Museum tram
The word museum tram is - like the word tram - ambiguous in everyday language and denotes both a tram operation with museum vehicles and a historic tram car.
The tram or tram (in Switzerland: the tram) has existed in Germany since 1865, initially as a horse-drawn tram , later also as a steam tram and from 1881 as an electric train. Until the 1930s, trams carried the bulk of passenger traffic in all large and many smaller cities . As an important factor in urban development and as a testimony to regional history, tram history is also presented in museums and historic tram cars are preserved in museums, in tram museums or museum trams, in museum collections, as individual vehicles or monuments.
Typing
Museum collections
Museum collections are collections of trams, railcars , sidecars and other exhibits that are not always open to the public and are certainly also displayed without their own exhibition - e.g. B. as part of a museum or as part of the vehicle collection of a museum railway .
Almost all tram companies have museum cars. Only the larger or formerly large companies have more extensive collections with several vehicles that document different periods of traffic history.
In Germany , the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe BVG has the largest and richest regional collection, with which the trams in Berlin from the first horse-drawn tram (1865) to the multitude of individual formerly independent trams 'Greater Berlin' and the different developments in the divided city to the 1990s can be shown. In Austria , the collection of the Vienna public transport company is comparable, with vehicles from horse-drawn trams to steam trams , Viennese electric light rail and articulated vehicles from the 1960s, supplemented by trolleybuses and omnibuses . The Tyrol area , as far as today's North and South Tyrol as well as parts of the Trentino are concerned, is covered by the collections of the Tiroler MuseumsBahnen in Innsbruck . In their vehicle and photo collections and plan archives, these railways, some of which were created in the old Austrian Austro-Hungarian past, are documented.
Most of these are locally or regionally oriented collections. The only national museum collection in Germany is maintained by the Hanover Tram Museum and shows the development of trams from the horse-drawn tram to the open-plan and articulated cars of the 1960s.
Museum trams
Museum trams offer than Museumsbahnen regular driving historic cars on yet publicly used or just more traffic in the museum operating distances. The train service runs according to the timetable on fixed vintage car lines, such as in Stuttgart , Frankfurt am Main (see Ebbelwei-Express and Lieschen (until 2013)), Nuremberg (see St. Peter historic tram depot ) or Zurich (see Zurich Tram Museum ), in the form of city tours, such as in Düsseldorf , Vienna and Innsbruck , or on their own museum routes , such as in Schönberg near Kiel on the route of the Association of Traffic Amateurs and Museum Railways , the routes of the Hanoverian Tram Museum in Sehnde near Hanover and the Bergische Museumsbahnen Wuppertal- Kohlfurt . A rare case is the construction of a completely new line, as in Mariazell in Styria .
Tram museums
As museums, tram museums present parts of their collection - vehicles and / or other exhibits on tram history - in permanent exhibitions . The spectrum ranges from small exhibition rooms - like in Mannheim , to separate areas in depots that are still in use - like in Bremen , to independent smaller and larger museum halls in former depots - e.g. B. in Chemnitz , Dresden , Frankfurt , Leipzig , Stuttgart , Cologne , Nuremberg or Innsbruck . According to the company, the largest museum of its kind is the Transport Museum Remise in Vienna .
Almost all museums with their own vehicles also offer museum driving ; a minority has so far presented an exclusively stationary exhibition of historical vehicles. However, the processing of individual museum exhibits is planned. The Frankfurt am Main transport company offers scheduled operation with operational historical vehicles for one-off or regular events such as the German Gymnastics Festival 2009 , the Night of the Museums or the Day of Transport History.
Part of such exhibitions are sometimes model-making systems from the earlier company, some of which are modular.
Development in Germany
Early phase
Even before the First World War and increasingly in the 1920s, some transport companies kept older railways as museum vehicles, e.g. B. in Berlin , Dortmund , Düsseldorf , Hanover and Leipzig . In Nuremberg , the preservation of historical cars and exhibits in a non-public tram museum for posterity began as early as 1903. Even restoration was turned early there: the first horse-drawn tram was restored in 1909 and has been preserved to this day. Above all, it was individual responsible persons in transport companies who campaigned for the preservation of historic trams - if these people left the company, the vehicles were also at risk.
As far as is known, the existing historic vehicles were hardly affected by the Second World War , but in the 1950s and 1960s some of the wagons that had already been preserved as museum railways were scrapped by transport companies due to lack of interest (for example at Rheinbahn AG Düsseldorf). In Hanover, on the other hand, there was a small but closed tram museum with historical vehicles and other exhibits in the 1950s, which was abandoned after a few years.
Since the 1960s
Private initiatives and associations emerged mainly from the end of the 1960s, mostly loosely or more closely based on the local transport companies. Most of the initiatives were closely linked to transport companies and tried to preserve historical railways on site. The transport company could henceforth be relieved of part of the costs through the voluntary care of the vehicles. In many places it was not only possible to save the existing vehicles from being scrapped, but also to bring other trains back and restore them. But in general, the vehicles, especially the operational railways, remained in the possession of the transport companies. Very successful initiatives were formed in Nuremberg , where the historic tram depot has been located since 1985 , and in Stuttgart , where the Gerlingen Tram Museum was opened in 1989 , which was able to move to a much larger area in Zuffenhausen in 1995. The two somewhat larger museums are operated by private associations that are closely related to the respective transport companies.
Initially connected to, but later largely independent of transport companies, voluntary initiatives arose in Hamburg - from which the Association of Traffic Amateurs and Museum Railways eV later emerged, in Hanover, from which the German Tram Museum Hanover eV emerged, and in Wuppertal , the later Bergische Museumsbahnen Wuppertal eV Waren the other companies interested in maintaining locally important vehicles, these three associations formed national collections: The VVM in Schönberg b. Kiel with a focus on Hamburg / Schleswig-Holstein, the BMB with a collection from the Rhine-Ruhr-Wupper region and only the DSM with a national collection from all parts of West Germany.
Various initiatives failed in the course of time - due to a lack of interest on the part of municipalities, disputes within the initiative or with the transport companies, or because those responsible had overestimated themselves.
The current situation in Germany
Today, almost all historic railways at transport companies are looked after by volunteers or associations - but in very different ways. If some clubs are only allowed to maintain 'their' tracks, they are significantly involved in the refurbishment of the vehicles in other companies and also run the operation on a voluntary basis.
A wealth of ideas in the marketing of the cars and museums can at least recoup some of the costs - for example in Magdeburg through city tours with cabaret and theater on board - a purely static exhibition like in Frankfurt is correspondingly more difficult to market. Inner-city tunnels, elevated platforms and gauge changes are increasingly restricting the choice of routes for city tours with historic trams in many West German cities and sometimes even making them impossible.
National tram museums and museum trams
- Hannoversches Straßenbahn-Museum eV (HSM)
- The HSM maintains a tram museum and museum operation on the site of a former potash mine southeast of Hanover. The museum collection consists of vehicles from all parts of Germany, enriched by some foreign museum cars. There is also a modular system / model tram , the origins of which can be found in Hamburg .
- Aumühle near Hamburg - Association of Traffic Amateurs and Museum Railways eV (VVM)
- The VVM operates a small railway museum in Aumühle near Hamburg and maintains a museum railway and a museum tram in Schönberg north of Kiel. The tram collection consists of vehicles from Schleswig-Holstein and Hamburg, and the standard gauge and 1100 mm gauge are used.
- Bergisches Trammuseum Bergische Museumsbahnen Wuppertal eV (BMB)
- The BMB operate a 3.2 km long museum tram on part of the former Wuppertal tram line 5 (Elberfeld-Solingen). The vehicle collection consists of meter gauge trams from the Rhein-Ruhr-Wupper region.
- The vehicle collection consists of standard-gauge trams and some old buses from the Dortmund area. Museum operations take place on an approx. 7 km long stretch of former colliery and industrial tracks. Since the routes are not electrified, the trams are supplied with electricity by attached generator cars .
- In Döbeln there is the German Horse Railway Museum ,
- In sections, historical wagons are driving again on a section that was relocated in 2007.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Lieschen says quietly goodbye ( memento of the original from April 15, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) 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. , accessed March 27, 2014
