Trolleybus Pforzheim

Trolleybus Pforzheim
Route length:	10.2 km
Power system :	600 volts  =
Legend 3.4 Wilferdinger Höhe Siloam Hospital To the Geigersgrund Tile tower Main cemetery Ispringer relay Philippstrasse 2.7 Wartberg Friedrich-Ebert-Strasse 1.3 Zähringerallee Pfälzerstrasse Christophallee Karlsruhe – Mühlacker railway line Central Station Bahnhofstrasse 0.0 0.0 Leopoldplatz Car hall Enz Sedanplatz Jahnstrasse / Bleichstrasse Rodstrasse Kallhardtstrasse Nagold 1.9 Copper hammer Worm Dillweißstein Riedstrasse Dillweißstein Seegerstrasse Dillweißstein Ludwigsplatz Dillweißstein Hirsauer Strasse Dillweißstein Outer Hirsauer Strasse Dillweissenstein Nagoldbad Dillweißstein Steinbergsgutstrasse 5.4 Dillweißstein Iron Bridge

The trolleybus Pforzheim was the trolleybus operation of the city of Pforzheim . It existed from 1951 to 1969 and partly replaced the Pforzheim tram, which was closed in 1964 , or supplemented the urban bus service introduced in 1949 . The responsible transport company in both cases was the Stadtwerke Pforzheim (SWP), which also operated the Pforzheimer Kleinbahn to Ittersbach , which was closed in 1968 . The company Stadtverkehr Pforzheim (SVP) was then responsible for bus transport until 2016, and has been carried out by SüdwestBus since 2017 .

history

On September 29, 1951, with the handover of the new Nordstadtbrücke, which ran across the Karlsruhe – Mühlacker railway line , two trolleybus lines went into operation. Both replaced provisional omnibus lines that were set up in 1949 and had no line number. Starting from the central Leopoldplatz , the 2.7 kilometer long line 4 led past the main station into the Wartberg district in the north of the city. The 3.4 kilometer long line 5 took the same route to the Zähringerallee stop , but then turned west to the main cemetery. The tram ended there until 1945, while the trolleybus continued to Wilferdinger Höhe. The initial network of the two radial lines was 4.8 kilometers long. In 1952, the Hachelallee had to be widened as part of the route to Wilferdinger Höhe and a turning loop had to be set up to enable smooth trolleybus traffic there as well.

On May 27, 1952, the Pforzheim City Council finally approved the conversion of tram line 3 to the south of the city, which followed the course of the Nagold to Dillweißstein , to trolleybus operation. The tram there was stopped on August 14, 1953, the trolleybus service started on September 12, 1953. From then on, the terminus was at the Iron Bridge - which was replaced by today's Weißensteiner Bridge in 1982 - while the tram only went to the paper mill, i.e. ended one stop earlier.

The previous line 4, which was expanded to the diameter line to Dillweissenstein, took over line number 3 from the tram. It was supplemented by the previous line 5, now called line 2, which from then on went in the south to the intermediate turning loop at the Kupferhammer. Both lines ran through the southern part of the city and used Bleichstrasse as far as the Kallhardtbrücke over Nagold, while tram line 3 had previously run over Marktplatz and Calwer Strasse.

Line 2 was now 5.3 kilometers long, line 3 was 8.1 kilometers. The largest area of ​​the entire network was 10.2 kilometers, plus the access from Leopoldplatz to the depot shared by trams and small trains . Although it was decided on March 13, 1962 to switch tram line 1 from the gasworks to Brötzingen , this extension was no longer possible and was revised on November 29, 1966. A new line to the industrial area on the Wilferdinger Höhe planned at the time - it would have been 1.5 kilometers long - was not realized either.

On July 10, 1968, the tornado over Pforzheim destroyed the overhead line between Bleichstrasse and Dillweißstein. In the summer of 1969, the trolleybuses were gradually replaced by newly purchased diesel buses; the last trolleybus in Pforzheim finally ran on October 1, 1969.

vehicles

Initially, only five solo cars from Henschel were available at the opening, with road numbers 1 to 5.

Then 15 cars of the so-called Ulm design came to Pforzheim. These had a Henschel chassis of type II-6500, a body from Kässbohrer Fahrzeugwerke in Ulm and electrical equipment from AEG . Of these, cars 6 to 8 were delivered in 1952, followed in 1953 by cars 9 to 16 and finally in 1954 by cars 17 to 20, which stood out for their distinctive roof edge glazing. As a result of renumbering, the 20 trolleybuses were assigned the new numbers 201 to 220.

In 1960 two used articulated trolleybuses were procured from the Neuss municipal utilities , which had stopped their trolleybus operations the year before. There they had the numbers 106 and 107 and were built in 1954, in Pforzheim they were initially included in the inventory under the numbers 21 and 22 and later under the numbers 251 and 252. These four-axle vehicles with two-axle trailers manufactured by Henschel, Kässbohrer and Kiepe were the first articulated trolleybuses in Germany at the time.

A specialty from Pforzheim was the self-made trolleybus 221. It was built in 1965 on the basis of a brand-new Büssing Prefect diesel bus body, which was completed with electrical equipment by the Pforzheim municipal utility.

None of the 23 trolleybuses in Pforzheim has survived. The last car 219 was scrapped in Eberswalde in 2008 .

literature

• Werner Stock: Trolleybus systems in Germany, Bielefeld 1987, ISBN 3-926882-00-X
• Kurt Schwab: Tram and small train in Pforzheim, Nordhorn 1997, ISBN 3-927587-64-8

Web links

• Historical local traffic Pforzheim e. V.