Guben tram

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Network plan

The tram Guben connected the northwest of the same name Brandenburg town built Bahnhof Guben to the east of the Neisse past, now Polish, Old Town by an electric tram.

Railcar on the Neißebrücke along Frankfurter Strasse (around 1920)

Its construction was delayed until 1903, although the city had already signed a concession agreement with the German Society for Electrical Enterprises in Frankfurt am Main in 1899 . Only after their merger with Elektrizitäts-AG, formerly W. Lahmeyer & Co. (EAG), did the planning resume. It began at the same time as the construction of the power station and the tram in Guben. The power station went into operation on December 20, 1903, and test drives on the tram began on February 16 of the following year. On February 24, 1904, the tram started its regular service.

The former course of the tracks in the pavement at the Markt station on what is now the Polish city side in Gubin

The route was two and a half kilometers long and laid out in meter gauge. It began at the state train station and led across Bahnhofstrasse, where the three-track depot was located, to Frankfurter Strasse. Then it crossed the Neisse and traversed the narrow streets of the old town to the Lubstbrücke, which for technical reasons could not be used at first. There were a total of four sidings, but not at the two endpoints, as there were initially only six railcars; but in 1905 two sidecars were added. As a rule, the carriages ran eight times an hour, and four times during the quieter times of the day.

In 1913 the EAG spun off the tram operation and founded the Guben GmbH tram , in which the city of Guben also took a 50.37 percent stake in 1928 so that city bus services could be set up. In 1914 the EAG wanted to comply with the repeated requests made by the population for an extension of the railway. The beginning of the war and the subsequent economic crisis prevented this. In 1920 the operation was stopped for a few days, a permanent cessation prevented a decision of the district court. In November 1923 operations were stopped for several months due to inflation and only resumed in June 1924 after a decision by the Berlin Court of Appeal. From December 15, 1927, the necessary expansion of the traffic service brought a bus operation, which the Guben GmbH streetcar took over itself in 1928. The tram got line number 1 after the bus service went into operation.

The tram only remained a small percentage of the passengers in the following years; in addition, after more than thirty years of operation, expensive renewals would have been necessary. So it was decided to cease operations on June 8, 1938 and replace them with buses. In 1939, 18 buses ran on six city and suburban lines.

literature

  • Günther Klebes: Once in Guben. In: Straßenbahn-Magazin , Issue 55 (February 1985), p. #.
  • Norbert Kuschinski: Wilhelm Pieck City Guben. In: Tram Archive 6, Cottbus Magdeburg / Schwerin Rostock area. transpress VEB Verlag für Verkehrwesen, Berlin, ISBN 3-344-00003-9 , pp. 225–228.