Eisenach tram

Eisenach tram
Railcar leaves Karlstrasse and enters the market (1974)
City map from 1925 with tram routes
Route length:	9.2 km
Gauge :	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Power system :	600 V  =
Minimum radius :	15 m
Legend hospital 1925-1969 graveyard 1909-1969 Hörsel Mühlhäuser Strasse 1909-1975 Green Tree 1909-1975 Thuringian Railway and Werra Railway Westbahnhof 1913-1975 Werra Railway Katharinenstrasse 1909-1975 Sun 1909-1975 market 1909-1975 Mariental 1897-1944 imagination 1897-1958 Lily ground 1897-1958 Reutervilla 1897-1958 Frauenberg 1897-1958 Karlsplatz 1897-1975 Car hall at Helenenstrasse 1897-1929 Wagenhalle Sommerstrasse 1929-1975 Central Station 1897-1975 Thuringian Railway Langensalzaer Strasse 1913-1975 East town 1913-1975

Ticket for three sections

Former Eisenacher Wagen 19 before refurbishment as a historic car of the Jena tram, parked in Jena-Zwatzen in 1979

The tram Eisenach was on August 3, 1897 Eisenach opened and as part of a so-called modal shift shut down on 31 December 1975th

history

With the increase in tourism in Eisenach, there was a project in 1891 for a steam-powered train into the Annatal with a branch to the Wartburg . In 1897, the Eisenacher Elektrizitätswerk (EWE) opened a 3.1 km long, meter-gauge electric tram route from the main station to the Mariental . In 1909, two line extensions followed from Karlsplatz via Markt to Frankfurter Strasse, and branching off from there a stretch from Katharinenstrasse to the cemetery. Between 1910 and 1913, the network was expanded to the Westbahnhof and Weimar Street. In 1922 the line leading through Kasernenstrasse (August-Bebel-Strasse) to the hospital was moved to Hospitalstrasse. The new branch with a turnout was now on the corner of Georgenstrasse and Hospitalstrasse at the restaurant "Sonne". The new section between the hospital and the cemetery was the last; In 1925 the network reached its greatest expansion with a route length of 9.2 kilometers. A branch line to the Wartburg was not built.

In 1929 the old depot on Helenenstraße was closed in favor of a new wagon hall in Sommerstraße / Uferstraße and the Gotha wagon factory delivered six new railcars . In 1936 a project emerged to convert urban local transport to trolleybus operation. Due to the war, the section in the Mariental was closed in 1943. It was not put back into operation and was dismantled in the following years. The new final stop was the Phantasie excursion restaurant .

Due to the effects of the war on track and contact line systems and a direct bomb hit in the car hall and the neighboring power supply, operations had to be completely stopped in September 1944. From July 1947 tram operations could gradually be resumed. In 1956 a change to trolleybuses was discussed again. On February 3, 1958, the section between DSF Platz (Karlsplatz) and the “Phantasie” restaurant was closed and switched to bus operation.

From 1960, the now " VEB  (K) Städtischer Verkehr" modernized the contact line network and the power supply systems. The transfer table the vehicle hall was a turnout road replaced. The replacement of the bridge over the Hörsel in Mühlhäuser Strasse was carried out without a track, so that from January 21, 1969, the end of the hospital line was in front of the Hörselbrücke in Mühlhäuser Strasse at the corner of Amrastrasse.

On December 31, 1975, tram traffic in Eisenach was stopped, and on January 1, 1976, Hungarian Ikarus buses took over inner-city traffic. After the cessation of operations, the dismantling of the contact lines and rails began. Some of the vehicles were scrapped or given to other tram operators.

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  Narrow in Karlstrasse

• 

  Tram in Karlstrasse

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  Railcar on Karlsplatz

business

The Eisenach tram was operated with bidirectional vehicles until it was closed. At peak times and in certain times of the day, the railcars were given sidecars on the Mariental line and on the hospital line. The Westbahnhof line was always used solo due to the lack of transfer options. In the last years of operation of the tram, only three sidecars were left, of which mostly only one, namely the Bw 32, was in use. If a sidecar was carried on the journey to the east of the city , it was left standing at the Langensalzaer Strasse siding and the railcar drove alone to the final stop at Weimarian Strasse. Usually the oncoming railcar took the sidecar with it again. As a rule, the unneeded sidecar was parked on Karlsplatz on the remainder of the Mariental line. In the last few years of operation, the Eisenach tram service was idle during the night from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. The tracks were then set in the vehicle hall.

stretch

There were three lines that did not have a line number:

• Hospital line : (Hospital) Mühlhäuser Straße - Oststadt; (Hospital – Mühlhäuser Str. Due to the new construction of the Hörsel Bridge without tracks only until 1969)
• Westbahnhof line : Westbahnhof - Langensalzaer Straße
• Mariental-Line : (Mariental -) Phantasie - Karlsplatz / Platz der DSF - Bahnhof (until 1958, Mariental until 1944)

vehicles

Railcar 5 with an open sidecar around 1900

In the year operations began, five railcars (1-5) manufactured by P. Herbrand in Cologne and four sidecars (6-9) from the Falkenried vehicle workshop in Hamburg were procured. In the following years, the vehicle inventory was supplemented by various manufacturers. In the course of the first two route extensions in 1909, the railcars 10–16 were procured from the North German wagon factory . In 1929 additional railcars 19–24 were procured, this time from the Gothaer Waggonfabrik . For the year-round sidecar operation established from this time on, used sidecars 17-18 were procured from Mansfeld . The vehicle population reached its greatest extent in 1929 with 18 railcars and six sidecars. After the Second World War, vehicles were isolated and replaced by vehicles that were decommissioned in Erfurt. From 1959, first the railcars 25-29 and the sidecars 31-33 and a little later the sidecar 35 and the sidecar 34 from Mühlhausen to Eisenach. After replacing the transfer table as an access to the wagon hall with a route, motor coaches and sidecars with a slightly larger center distance could also be used in Eisenach. The last vehicle access was the 40-45 railcars (Gothaer Wagonfabrik AG), also from Erfurt to Eisenach. The railcar 18 ^II , which had already come to Eisenach in 1956 , was converted into a working railcar in 1960. In the last year of operation, 1975, the Eisenach tram still had ten railcars, three sidecars and one service vehicle (railcars 19-20, 22-24, 40-43 and 45, sidecars 31, 33 and 35 and work cars 18 ^II ).

Three Eisenach railcars have been preserved. In addition to car 19 (Gothaer Waggonfabrik, 1929), which is used in Jena as the historic motor car 26, the Erfurt local transport fans maintain the former car 42 (formerly Erfurt; Waggonfabrik Gotha, 1938) as a historic motor car 92. The work car 18 ^II (AG für Eisenbahn - and military supplies Weimar, 1913) was put back into operation as a historic railcar 257 at the Leipzig Tram Museum after refurbishing and re-gauging.

The Eisenach vehicles had no extra-low voltage system until the end and therefore only directional lamps with permanent light as direction indicators , as were common on trams of the 1920s and 1930s.

Depots

Helenenstrasse

The first depot of the Eisenach tram was on Helenenstrasse. It was closed when the new depot on Uferstrasse opened in 1929. The building was demolished in 1993.

Sommerstrasse / Uferstrasse

The new depot at the corner of Sommerstrasse and Uferstrasse was built between 1925 and 1929 on a former storage area of ​​the power station and opened in August 1929. The depot, which was built according to the latest technical standards, housed the 20-meter-wide and 48-meter-long wagon hall for up to 25 wagons, a workshop with a forge, joinery, paint shop, engine fitter as well as an armature winding workshop, administrative offices, social facilities for the staff and a metal forming shop. Inside the hall, three-hinged wooden frames were spanned 19 meters.

During the air raids on the city in autumn 1944, the extension of the carriage hall was destroyed; There were a total of 51 deaths on the company premises. Operations were suspended until the summer of 1945. The reconstruction of the depot was only completed in 1966 with the restoration of the social rooms. In the course of the reconstruction, the wagon hall was converted to accommodate buses as early as 1951, and a siding was dispensed with.

In the 1990s, the former tram depot was converted into a city ​​car park and opened as such in 1998.

Relics

Exhibition boards in Sommerstraße (2010)

The car shed on Sommerstrasse / Uferstrasse was retained as a multi-storey car park. The last remains of the tram track can still be seen on Karlsplatz in front of the Nikolaitor . In front of the former car shed, a section of track was paved again when it was converted into a parking garage in memory of the Eisenach tram. Since September 2010, five panels of a permanent exhibition on the company's history can be viewed there. In some townhouses, hooks and suspensions of the catenary can still be seen along the lines .

literature

• Eckardt Weber: The tram in Eisenach. Kenning Verlag, Nordhorn 1997, ISBN 3-927587-63-X .
• Gerhard Bauer and others: Tram archive. Vol. 4: Erfurt / Gera - Halle (Saale) / Dessau area. transpress publishing house for transport, Berlin 1984.
• Arno Sippel and Heinz Seidel: Festschrift for the 75th anniversary of the tram in Eisenach. Eisenach 1972.

Web links

Commons : Trams in Eisenach  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Historic trams in Eisenach at wisoveg.de
• Thuringian Tram Friends eV
• 3. Tram depot. Open Monument Day 2010, Eisenach.de ( Memento from February 11, 2013 in the web archive archive.today )

Individual evidence

1. ↑ On Friday, June 13th, the new historic railcar 257 of the Leipzig electric tram was presented. Tram Museum Leipzig ( Memento from September 10, 2012 in the web archive archive.today ).
2. ^ Gerhard Bauer and others: Tram archive. Vol. 1: History, technology, operation. transpress publishing house for traffic, Berlin 1983, p. 161.

Coordinates: 50 ° 58 ′ 42 ″  N , 10 ° 19 ′ 32 ″  E