Mulhouse tram
The Mühlhausen tram was a tram company that existed from 1898 to 1969 in the city of Mühlhausen , which is now part of Thuringia .
history
From 1878, plans were made to build a horse-drawn tram in the city of Mühlhausen , which at that time belonged to the Erfurt administrative district in the Prussian province of Saxony , and then from 1895 a gas railway . In 1897, with a population of around 30,000, the concession for an electric tram was finally granted to Elektrizitäts-AG, formerly Schuckert & Co. in Nuremberg, from which it was transferred to the Continental Society for Electrical Enterprises in Nuremberg at the beginning of 1899 .
The city later took over the tram operation and the power station. The power plant and overland center Mühlhausen in Thüringen GmbH was renamed to Überlandwerk Nordthüringen GmbH around 1940 .
stretch
The first route began at the train station and from December 21, 1898, headed west through the lower town, past the Bastmarkt with the wagon hall to the floodplain, where the new depot was built in 1911; then it went on to the Popperöder Brunnenhaus . On January 24, 1899, the excursion restaurant Weißes Haus in the Mühlhausen city forest was reached. The network was completed in 1901 when a parallel line was opened from the train station through the Upper Town to the Frauentor and the Aue with a cross connection to the Bastmarkt.
In the outside area, two shorter routes were added: In 1911, a branch route from the field switch to the newly established Pfafferode state sanatorium and nursing home was built. This route was also used for freight traffic: initially building materials, later coal and other goods, were transported to the nursing home. On July 1, 1965, the section was closed.
In 1939, a 1.2 km long branch line was built from the Prinzenhaus (shortly before the end of the White House) to the armaments company Gerätebau GmbH in the Mühlhausen city forest. The line was closed in 1946.
The single-track, meter -gauge track network was around twelve kilometers long and was used by 26 railcars, 17 sidecars and 12 freight cars in 1939. There were also 7 omnibuses, which had been added to the tram network with two lines since May 16, 1937.
In 1966 there were two lines, each running every quarter of an hour:
- Lower town line: Railway station - August-Bebel-Straße - Erfurter Straße - Felchtaer Straße - Lentzeplatz - Wanfrieder Straße - Aue - Schwanenteich - Popperöder Brunnenhaus - Prinzenhaus - White House (to the forest)
- Oberstadtlinie: Bahnhof - Karl-Marx-Straße - Steinweg - Blobach - Johannisstraße - Marcel-Verfaillie-Allee - Aue
Shutdown
The line through the upper town was shut down on July 6, 1968. The closure was justified with the routing in the upper town through the outer Frauentor . The line through the lower town followed on June 27, 1969. Here, the growing individual motorized traffic on trunk road 249 was the reason for the closure. At that time the F 249 still ran through the city center (Erfurter Tor - Felchtaer Straße - Bastmarkt - Wanfrieder Straße). Between Untermarkt and Aue, the tram followed the course of the F 249. The tram was perceived as an obstacle in terms of traffic, especially on the narrow and winding passage between Lentzeplatz and Bastmarkt.
Since then, bus routes have been running in Mühlhausen's city traffic, which are now operated by the Mühlhausen and Sondershausen city bus company .
literature
- The trams in the GDR. History, technology and operation. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1978, ISBN 3-87943-625-8 .
- H.-J. Ritzau: The Mühlhausen tram in Thuringia. In: Tram magazine. Issue 11, February 1974, ISSN 0340-7071 .
- Andreas Möller: Tram in Mühlhausen (Thuringia). Kenning Verlag, Nordhorn 1999, ISBN 3-927587-97-4 .
