Switching and rectifying plant in Halensee

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Operations center of the S-Bahn , view from Halenseestrasse onto the switch house and the central building (right), 2017

The Halensee switching and rectifier plant was built from 1927 by the Reichsbahn Oberbaurat and architect Richard Brademann to feed electrical energy into the Berlin S-Bahn network and to monitor and control the traction power supply to the substations . At the same time came with the switch and rectifier station Markgrafendamm a counterpart near the present station Ostkreuz . The Böttgerstrasse and Ebersstrasse switchgear plants were added later. The building is on the list of monuments in the Halensee district .

history

Since the start of passenger traffic on the eastern ring line in 1871 and the western ring line in 1877, the railway has been running with steam . The first electrically operated railway from Siemens & Halske was demonstrated at the Berlin trade fair in 1879 . The increasing population in Berlin at this time as well as the city expanding beyond the Ringbahn, considerations and investigations arose to electrify the network of urban, ring and suburban railways .

Starting in 1899, the first cost estimates for the construction and operation were drawn up, which were specified and adapted through tests due to technical developments up to 1910. The proposal for the electrification of the Berlin city, ring and suburban railways was decided in 1913 in the Prussian House of Representatives for the completion of the preparatory work 25 million marks (adjusted for purchasing power in today's currency: around 135.7 million euros) by 1918. During the First World War between 1914 and 1918, work came to an almost complete standstill.

Description of the structure

Switching house, 2011
Switching house and control room, 2011
Halensee rectifier plant, 2011
Halensee rectifier plant, 1986

From 1927, the two switching and rectifier plants in Halensee and Markgrafendamm were built according to plans by the Reichsbahn Oberbaurat and architect Richard Brademann . The choice of location fell on a property belonging to the Reichsbahn on the connecting curve between the Ringbahn and Wetzlarer Bahn , which made it easy to implement the necessary siding . The total construction costs were calculated in 1912 at 1,116,000 marks (today around 5.94 million euros) for the Halensee switchgear. Construction of the masonry, which was partially reinforced with steel girders, began on April 1, 1927. The shell was finished after around four months. The construction of the electrical equipment could begin in mid-September and lasted until February 1928. The official commissioning took place on June 9, 1928, the day electrical operation began on the light rail and the subsequent routes.

The facility consisted of two parallel building blocks, which were connected by an octagonal central building. Brademann thus architecturally emphasized the functional structure of the building structure in high-voltage switchgear, rectifier and control room. Characteristic of all three buildings clear geometric shapes symmetrical panel layout and arrangement of goods ogival blind arcades on the ground floor. According to Brademann, the indoor facilities were arranged symmetrically to a central axis. The façades of the buildings were clinkered with red and blue, against which the blue and yellow windows contrasted. The red and brown gates were color-coordinated with the facades.

Depending on the floor, the five-storey switch house had a different window layout that was purely of a design nature. The corners of the building were accentuated by wide wall templates that end with stepped brick cornices at the level of the second floor . These were continued over the entire width of the front sides, making the third floor appear as a mezzanine on these sides . The incoming and outgoing cables converged in the basement. The cable terminations and transducers were located on the ground floor, and the choke coils on the first floor . The oil switches were located on the second floor and the 30 kV busbars were located on the third floor .

In contrast to the switching mechanism, the rectifier unit on the opposite side had a strongly structured front with a moving eaves line. The transformer cells were arranged between two almost square staircase towers. The closely lined up cell gates were combined by a projecting concrete slab. Triangular ventilation shafts rose above the façade like pillars and ended above the eaves with attachments. The cables came together in the basement of the three-story building. The DC busbars, the high-speed circuit breakers and rectifier transformers were located on the ground floor and the rectifiers on the upper floor.

The octagonal central building with an extension housed the control room and the offices. The control room on the upper floor was designed in the shape of an ellipse. The switches for the remote-controlled converters were located on the wall surfaces, and a control panel for local operations was provided in the middle. The wall surfaces were divided by tiered cornices. The conclusion was formed by the glass ceiling with a two-tier octagonal skylight, through which the room was illuminated with daylight. The mezzanine floor below contained the control cables and devices for remote control of the subordinate rectifier plants. The basement accommodated the accumulators for the control and auxiliary power.

use

The electricity was obtained from two providers, BEWAG and EWAG . Both shared the delivery in half. EWAG generated its electricity in the Zschornewitz and Trattendorf power plants , BEWAG in Klingenberg . The electricity was conducted over a 110 kV line to the power and transformer stations in Charlottenburg and Rummelsburg , from where it was fed into the switchgear after being converted into 30 kV three-phase current. In normal operation, the Halensee switchgear should only be supplied by EWAG. The Halensee switchgear was connected to the Charlottenburg substation via eight 30 kV cables. Part of the electricity was fed from the switchgear into the approximately 350-kilometer 30-kV network of the Berlin S-Bahn in order to supply the downstream converter stations. The other part was transformed to 800 V direct current at the Halensee rectifier plant in order to feed the adjacent sections of the route.

The Halensee switchgear was subordinate to the Markgrafendamm switchgear as the main command post. In turn, the Halensee and Ebersstrasse substations, the Böttgerstrasse switchgear and remote-controlled rectifier stations and power supply systems on the western ring line from Wilmersdorf-Friedenau to Frankfurter Allee and the western suburbs to Spandau-West , Gartenfeld , Potsdam and Stahnsdorf were subordinate to it. In addition to the above-mentioned suburban lines, the ring line section from Westend to Wedding was remote-controlled , while the subsequent sections were taken over by the Böttgerstrasse and Ebersstrasse switchgear .

In the rectifier plant there were initially mercury vapor rectifiers with a continuous output of 1200 kW. The Reichsbahn decided to use rectifiers instead of the previously common rotating converters. In the 1930s, the old converters were replaced by rectifiers with a continuous output of 2400 kW. With a continuous output of all rectifiers of 208,000 kW, the Berlin S-Bahn had the largest rectifier system in the world at that time.

Starting in the 1950s, the converter plants, some of which were still locally manned, were connected to the Halensee and Markgrafendamm switchgear, depending on their location in the network. After the switchboards of the control rooms in Böttgerstrasse and Ebersstrasse had also been implemented in the 1960s, the control of the power supply systems concentrated on the two remaining switchgear. The building was remodeled in the 1970s. After the operating rights to the Berlin S-Bahn were taken over by the Berliner Verkehrsbetriebe in 1984, they started building a network control center with modern remote control technology in Halensee. The merger of the S-Bahn network after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the uniform operational management by S-Bahn Berlin GmbH made the project obsolete . Since the modernization of the switchgear required less space, the operator stations for the first electronic signal boxes in the S-Bahn network could be set up in the vacated rooms from May 1993 . A computer-aided network control center went into operation on Markgrafendamm in 1999, as a result of which the Halensee switching plant was closed in 2000. The rectifier plant remained unaffected by these measures and is still in operation. The control room was retained as a fall-back level.

After the buildings are closed, the switch house will serve as the location for the electronic interlocking computers of the S-Bahn operations center . The operations center (BZ) emerged in the early 1990s from the chief dispatcher management, the dispatcher management lines Ring and Ost and the operations control center of the BVG. In addition to the dispatchers of almost all electronic signal boxes in the S-Bahn network, the network coordinator , the emergency control center and the area dispatchers in the operations center are also on duty. In mid-2008, the BZ controlled and monitored around 50 percent of the route network in nine interlockings; in 2018 it was already around two thirds.

literature

Web links

Commons : Schaltwerk Halensee  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Remy: The electrification of the Berlin city, ring and suburban railways as an economic problem . Julius Springer, Berlin 1931, p. 56-60 .
  2. ^ Karl Remy: The electrification of the Berlin city, ring and suburban railways as an economic problem . Julius Springer, Berlin 1931, p. 48-55 .
  3. ^ Richard Brademann: Halensee switchgear of the Reichsbahndirektion Berlin . In: Zentralblatt der Bauverwaltung . 49th year, no. 20 , May 15, 1929, pp. 313-320 ( zlb.de ).
  4. ↑ a b c d e f g Susanne Dost: Richard Brademann (1884–1965). Architect of the Berlin S-Bahn . VBN Verlag B. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2002, ISBN 3-933254-36-1 , p. 60-66 .
  5. ↑ a b c d e f g Wolfgang Kiebert: The electrical operation on the Berlin S-Bahn. Volume 2.1: The Great Electrification - 1926 to 1930 . VBN Verlag B. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-933254-15-3 , pp. 14-19 .
  6. ^ Karl Remy: The electrification of the Berlin city, ring and suburban railways as an economic problem . Julius Springer, Berlin 1931, p. 81-83 .
  7. ^ Peter Bley: Berlin S-Bahn . 8th edition. alba, Düsseldorf 2003, ISBN 3-87094-363-7 , p. 101-104 .
  8. ↑ a b Double anniversary in Halensee. In: sbahn.berlin. S-Bahn Berlin GmbH, November 8, 2018, accessed on February 11, 2019 .
  9. ↑ Manuel Jacob: The electrical operation on the Berlin S-Bahn. Volume 7: "Safe is Safe" - How it works on the Berlin S-Bahn . 2nd Edition. VBN Verlag B. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-933254-94-8 , p. 104-105 .
  10. ↑ Manuel Jacob: The electrical operation on the Berlin S-Bahn. Volume 7: "Safe is Safe" - How it works on the Berlin S-Bahn . 2nd Edition. VBN Verlag B. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-933254-94-8 , p. 130-131 .