Sibiu Tram

A former Swiss standard car from Geneva at the cemetery

Route length:

15.5 km

1000 mm ( meter gauge )

		Note: not all stops are shown in the city center

		Gara Mare
		Depot until 1970
		Piața Dragoons
		Piața Cibin
		Cibin
		Piața Cluj
		Gara Turnișor
		Piața Mare
		Piața Unirii
		Parcul Sub Arini
		Trinkbach
		Depot from 1970
		Cimitirul Municipal
		Cimitirul Eroilor
		Han Dumbrava (formerly Dumbrava)
		Muzeul Satului I
		Muzeul Satului II
		Oraca
		Fabrica Dumbrava (formerly Sitex Dumbrava)
		Lunca
		Troita
		City limits
		Rășinari Pod
		Râul Seviș
		Rășinari Intrare / Ieșire
		Rășinari Muzeu
		Rășinari Șteaza
		Rășinari Centru

The Hermannstadt tram is the tram system of the Romanian city of Hermannstadt ( Romanian Sibiu ). The meter-gauge system has existed since 1905 - when the city was still part of the Kingdom of Hungary under its then name Nagyszeben - and was operated by the Tursib transport company until 2011 . Today only part of the route is used for tourism purposes.

history

opening

The tram in Sibiu was opened on September 8th, 1905 by the Electric Light Rail Corporation , which was founded especially for this purpose in the same year . The first route connected the Great Station ( Gara Mare ) via the upper town (Orașul de Sus) with the entrance to the Alder Park (Parcul Sub Arini) on the outskirts. The 2.388 kilometer long connection replaced the Gleislose Bahn Hermannstadt which opened in August 1904 , an early trolleybus operation that ran on the same route. This did not prove itself and had to be given up again in October 1904 due to technical problems. The steepest section of the route at the Ursuline Church at nine percent also caused problems for the tram and therefore had to be later flattened to a maximum gradient of seven percent. The power station was on the station forecourt, the depot a little east of it, already in today's Strada Uzinei. Initially wrong tram in the six-minute cycle .

Postcard on the occasion of the opening
Strada General Magheru: at the steepest point, this car drives downhill to the station
The switch on the Piața Unirii
Ticket from Hungarian times, valid between the train station and the cadet school

Extensions

From 1910, the Oberstadtlinie cars crossed the Erlenpark on the so-called Föhrendamm

The tramway was expanded for the first time on May 15, 1910, when the existing route - crossing the Alder Park in the course of today's Strada Avrig on a railway embankment - was extended to the municipal cemetery (Cimitirul Municipal) opened in 1907. The second expansion followed on August 10, 1912, when a new second line from the station to the lumber yard (Piața Cibin) in the lower town (Oraşul de Jos) went into operation. The new route ended in front of the Zibinsbrücke or the Sagtor. Henceforth a distinction was made between the two routes in the upper town line and the lower town line .

During the First World War , the third expansion followed on May 15, 1915, since then the railways of the Oberstadtlinie have been running beyond the cemetery to Junge Wald, in Romanian Dumbrava , where a new forest management opened at that time. After this, the stop there is still called Han Dumbrava today . The lower town line also experienced two extensions, it led from September 26, 1927 to Konradplatz ( Piața Cluj ) and from September 18, 1929 finally to Neppendorfer Bahnhof ( Gara Turnișor ).

Last extension was to connect the little village about ten kilometers away from Sibiu Răşinari , German townspeople village . This had been connected to Sibiu by bus since 1925 , after plans for a narrow - gauge railway leading there from before the First World War could no longer be realized due to the war. The overland line to Rășinari was opened on March 14, 1948, initially with diesel operation, with a trailer-mounted diesel engine of a truck feeding an electric generator. It was not until 1951 that the outer line could be electrified. However, there was no continuous operation, the passengers had to change between urban and intercity lines at the Junge Wald. As a result, three lines operated from 1948 onwards, and they still did not have numbers. With a route length of 15.5 kilometers, the network thus reached its greatest extent, and all routes were single-track throughout. At the end point Rășinari there was also a small two-tier wagon hall.

In 1961 the Sibiu tram introduced the modern equipment operation on the upper town line , for this purpose a turning loop was set up on the station forecourt and a turning triangle at the terminal in Junge Wald .

Decline

From the 1970s onwards, the cemetery was the end point of the overland line to Rășinari, where there was a connection to the trolleybuses in the direction of the city center

Ultimately, neither the modern facility nor the thorough renovation of the Gara Mare – Cimitirul Municipal section that took place between 1962 and 1967 could stop the decline of the Sibiu tram. In 1964, the lower town line was converted to bus service before the upper town line was also discontinued on March 31, 1970.

Thus from 1970 only the overland line to Rășinari remained, which was simultaneously extended to Cimitirul Municipal and thus reached a length of 8.4 kilometers. On the occasion of the implementation of the modern wagons - no longer needed on the Oberstadtlinie - from then on it also ran in the facility operation. For this purpose, she received a new turning triangle both at the cemetery and in Rășinari. From then on, the trams - together with the buses and from 1983 also with the then reintroduced trolleybuses - were housed in the new depot at Calea Dumbrăvii, because the old depot near the train station from 1905 had not been connected to the network since 1970. The new depot is located about 500 meters north of the cemetery, which means that regardless of the regular route, part of the former upper town line served as an operating route from then on.

Since the traffic between the city center and the starting point of the overland tram at the cemetery could not be adequately handled by buses, the city reactivated in 1972 the section of the upper city line that had not yet been dismantled. From then on, the trams shuttled between the new inner-city turning loop at Parcul Sub Arini, the name of the stop at that time was after the neighboring textile factory Fabrica de confecții , and Rășinari. But as early as 1974 the overland line was cut back to the cemetery and the route through the Alder Park was permanently abandoned.

Adjustment and transition to tourist operations

Finally, on February 28, 2011, the Sibiu tram was temporarily shut down. However, the municipality of Rășinari managed to keep the almost seven-kilometer section between Han Dumbrava, where the Sibiu Zoo is located, and the track triangle in the center of Rășinari operational. Since there is no turning point for the last existing facility railcars at the new end point at the zoo, the municipality bought the two-way railcar number 26.111 from the Stern & Hafferl Verkehrsgesellschaft from Austria in 2016 , which was transferred to Romania in September 2017. This is the last four-axle railcar 26.111 used on the Vöcklamarkt – Attersee local line , but was originally delivered to the Birsigthalbahn in Switzerland in 1951 .

vehicles

Timiș 2 railcar number 6 in 1994

After the unsuccessful experiment with the trackless railway in 1904, the city exchanged the four trolleybus motorcars at AEG for six tramcars from Schlick Vasöntő és Gépgyár from Budapest. By 1915, eight more railcars and four trailer cars followed . The latter, however, only operated on the upper town line and later on the Rășinari line, while the lower town line was always served by solo cars. For the extension of the lower city line, Hermannstadt also received five used railcars from the Zittau tram that was discontinued in 1919 .

On the occasion of the changeover to one-way operation, the wooden superstructure cars on the Oberstadtlinie were replaced by 17 type V58 steel railcars with associated steel type V10 trailers. The lower town line, however, kept its wooden wagons until it was discontinued in 1964, the Rășinari line in turn could be served from 1970 with the steel trains of the discontinued upper town line. The surplus trains were in turn given to the other two Romanian meter-gauge companies, that is, the Arad tram and the Iași tram . Only nine of the original 34 steel wagons remained on site.

The last two-axle eventually gave way to 1987, four Timis 2 - Greater trains . They were numbered 5, 6, 7 and 8, with the railcar and trailer car being numbered the same.

In the years 1993 to 1996, Sibiu was the first city in Romania to receive used vehicles from Western Europe. Until she was hired, she drove with standard Swiss cars from Geneva , including four railcars and four sidecars.

literature

A. Günther, S. Tarkhov, C. Blank: Tram atlas Romania 2004 . Working group Blickpunkt Straßenbahn e. V., Berlin 2004, ISBN 3-926524-23-5 .

Hans Lehnhart: The tram companies in Romania. In: Der Stadtverkehr, 11–12 / 1966 and 3/1967.

Hans Lehnhart and Claude Jeanmarie: Tram Companies in Eastern Europe II . Verlag Eisenbahn, Villingen 1977, ISBN 3-85649-032-9 .

Axel Reuther: Stadtverkehr in Romania 1992. In: Blickpunkt Straßenbahn 02/1993, pp. 234–238.

Web links

Commons : Trams in Sibiu - Collection of images, videos and audio files

History of the Sibiu tram on www.tursib.ro

Individual evidence

[1] And it still drives: 100 years of the Sibiu "electric" tram , Siebenbürgische Zeitung of November 17th, 2005

[2] tramclub.org

[3] Tramvaiul cumpărat de Primăria Răşinari cu 6.000 de euro din Austria a ajuns la Destinatie. Va circula pe ruta Sibiu Zoo - Răşinari şi retur. Din toamna! , Article from September 18, 2017 on tribuna.ro

[4] Vehicles of the Sibiu tram on transphoto.ru