Freiberg tram
The Freiberg tram was a tram system in the Saxon city of Freiberg that connected the train station with the city center.
Around 31,000 people lived in the mountain town of Freiberg at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries. The distance from the train station to the city center was about one and a half kilometers and required a modern transport connection. The magistrate agreed with AEG that it would build an electric tram and operate it for ten years. However, the city itself took over management prematurely on April 1, 1905.
On August 11, 1902, operations began on the meter-gauge , single-track route network. Six railcars were available for this purpose, to which another was added in 1907.
The route began at the train station and headed north over Wernerplatz past the post office into the old town to the town hall. There it split into two routes. The 1.8 kilometer long “white line” ran on one strand past the castle to the end point Hainichener Strasse west of the Oberen Kreuzteich. The other, about 700 meters long, led from the town hall in an easterly direction over Herderstraße to the cathedral and Untermarkt to the Meißner Tor. It was used by the "red line" that also began at the train station. A short branch line branched off between the train station and Wernerplatz to the depot at the corner of Eherne Schlange and Schönlebestrasse.
After the beginning of the First World War, the “red line” had to cease operations on August 4, 1914 due to acute staff shortages. That is why the twelve-minute cycle was introduced in 1917. The section from town hall to Meißner Tor was dismantled shortly before the end of the war in autumn 1918, and the tracks were used to repair the remaining route. But the rest of the operation also ended the following year. Due to the economic situation, traffic was stopped on December 31, 1919. When there was no longer any hope of restarting operations, all vehicles were sold to the Zwickau tram in 1921 and 1922 and the tracks and overhead lines were dismantled. Individual track remnants remained in the pavement until the 1970s. The last remains of the track were in the Brazen Queue or at the junction with Wasserturmstrasse and were expanded in the course of road construction work. As the last remnants of the Freiberg tram, there are some overhead line rosettes on the corner of Obermarkt and Burgstrasse , including a gold-plated one on the bay window of the corner building.
literature
- Author collective: The trams in the GDR. Berlin 1978
