Mulhouse light rail

Car 3 in the turning loop out of town, on the destination sign is Rebberg as the end point . Zool. Garden. specified

The Mulhouse Stadtbahn was a trolleybus company in Mulhouse in Alsace , at that time still called Gleislose Bahn in German-speaking countries . It was set up in 1907 as a supplement to the conventional tram on rails that had existed since 1882 and had to be stopped again on July 14, 1918 after a fire destroyed the car hall and all vehicles. The city of Mulhouse itself owned the business.

Regardless of the tram covered here, there was another trolleybus operation in Mulhouse between July 5, 1946 and November 4, 1968; it took over some of the routes from the tram that was closed in 1960.

Route

Contemporary city map with the route in the city center, the legend differentiates between the tram on the one hand and the unattended light rail on the other

The 1.7 kilometer long and a maximum of 83 per thousand steep section of the Stadtbahn connected the Neuquartierplatz , today Place de la République , in the city center with the entrance of the Mülhausen Zoo at the end of Tiergartenstraße , today's Rue du Jardin Zoologique . Looking outwards from the city, it first crossed the Rhine-Rhône Canal and the Müllheim – Mulhouse railway line on the Guteleut Bridge , then passed Tivoliplatz and then followed the Kamispfad , now Boulevard Léon Gambetta . The Stadtbahn also opened up the Rebberg villa colony on the hills in the south of the city, for which the existing tram did not seem suitable as a means of transport. In the course of the route, the road surface alternated between macadam without packing , asphalt and large pavement .

In the city center, the light rail operated a block loop in an anti-clockwise direction. Coming from the Rebberg, this led through Guteleut-Strasse , Baseler Strasse , Handel-Strasse and Jacques-Henner-Strasse back to Guteleut-Strasse . On the forecourt of the zoological garden there was also a counter-clockwise turning loop.

history

The Mülhausen urban railway was built and operated according to the so-called Schiemann system , developed by the Saxon company Society for Trackless Railways Max Schiemann & Co. from Wurzen . The date of commissioning is July 1907, the official opening finally took place on September 11, 1907. On that day, however, a brake failure led to an accident, so that regular service could only be started on October 9, 1908.

As a special feature, the vehicles used in Mulhouse only had one instead of the usual two pantograph poles . This was possible because the two wires of the overhead line were arranged at a distance of only 15 centimeters from each other. This meant that they were much closer to each other than is usual with other trolleybus systems. This so-called “ single-rod contact system ” was only used in a few companies; the system discussed here was the first in the world to do this. The new construction also made it possible to provide a separate pair of contact lines for each direction of travel. In contrast to all previously built Schiemann systems, this enabled the cars to meet without stopping; the total length of the contact line was 3.3 kilometers. The light rail drove in seven and a half-minute clock , freight did not take place. The electricity price for operating the plant in 1908 was ten pfennigs per kilowatt hour .

In addition to the Rebbergbahn , an eleven-kilometer ring line was planned in 1908 , but this was no longer implemented. The Rebberg, on the other hand, remained completely without transport links after the tram was shut down, and it was not until 1930 that a replacement bus service ran there.

vehicles

The Mulhouse Stadtbahn had a total of four railcars with the road numbers 1 to 4. They had 20 seats each, weighed 2.8 tons and had an engine output of 15 to 22 horsepower . There were no trailers , but ten sidecars should have been procured for the unrealized ring line - in addition to 20 other railcars.

gallery

Car 1 in the city center
Car 4 in front of the entrance to the zoo
A light rail travels out of town on Tivoliplatz
Car 2 passes Tivoliplatz on the way out of town, the two contact wires in each direction can be clearly seen
Car 1 reaches an intermediate stop on the vineyard on the way to the zoo
Car 1 drives into the city and passes the striking building at the junction of Rue Stoeber and Boulevard Léon Gambetta