October 3, 2012 (Polish). 
4. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g h i j k l} Volker Vondran: The LOWA tram cars . In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter . Volume 6, 1981, pp. 147-152 .
5. ↑ ^{a b} Robert Leichsenring: LOWA two-axle vehicle. In: www.tram2000.de. Retrieved February 21, 2017 . 
6. ↑ Stannigel maps: ET50 / ET54 (LOWA car). In: www.tram-plauen.de. Retrieved October 3, 2012 . 
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Henry Wille: The LOWA sidecar of the type B50 / B51 . In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter . Issue 7, 1979, pp. 106-108 .
8. ↑ ^{a b c} Christoph Heuer: VEB Waggonbau Gotha from 1949. In: Gothawagen.de. September 5, 2010, accessed October 3, 2012 . 
9. ↑ Historic railcar 505. (No longer available online.) Hallesche Straßenbahnfreunde, formerly in the original ; Retrieved October 3, 2012 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.    
10. ↑ Historic sidecar 328. (No longer available online.) Hallesche Straßenbahnfreunde, archived from the original on April 5, 2013 ; Retrieved October 3, 2012 . 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.  
11. ↑ Sidecar 1707 ("LOWA" type B 50). Monument Preservation Association Berlin, January 5, 2010, accessed on October 3, 2012 .