Bremerhaven tram

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disused tram
Bremerhaven tram
image
Hansa car on line 2 via Alte Geestebrücke (1982)
Basic information
Country Germany
city Bremerhaven
opening June 26, 1881
electrification 1898 (battery) / 28 August 1908 (overhead line)
Shutdown July 30, 1982
operator Bremerhaven AG Transport Company (VGB)
Infrastructure
Formerly the largest
route 		approx. 21 km (1927)
Track length 39.14 km (1927)
Gauge 1435 mm ( standard gauge )

The Bremerhaven tram operated in the Lower Weser area in the area of ​​today's cities of Bremerhaven and Geestland . The tram service began in 1881 as a standard gauge horse-drawn tram , which was electrified by the 1908th In 1982, the Bremerhaven AG public transport company finally switched its last tram line to bus operation : From September 1, 1977, line 2 was only operated on working days during the day; the rest of the time, bus line 1 ran

founding

The Bremen entrepreneur Heinrich Alfes applied for a concession for a horse-drawn tram between Lehe and Geestemünde in 1879 . Together with the Bremen lawyer Wilkens and the banker Loose, he then founded the Bremerhaven Tram Actiengesellschaft with a share capital of 450,000 marks. On Sunday June 26, 1881, the horse-drawn tram ran for the first time on the Geestemünde- Wurster Strasse line . At that time the Bremerhaven tram had 14 carriages, 50 horses and 30 employees.

In the first financial year, 846,944 people were transported. There weren't any stops back then. You stopped the horse-drawn tram and got on. The railways initially only ran on a single track and had to wait for oncoming wagons at passing points. The Bremerhaven tram grew rapidly, so that it soon had 120 horses in the stable on Wurster Straße and 50 horses on the border with Wulsdorf . The train traveled in the direction of Wulsdorf in 1891 after it was extended on Georgstrasse to the “Schweizerhalle”.

In 1892 a total of 1,303,478 people were already using the Bremerhaven tram. In 1896 the line to Speckenbüttel was added and the route network was gradually expanded to double-track.

electrification

Tram railcar 56 around 1910

In 1898 an accumulator train drove from Karlsburg via Kaiserstraße to the Rothersand stop; from 1899 on to the Lloydhalle. Ten years later, on August 11, 1908, the Wulsdorf tram depot was put into operation and on August 28, 1908 the electric tram with overhead line operation was introduced in the inner-city area. The route, the lines were labeled 1 to 5, now extended to Speckenbüttel, Wulsdorf and the fishing port . On September 2, 1911, it was extended to the Niederweserbahn train station on Weserstraße .

Further development

In 1920 the city administrations of Bremerhaven, Geestemünde and Lehe participated with the purchase of half of the share capital in Bremerhavener Straßenbahn AG . On June 3, 1925, the first public bus ran on the Hauptbahnhof- Schiffdorf line . A month later, the Reichspost opened the bus route between Dedesdorf and Wulsdorf, which was later taken to the main station.

In 1924 the towns of Lehe and Geestemünde merged to form the new town of Wesermünde and in 1926 the company was renamed the Bremerhaven-Wesermünde AG tram . To mark the centenary of Bremerhaven's existence in 1927, there were also some changes in local transport: the tram line was continued from Langen station to Friedrichsruh. The total track length of the tram was now 39.14 kilometers. There were now 12 buses registered in Wesermünde. A bus line now even ran to Weddewarden . On August 17, 1929, the streetcar AG introduced a permanent bus line to Spaden , in March 1931 (until 1933) a motor boat ferry service between the canal bridge and the fishing port.

In 1939, the city of Bremerhaven was incorporated into Wesermünde, so that the company was renamed the Tram Wesermünde Aktiengesellschaft . After Wesermünde was renamed Bremerhaven in 1947, the name was changed to Verkehrsgesellschaft Bremerhaven AG (VGB).

In March 1949, the tram lines 1 to 6 were operated; complemented by a trolleybus line and several bus feeder lines.

In 1952 the track network was still quite extensive: the lines to Wulsdorf, the fishing port and the neighboring town of Langen are still in operation. At the Wulsdorf depot and at the Debstedter Weg (Speckenbüttel) there were still triangular tracks. There were 5 level crossings in the VGB network.

A night offer - with several trips after midnight - was run according to the VGB timetable of December 1958: At the weekend the trams 2 + 3 and during the week the bus night line R.

Line 4, the "Fischbahn"

The tram network consisted of the lines in 1960

Line 4 ran from Weserlust and in the afternoon from the main station to Hall IX in the fishing port. It was discontinued on August 31, 1959. Since September 1, 1959, only buses have served this district. The south branch of line 3 to Wulsdorf fell victim to the reconstruction of the fishing port ramp in 1960. In the 1961 timetable, a rail replacement service with lines 5/6 also took place to Lehe station in the evening and on Sunday morning. From the main station to Georgstrasse , the trams drove through the narrow Buchtstrasse, in the opposite direction through the wide Grashoffstrasse. In the 1960s, the track in Buchtstraße was replaced by a second one in Grashoffstraße. From November 1966, line 2 traffic was abandoned in the clockwise direction. From the Alte Geestebrücke the railways only drove through Borriesstrasse to Elbinger Platz and from there over Georgstrasse and Grashoffstrasse to the main station. A pull-out track was built into the bend towards Friedrich-Ebert-Straße .

In 1964, line 3 on the remaining section between the main train station and Lehe train station was finally closed. From October 1964 the harbor ferry in the Kaiserhafen also drove for the last time. The port launches were replaced by the new bus line 14 from January 1965.

attitude

Last trip of the 3 to Lehe

After 74 years, line 2, which ran from 1958 between the main station and the city limits of Langen, ceased tram operations on July 30, 1982. Since then, only buses have been running in the city area. Passenger numbers have almost halved from 25 million then to 13 million today since 1975, when the tram was still running every day and late into the evening.

The Verkehrsgesellschaft Bremerhaven AG (VGB) has been advertising with the name BremerhavenBus since 2001 .

vehicles

In September 1924 the tram had 60 motor vehicles and 55 trailer cars.

The latest vehicles when operations were closed were the Hansa short-articulated cars built in 1968 . There were five railcars (nos. 80 to 84) and five associated sidecars (nos. 218 to 222). These cars were handed over to the Bremen tram after ceasing to operate. From 1995 to 1998 they were passed on to the Timișoara tram in Romania . All five railcars and three sidecars are still in use there today.

"Offenbacher" train in front of the Bremerhaven main station

Some of the other vehicles that were still in existence when operations were closed were brought to the Hanover Tram Museum in Wehmingen. The Association for the Preservation of Historical Values ​​Bremerhaven e. V. bought back wagons 71 (built in 1950, came from Opladen to Bremerhaven in 1955 ) and 79 (built in 1957, came from Offenbach to Bremerhaven in 1967) from there in 2010 and temporarily parked them at Heinschenwalde station until they were reconditioned .

Bremerhaven tram train parked at Heinschenwalde station, June 2019

The Offenbach trailer No. 216 followed in 2012.

With the railcar 7 (north wagon, 1908), a two-axle railcar has been preserved in Bremerhaven. Until 1948 he carried the car number 58; in 1977 on the occasion of the city anniversary on Theodor-Heuss-Platz used as a café car. After the tram was discontinued, it could be seen in the former Stadtwerke Museum, from 2007 to 2014 in the exhibition Model City Bremerhaven . Briefly placed in the bus depot of Verkehrsgesellschaft Bremerhaven AG, it has been in the Rotersand flea market hall since October 2015.

outlook

In 1998 the Verkehrsclub Deutschland (VCD) presented a concept for the reintroduction of trams on the main axes in Bremerhaven. Expert reports from the management consultancy TransTec (Hanover) from 2000/2002 supported the concept. The project was not implemented by the city for cost reasons.

The reintroduction of a tram has been discussed again since the end of 2012.

literature

  • Andreas Mausolf, Wilhelm Esmann: The history of the Bremerhaven tram . 1990, ISBN 3-88255-215-8 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Paul Homann: VGB-Nachrichten. (PDF; 3.1 MB) p. 478; Friday, September 1, 2017 , accessed on June 27, 2020 .
  2. ↑ Paul Homann: Why was bus line 1 set up 40 years ago? Retrieved June 11, 2020 .
  3. ^ VGB timetable 1977. Accessed on January 1, 2020 .
  4. ↑ Paul Homann: ÖPNV- Streetennetze from 1881. (PDF, 2.7 MB) p. 9 (bookmark from November 1, 1908) , accessed on June 11, 2020 .
  5. ↑ VGB timetable, valid from March 1st, 1949. Verkehrsgesellschaft Bremerhaven AG, accessed on June 25, 2020 .
  6. ^ Paul Homann: Tram Bremerhaven - track position December 31, 1952. In: Tram Bremerhaven - track position December 31, 1952. Retrieved May 4, 2019 .
  7. ↑ VGB night connections according to the 1958 timetable. Accessed June 11, 2020 .
  8. ↑ VGB timetable 1961 (PDF; 32 MB) Retrieved on June 11, 2020 .
  9. ^ Verkehrsgesellschaft Bremerhaven AG: June 26, 1881–26. June 1981 - A hundred years young - In the beginning there was the horse tram . Bremerhaven 1981.
  10. ^ Paul Homann: Bremerhaven route networks. (PDF; 2.7 MB) Retrieved June 11, 2020 .
  11. ^ Paul Homann: VGB-Nachrichten. (PDF; 3.1 MB) p. 16 (notification from July 31, 1982) , accessed on June 27, 2020 .
  12. ^ Paul Homann: Wagenpark der Bremerhaven tram 1924. In: Wagenpark der Bremerhaven tram 1924. Retrieved on July 5, 2019 .
  13. ↑ Vehicle fleet list
  14. ↑ Project on the club website
  15. ^ Paul Homann: VGB-Nachrichten. (PDF; 3.1 MB) p. 312; Friday, February 23, 2007 , accessed on June 27, 2020 .
  16. ↑ Everything that turns and flashes. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on November 7, 2015 ; accessed on January 8, 2019 .
  17. ↑ VCD concept reintroduction of the tram
  18. ^ Bremerhaven tram