Altenburg tram
The Altenburg tram operated in Altenburg from 1895 to 1920 .
history
The Aktiengesellschaft Straßenbahn und Elektricitätswerk in Altenburg was founded in 1894 to supply the residential city of Altenburg of the Duchy of Saxony-Altenburg with electricity and to set up a public transport connection there. The Allgemeine Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft ( AEG ) was the main shareholder and laid out a 4.5-kilometer single-track line with a total of five switches in meter gauge . This connected the Altenburg train station with the city center; At the theater the train split and circumnavigated the city center in a loop up to Schützenstrasse. At Agnesplatz a track branched off to Wilhelmstrasse, where the depot and the power station were located. On April 18, 1895, operations with eight railcars were opened. Furthermore, from September 16, 1900, shipments were transported between the train station and the post office on Josephsplatz (Theaterplatz) with two special post railcars . Apart from the horse-drawn tram in Döbeln , which did this as early as 1892, it was the first postal tram in Germany.
In the time of crisis after the end of the First World War, the tram could no longer be operated economically and was discontinued on March 31, 1920. Since May 14, 1923, the company has been known as “Altenburg AG Power Supply”. Since the rails and overhead lines had already been dismantled, the tram could no longer be reopened. Parts of a car body were rediscovered in the 1980s. The car, manufactured in 1894 by P. Herbrand & Co. Cologne and Allgemeine Elektrizitäts-Gesellschaft, was restored in Halle (Saale) in 1991 and is now in the Halle Tram Museum with the number Tw4 as a historic vehicle. Electric operation began in Halle in 1891 with identical vehicles.
On October 1, 1929, the city of Altenburg set up a bus operation in the form of a municipal own operation, which in 1939 maintained two city bus routes and two overland routes to Schmölln and Zechau . Thirteen buses were available for this.
literature
- The trams in the GDR, Berlin 1978
- Günter H. Köhler: Post and Tram. Konkordia-Verlag, Bühl 1998, ISBN 3-7826-0156-4 .