Szczecin Road and Railway Company
The Stettiner Straßen-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft was the predecessor of today's Stettin tram .
As early as 1878 the city of Stettin , at that time the seat of the chief president for the Prussian province of Pomerania , and the district of Randow had granted the engineer Johannes Büsing the right to build and operate trams in the city and the surrounding area. He transferred these rights to the Stettiner Straßen-Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft founded on March 25, 1879 as a stock corporation.
Horse tram
As early as August 23, 1879, the 5.03 km long first horse-drawn tram line Westend - Berliner Tor - Rossmarkt - Königstor - Pölitzer Strasse - Elysium (Grünhof) was opened, followed by the second on October 16, 1879: Odertor - Berliner Tor - Luisenstrasse - Königstor - Grabow - Frauendorf with a length of 6.33 kilometers. The depots were built in the Westend on Falkenwalder Straße and in Züllchow.
The operation on the single-track network developed satisfactorily, so that after a few months it was operated at times every 12 minutes, and since 1880 all day. After Szczecin had grown into a city with 100,000 inhabitants in 1885, the route network comprised the following three lines in 1887
- Elysium - Luisenstraße - Oberwiek / train station - Cap Chérie
- Bellevue - Berliner Tor - Grabow - Frauendorf
- Falkenwalder Strasse - Breite Strasse - (summer) - steamship bulwark
The statistics for 1891 name a network of 16.8 kilometers on which 195 horses with 39 carriages were available. A few years later, the electrification of the horse-drawn tram was considered, especially as there were significant inclines in some places in the city, which made expensive tensioning services necessary. The Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft ( AEG ) in Berlin was commissioned to plan an electric train; construction began in the summer of 1896.
Electric tram
The first electrically operated tram ran from July 4, 1897 from Westend to Breite Straße; By the end of 1897, this 2.6 kilometer long line grew to 18.6 kilometers of mostly double-track lines, so that in May 1898 the last horse-drawn tram could stop operating.
With the constant increase in the number of inhabitants (in 1900 there were already 200,000), the tram network also grew rather quickly.
On October 1, 1903 there were five lines on 25.9 kilometers:
- Westend, Eckerberg dairy - Breite Straße
- Tiergarten - Nemitz cemetery
- Bellevue - Bredow - Frauendorf
- Ringbahn
- Central Station - Lange Strasse
In 1912 the eight lines already had line numbers and colored signal discs:
- 1 (yellow) Neu Westend - Berliner Tor - Lastadi e - Altdammer Straße
- 2 (gray) Berliner Tor - Schinkelplatz - main cemetery
- 3 (Orange) Hbf - Paradeplatz - Eckerberger Wald
- 4 (green) Tiergarten - Bollwerk - Kohlmarkt - Arndtplatz / Grünstraße
- 5 (blue) Alleestraße - Königsplatz - Dunzig ferry
- 6 (white) Hbf - Bollwerk - Grenzstraße / Pölitzer Straße
- 7 (red) Bellevuestraße - Königstor - Grabow - Frauendorf
- 8 (black) Schinkelplatz - K-Wilhelm-Strasse - Birkenstrasse / Grabower Strasse
The First World War and its consequences brought numerous restrictions on operations from 1914 onwards; after all, parcel delivery between several post offices in the city began in 1919.
In 1924, the city of Szczecin took over the majority of the share capital in the tram company, which has now expanded its range so that at the end of 1930 the operating length was 49.96 kilometers:
- 1 racetrack - airport (11.6 km)
- 2 Berliner Tor - Wendorf (3.5 km)
- 3 Pommerensdorf - Eckenberger Forest (8.1 km)
- 4 Central Station - Hospital (5.8 km)
- 5 Braunsfelde - Dunzig (5.8 km)
- 6 Central Station - Zabelsdorf (5.7 km)
- 7 Bellevue - Gotzlow (9.6 km) (extended from Frauendorf in 1927/28)
As early as December 7, 1928, an additional motor transport company was set up, which at the beginning of the Second World War had nine bus routes (63.9 km), including two city routes (8.1 km) and six overland routes from Stettin to Altdamm (6.5 km ); - Rose Garden (7.7 km); - Hökendorf (4.7 km); - Podejuch (6.5 km); - Falkenwalde (9.8 km); - Neuenkirchen (10 km) and one from Gotzlow to Pölitz (10.6 km) included.
Incorporation into the Szczecin municipal utilities
The general meeting of the tram company on June 7, 1937 transferred the entire transport operations to the main shareholder, who now held 77% of the shares. It now operated as Stettiner Stadtwerke GmbH - Dept. Tram and Motor Transport.
According to the manual of the public transport company of 1940 the route length was: 47.8 kilometers (44.2 km double track , 3.6 km single track). There were 120 railcars, 140 sidecars and 13 work cars as well as 24 buses.
By the beginning of World War II, the population had grown to around 350,000 people. After the first heavy air raid on 20/21 In April 1943, a steady decline in traffic began, until in the first quarter of 1945 with the approaching Eastern Front, traffic came to a standstill; This was followed by the evacuation of the city on April 25, 1945.
Some of the workforce returned to Stettin soon after the end of the war and, together with Polish personnel, began to make the electricity supply and the tram operational again. The Stadtwerke Stettin were dissolved on July 7, 1945. It was replaced by the new Tramwaje i Autobusy miasta Szczecina transport company . Tram traffic on the two sections from the Nemitz train station to the Berliner Tor and from the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial to Schmiedestrasse was restarted on August 12, 1945.
literature
- Karl-Heinz Drewelow and Wolfgang Krüger: Trams in Pommern, Egglham 1989
- KH Gewandt: The tram in Stettin, part 1 in the tram magazine issue 58, November 1985
- Public Transport Handbook 1940