Baden-Baden trolleybus

Baden-Baden trolleybus
Route length:	15.65 km of which single-track: 4.72 km
Power system :	650 volts  =
Legend Baden-Oos train station Sinzheimer Strasse Woerthstrasse Schweigrother Platz Dreieichenkapelle Little Dollenstrasse Great Dollenstrasse Hardbergbad Ebertplatz Waldseestrasse City train station Hindenburgplatz Merkurwald station Forest coffee Friedrichshöhe turning loop Friedrichshöhe City cemetery Upper Prinz-Weimar-Strasse Upper Weinbergstrasse Markgrafenplatz Kurfürstenstrasse Lower Prinz-Weimar-Strasse Ebersteinstrasse Ludwig-Wilhelm-Stift Landesbad New Augustabad / Vincentistraße Leopoldsplatz Augustaplatz Gausplatz Lichtentaler Allee Bismarckplatz Stadelhofer Strasse Hans-Bredow-Strasse Schirmhofweg Tiergarten, golf hotel Bertholdplatz Maximilianstrasse Bridge Rotackerstrasse Klosterplatz Lichtental Brahmsplatz Spring road Turning loop in Lichtental depot Steinackergasse Picture oak Oberbeuern, settlement Oberbeuern

The Baden-Baden trolleybus is a former trolleybus operation in the Baden-Württemberg spa town of Baden-Baden . It existed from June 26, 1949 to July 31, 1971. Only the so-called valley line (initially line T, later line 1, today's line 201) and the so-called mountain line (line B, today's lines 204, 205, 214 and 216). The operating company was the Baden-Baden tram and mountain railway , which later became the Baden-Baden municipal utility and is now the transport company .

prehistory

For reasons of cost and the desire to have a modern means of transport at the time, a decision was made in the post-war period to replace the former Baden-Baden tram completely with an O-bus service. The tram, which opened in 1910, was badly worn out as a result of the Second World War , this applied to both the track infrastructure and the outdated rolling stock. Reliable operation was no longer given under these conditions.

history

As the first section of the tram from June 26, 1949 - just one year after the currency reform - trolleybuses ran on the 5.1 kilometer section from Leopoldsplatz to Baden-Oos station on the Rhine Valley Railway . In the following December 1949 the tram to the Merkurwald was discontinued. The trolleybus went into operation from December 15, 1949 to Friedrichshöhe and reached the valley station of the Merkurbergbahn from April 1, 1950 .

1953: Augustaplatz with trolleybus overhead lines and a parked trailer

From May 15, 1950, the trolleybus could drive a large loop in the city center, from Leopoldsplatz via Augustaplatz and Bertholdplatz back to Leopoldsplatz. In autumn 1950 the trolleybuses ran from October 28 to Lichtental (Frühlingstrasse) and from November 26 to the zoo. The last tram rides took place on February 28, 1951 between the Lichtental depot and Oberbeuern. Then the trolleybus replaced the entire rail network. As with the tram, the 15.65-kilometer-long route network was used by a valley line and a mountain line. The contact wire voltage was increased from 600 to 650 volts direct current for the O-bus operation.

But the service life of the trolleybus was to be much shorter at 22 years than that of the tram at 41 years. On July 29, 1970, operations on the "mountain line" ended and on July 31, 1971 also on the "valley line". Since then, all city traffic in Baden-Baden has been served by buses . The first urban bus route opened in March 1948. Ten years later, 22 buses with three trailers were on the road with a total length of 130 kilometers.

The changeover to bus operation, decided by a unanimous city council resolution on November 11, 1969, was primarily due to cost reasons. For the necessary renewal of the catenary system and the vehicle fleet, an estimate of 5.6 million D-Marks was made in advance, while the costs for a switch to bus operation were only 3.6 million D-Marks.

Vehicle inventory

In the first three years of operation (1949 to 1951), nine solo trolleybuses were initially purchased (car numbers 101 to 109). In 1951, six more solo trolleybuses (110 to 115) followed, which were manufactured jointly by Henschel and the Uerdingen wagon factory . They were built on Henschel chassis of type 6500 II and externally looked very much like the ÜHIIs .

From 1952, nine solo trolleybuses of the type ÜHIIIs with the numbers 221 to 229 were purchased, followed in 1959 by an HS 160 OSL with the number 231. At first, bus trailers were also used on the valley line, twelve sidecars were available.

When the use of trailers was forbidden by law on July 1, 1960 (according to StVZO ), a total of ten articulated vehicles were put into operation. These were partly created using components from older solo trolleybuses. Seven solo cars of the type Henschel / Wegmann 6500 (built in 1949) were taken over for this purpose in 1959 by the Hamburger Hochbahn (which ceased its trolleybus operation in 1958). They were then converted into articulated vehicles by Kässbohrer Fahrzeugwerke as follows:

Car 224 in the East Anglia Transport Museum

No. in Baden-Baden	former number in Hamburg	Year of renovation	electr. equipment
253	301	1960	AEG
254	310	1960	BBC
255	304	1960	AEG
256	306	1960	BBC
257	308	1960	BBC
259	305	1962	AEG
260	307	1962	BBC

A tower car was also available to maintain the overhead line . There was also a so-called generator trailer (road number 198), with the help of which the trolleybuses could exceptionally be moved without the power supply from the overhead line.

After operations ceased in 1971, most of the Baden-Baden trolleybuses were scrapped. Only car 231 could be sold to the Esslingen am Neckar trolleybus , where it was in use until 1977 under the new number 23. This and also car 224 (type ÜHIIIs, built in 1954, in service until 1969) have been preserved to this day, they are owned by the English trolleybus collector Jonathan Ward. Ward also recreated the generator trailer. The vehicles are stored in the East Anglia Transport Museum in Carlton Colville (England), both trolleybuses are operational and approved.

See also

• List of cities with former trolleybus operations

literature

• Roland Hartl: Pictures of the Baden-Baden tram and mountain railway, Verlag Röhr 1985
• Werner Stock: Trolleybus systems in Germany, Verlag Hermann Busch 1987

Web links

• Description of trolleybus 231 on obus-es.de
• The Baden-Badener ÜHIIIs / BBC 224 during the celebrations for the 90th anniversary of the Merkur mountain railway on obus-es.de

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d} Former trolleybus routes today. Baden-Baden ( Memento from February 10, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )
2. ↑ http://www.hov-bus.de/obus.pdf
3. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of October 12, 2007 in the Internet Archive )