Siemens freight railway
| Siemens freight railway | |
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| Gauge : | 1435 mm ( standard gauge ) |
The Siemens freight railway was a works railway in the Siemensstadt district of Berlin .
prehistory
Towards the end of the 19th century, the large Berlin companies in the metal and electrical industry were forced to relocate their production facilities from the city to the surrounding area due to lack of space. The company Siemens & Halske selected for their cable plant a new location north of the Spree to Spandau area. The desired track connection to the Westend station could not be realized for reasons that were based on the rivalry between the then independent cities of Charlottenburg and Spandau. For this reason, a two-kilometer trajectory connection to a track near the Charlottenburg lock was set up for the plant, which opened on August 1, 1899 . The steam ferry used could transport two 15-ton freight cars that were pulled by horses on the premises of the cable works.
As early as 1892, the Spandau military railway had been opened in Haselhorst by the Reichsmilitaryfiskus , which ran from the Hamburger Bahnhof (since 1998: Berlin-Stresow station ) to Eiswerder Island and the Salzhof. The city of Spandau, for its part, planned from 1900 to build a route to Nonnendamm (today: Nonnendammallee ), which could be used as a freight and tram at the same time , out of municipal interests . When construction began on the Wernerwerk in 1904, Siemens itself took over the lead management of this project.
History and description
From the beginning to the end of the Second World War
In 1906, Siemens signed a contract with the military treasury , whose train passed the factory halls just 1.5 kilometers away, for the "construction and commissioning of a standard-gauge electric tram [...]". This was to branch off from the military railway track at the western end of Nonnendamm and also serve the army canning factory located there on Schwarzen Weg (today: Paulsternstraße). Siemens & Halske received permission to drive through the Haselhorst exercise area under the condition that they set up five level crossings that could be used by heavy artillery . A key point of the agreement was the priority of military traffic over trains for Siemens. The negotiations with the municipality of Spandau regarding the joint operation of trams and freight railways turned out to be protracted. They did not come to an end until the autumn of 1907, whereby the use of the road land was agreed for a period of 60 years.
The construction work then proceeded quickly, on February 7, 1908 the track system was approved by the state railway administration. The operating permits for freight and tram traffic were issued on the 18th and 24th of the same month. On March 16, 1908, goods traffic with state railroad locomotives to and from “Spandau Anschluss Nonnendamm” (as stated in the destination on the waybills ) began. The wagon delivery was initially provided by a steam locomotive , presumably a Prussian T 3 , and a 32 kW battery-powered locomotive from our own production was used at the factory. It had the factory number 349, was delivered by Siemens-Schuckertwerke to Harburg in 1907 and was bought back by the rail freight operator in 1908. Later it was converted to overhead line operation, which was associated with an increase in output to 51.5 kW. The second, identical locomotive with the serial number 212, which was equipped for overhead line operation from the start, followed in 1908. Before that, the machine, built in 1905, was used by the company for tar-recycling in Duisburg-Meiderich . Handover trips to the state railway took place twice a day. As a rule, the freight wagons were handed over at the Nonnendamm station, but possibly also on the installation tracks of the military railway at the powder factory. During the night hours, cattle were transported to the army canning factory.
The transfer trains came from the Hamburg train station and crossed the Spree on the track of the military railway. The track of the Siemens freight railway branched off at km 2.0 and crossed the parade ground for around one kilometer. This was followed by the double-track transfer station Nonnendamm, from which the track led to the canning factory on Schwarzen Weg (from 1929: Paulsternstraße) to the north. The track to the Siemens site was divided into a branch in the planum of Nonnendamm and a second one along Motardstrasse (today in this area: Boltonstrasse) immediately east of the station. The latter opened up the halls to the east of the Rohrdamm from the south, the former turned into the plant before the intersection with the Rohrdamm.
The tram started operating on October 1, 1908. Mostly single-track it ran for about 5.2 kilometers from the old town of Spandau via Haselhorst to Siemensstadt (this name for the district was only introduced in 1914). Around 1.8 kilometers of common routes with the freight railway were in Nonnendamm and Black Way . Like the freight railway, it was operated with 550 volts DC. The six railcars and six sidecars were initially located in a railway hall on Rohrdamm, where railway engines were manufactured. As early as 1909, the city of Spandau made use of its contractually agreed right to transfer the tram into municipal ownership.
The need for a third transfer trip made it necessary to use another locomotive (with 118 kW) in 1909. In addition, the Dynamowerk 1910 and the Kabelwerk 1911 received two identical 32 kW battery locomotives (presumably the later locomotives 11 and 12), which initially did not belong to the rail freight operator, but to these works. The number of rail freight cars owned by the railway increased from six to nine in 1912.
In 1912, the cable factory handed over its halls to the electric motor factory and moved to the nearby garden field . A machine was purchased for the new route as locomotive 4, which Siemens had supplied in 1908 for test runs on the Seebach – Wettingen route in Switzerland. The 235 kW locomotive with two final driver's cabs returned after the test program was completed and was handed over to the rail freight operator after a conversion. In 1913 a fifth 118 kW locomotive was added. It replaced the locomotive 1 taken over from Meiderich in 1908, which in turn was sold to the Kösliner Stadt- und Strandbahn .
Not only goods and raw materials, for example also building materials for the construction of new plants and other buildings, were transported on the freight railway. In 1914, a good 20,000 people were employed in Siemensstadt, and with the outbreak of World War I , the volume of transport increased considerably. Hospital trains ran to the military hospital, which was housed in part of the Siemens administration building, and the number of employees more than doubled during the war years. The capacity of the single-track tram line was exhausted, so that a directional operation was set up. Between the Gartenfelder Strasse and the Schwarzen Weg , a tramway track went into operation between the freight tracks and the roadway, which the trains traveling eastwards used.
As early as 1915, the congestion on the freight line led to the idea of building a separate connecting line to the Ruhleben freight station . However, disagreements with the city of Spandau regarding the planned track systems in Nonnendammallee prevented their timely implementation. As a result of the Versailles Peace Treaty , the fiscal factories were shut down. The volume of traffic thus decreased rapidly and the expansion plans became obsolete.
The Motard company received a siding in 1917, and the later switchgear followed. By 1923, at the expense of Siemens, the freight and tram systems were finally separated. The tram route in Gartenfelder Strasse received its second track. The single-track tram route in the western Nonnendammallee had not been used since February 21, 1923 and became dispensable after the double-track expansion. It could not be avoided that the two modes of transport continued to obstruct each other at intersections. In September 1924 there was an accident with two deaths and several injuries when a handover ride of the Deutsche Reichsbahn lifted a tram sidecar from the tracks. In 1928 a barrier system was installed at the accident site.
After the 51.5 kW locomotives were withdrawn, the two 118 kW engines were given road numbers 1 and 2 with a second occupation. In October 1922, locomotive 3 was a machine for the freight railroad that was half of a high-speed locomotive Attempt in 1902 had reached a speed of 105 km / h. In exchange for its high-voltage motors, the asymmetrical vehicle received two DC motors connected in series with a combined output of around 270 kW. In 1929, the railroad's vehicle fleet consisted of four overhead line locomotives, one battery locomotive and two locomotives for overhead line and battery operation. There were also 64 owner-occupied cars and three special cars for heavy loads. The track network was 31 kilometers long, with 150 points and 32 turntables .
A track was laid for the future Osram machine glass factory, which initially served to transport the building materials. In 1926, the factory started production, and within the factory premises, a roll stand was operated on meter gauge tracks.
The number of deliveries rose from three in 1926 to five in 1928. That year around 49,000 wagons were transported, 80 percent of which were intended for the Siemens works. Material was also transported via the freight railway for Siemensbahn , which opened the S-Bahn line from Jungfernheide to Gartenfeld in 1929 . The Nonnendammallee station was expanded by three to five tracks in 1928, for which only a ten-year permit was granted due to Spandau's plans for a major arterial road that were still valid.
In 1931 there were already twelve daily handovers, which led to increasing disruption to road traffic. The material for the construction of the nearby West Power Plant was also transported by rail freight. In the course of its construction, the connecting line to the Ruhleben freight depot, which was planned in 1915, was created - with a modified route. Siemens and Berliner Kraft- und Licht-Aktiengesellschaft (Bekula) shared the costs of building the roughly two-kilometer stretch across the Spree to Nonnendammallee. When the new connection went into operation on March 1, 1932, the connection to the former military tracks was interrupted. At the beginning of the Second World War it was restored in order to have another Spree crossing available in the event of destruction by bombs.
At the end of 1939, the shunting operation was already suffering from the blackout measures ordered , the lack of rolling stock and the blockage of railway lines by military transports. From 1943 onwards, the increasing number of Allied air raids , which particularly affected the overhead lines, made operations more difficult . After each attack, the routes had to be searched for duds. Locomotive 4 was destroyed by an air mine in February 1944 . In that year the track length including the works tracks was 35.12 kilometers, there were seven locomotives and 23 turntables. In the Wernerwerk and in the Dynamowerk there was a so-called Germany curve .
1945–1988
The ravages of the war hit the freight railway and the former military railway hard. In the last days of the war, German troops blew up both bridges over the Spree, interrupting the connection to the state railway. Soviet troops restored the also heavily damaged S-Bahn line to Gartenfeld and created a connection to the freight railway at the terminus via a wooden ramp. On September 17th, the train service resumed, on the same day also the traffic to Industrieanlagen GmbH (Inag) via the former military railway (henceforth: Inag-Bahn). From 1946 to 1948, the Siemens freight railway's Spree Bridge was lifted and repaired.
Locomotives 1 and 2 are considered lost or destroyed in the Second World War. Three machines were damaged by bombs, and three more were taken by the Soviet occupiers. In 1946 the locomotive fleet was as follows:
- Locomotive 3: parked inoperable (repaired from the end of 1947)
- Locomotive 10: battery removed, missing ballast replaced with scrap rail
- Locomotive 11: burned out traction motor replaced with parts from locomotive 12 (from 1948 only locomotive for battery and catenary operation)
- Locomotive 12: roadworthy again at the end of 1946 (battery removed in 1948, missing ballast replaced with scrap rail)
- Kö 4371: ex Liebenwerda station , stopped in Siemensstadt as a result of the turmoil of the war, operations on the freight railway not occupied (picked up by the Reichsbahn in July 1948)
The 27 existing owner-occupied cars were mainly used to transport coal. In 1948, locomotives 11 and 12 received new type D54S traction motors from the Frankfurt (Oder) tram.
The operation of the non-electrified Inag-Bahn - up to six trips a day - was initially handled by Siemens with the battery locomotives. A rented for that traffic in September 1945 Henschel - steam locomotive may never used. In 1946/1947 the operation was carried out with an O&K diesel locomotive from the Inag subsidiary Rhenania-Ossag , then with a diesel locomotive from the Reichsbahn and finally with a three-axle locomotive from Deutz . Plans by the Siemens Güterbahn to acquire its own diesel locomotive for operation on the former military tracks or to electrify them ended in 1951 when the management of the Inag tracks was handed over to Westfälische Transport Aktiengesellschaft (WTAG). This ended battery operation, and in 1952 the batteries were also removed from Locomotive 11.
In 1951, Siemens locomotives carried 10,198 wagons, 3,765 of which were adjacent. In the years 1954/1955 the Nonnendammallee station received a third track. Between 1956 and 1958, the track length shrank to 28.15 kilometers, with 129 points and 11 turntables. In 1963 the railway had five neighboring connections: Inag, Motard, Osram , the ceramic supply company and the Jungfernheide waterworks, built between 1962 and 1964 .
In 1958, locomotive 10 was renamed No. 1 and locomotive 12, which was thoroughly overhauled in 1956, was renamed No. 2, and locomotive 11 was sold to a scrap dealer in 1959. In December 1965, Jung's No. 4, the first catenary-dependent locomotive with thyristor pulse control, came onto the tracks of the Siemens freight railway. As with all rail locomotives, the maximum speed of the 230 kW engine was set at 15 km / h.
In the 1962/1963 financial year, the Deutsche Reichsbahn handed over 10,505 cars and in 1968/1969 only 6,541 cars. The Nonnendammallee station was now mainly used for tank trucks to the fuel storage facility at Salzhof. In 1971/1972 the tracks were renewed on the most important lines and rails with S54 and UIC60 profiles were installed. At the same time there were major demolitions, the Motard company and the waterworks renounced their siding. The internal traffic with (1968/1969 still 33 existing) own freight wagons was stopped after the abandonment of the Elmo port in 1975. The track system east of Gartenfelder Straße (connection of the ceramic supply company and 1972-1974 used test track for linear motors ) were given up in 1977. In 1984, the delivery of freight wagons to the Bewag - Reuter thermal power station (formerly: Kraftwerk West) was given up, from then on they came directly from the Ruhleben freight yard.
In the course of the construction of the U7 underground line , Nonnendammallee was redesigned, the approx. 700 m long track to the switchgear was relocated from the middle of the street to the Siemens factory premises on the north side. In the late 1980s, around 20% of the total outgoing goods from all Siemens factories in Berlin, 75% of them from the Gartenfeld domestic appliance factory, were shipped via freight railways. The Deutsche Reichsbahn was responsible for running operations between the Ruhleben train station and the wagon transfer point on Nonnendammallee.
In 1987 the track length of the freight railway was approx. 20 kilometers, in addition there were 85 points, 11 bridges and a (no longer operational) turntable. In the autumn of 1988, Siemens AG gave up management, which was transferred to Rhenus AG when it was discontinued . This ended electrical operation.
Rhenus AG
At the turn of the millennium, Rhenus AG stopped rail operations on the freight railway. The Esso and Shell tank farms were demolished by 1996, and from 1997 the Wasserstadt Oberhavel residential area was built on the Salzhof site . In 2002, the Nonnendammallee station was still accessible from the Ruhleben station, as was the track from there to the gate of the Siemens factory in Gartenfeld. The track in the direction of Eiswerder had already been dismantled that year.
In 2017, the tracks were largely removed. The tank farms were demolished and the Gartenfelder Werke closed. The three-track transfer station in the middle of Nonnendammallee lies idle , but still exists.
Remarks
- ↑ Elmo = electric motor factory
literature
- Bodo Schulz / Michael Krolop: The private and industrial railways in Berlin (West) . 1st edition. C. Kersting, Niederkassel-Mondorf 1989, ISBN 3-925250-06-9 , p. 110-122 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Bodo Schulz / Michael Krolop: The private and industrial railways in Berlin (West) . C. Kersting, Niederkassel-Mondorf 1989, ISBN 3-925250-06-9 , p. 113 .
- ↑ a b Jörn Müller, Rolf Roland Scholze: The Köslin city and beach railway . VBN Verlag B. Neddermeyer, Berlin 2015, ISBN 978-3-941712-44-7 , p. 56-57 .
- ↑ Bodo Schulz / Michael Krolop: op. Cit. , P. 114.
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Kämpf: The tram in Spandau and around Spandau . Ed .: Heimatkundliche Vereinigung Spandau 1954 e. V. Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938648-05-6 , pp. 91-98 .
- ^ Henry Alex: A century of local traffic in Haselhorst . In: Verkehrsgeschichtliche Blätter . No. 2 , 2010, p. 41-47 .
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Kämpf: The tram in Spandau and around Spandau . Ed .: Heimatkundliche Vereinigung Spandau 1954 e. V. Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938648-05-6 , pp. 109-110 .
- ↑ Hans-Jürgen Kämpf: The tram in Spandau and around Spandau . Ed .: Heimatkundliche Vereinigung Spandau 1954 e. V. Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-938648-05-6 , pp. 159-184 .
- ↑ Bodo Schulz / Michael Krolop: op. Cit. , P. 116.
- ↑ Elmar Schütze: Shell in Haselhorst also released tanks for demolition . In: Berliner Zeitung . January 5, 1996 ( berliner-zeitung.de [accessed October 8, 2018]).
- ↑ On freight tracks across the capital: June 15, 2002 at: Interest group for the travel of trams and railways eV, accessed on October 16, 2018
- ^ Rainer W. During: No ideas for fallow land in Haselhorst . In: Der Tagesspiegel . December 28, 2017 ( tagesspiegel.de [accessed October 7, 2018]).