Meissen tram
The Meißen tram was a tram in the Saxon city of Meißen and served passenger traffic from 1899 to 1936 and goods traffic in the city from 1900 to 1967 .
At the end of the 19th century, the district town on the Elbe had around 30,000 inhabitants. Thus, the establishment of an inner-city means of transport seemed appropriate, especially since the Meissen train station is opposite the old town on the right bank of the Elbe.
passenger traffic
On June 2, 1898, the city signed a contract with the Credit- und Sparbank in Leipzig , the Union-Elektricitäts-Gesellschaft in Berlin and a merchant for the construction of a tram and a power station in Meissen. This consortium founded the Meißener Straßenbahn AG on May 12, 1900. On December 13, 1899, passenger traffic was opened on the 4.6-kilometer, single-track, meter-gauge line. It began at the state train station in Cölln and crossed the Elbe to the old town ; it then followed Neugasse, Talstrasse and Jacobistrasse to the west to the terminus at Buschbad , near Triebisch .
The travel time over the entire route was 23 minutes, with a twelve-minute cycle initially being offered. Later, a course to the Buschbad began every 20 minutes at the train station , in between there were trips that ended at Jaspisstraße in Triebischtal .
At the beginning of 1917, Meißener Straßenbahn AG sold the company to the city of Meißen. At that time, there were eight railcars and five sidecars for passenger traffic , which were expanded by two railcars and three sidecars after the First World War .
Freight transport
On September 20, 1900, the tram company also began transporting goods, for which four electric locomotives and 48 trolleys were procured. The freight track began at the fiscal Elbkai below the Meißner Domes and led up the valley on the right bank of the Triebisch over Poststrasse and Neumarkt, crossed the river again and merged into the passenger traffic route, from which several sidings branched off, for example to the gas works. At Jaspisstraße, the freight railway branched off to the tram station, where there was a connection to the state railway. From June 20, 1913, freight trains drove from there through the old town to the right bank of the Elbe and used a new transfer option to the state railway near the “Hauptbahnhof”. Rolling stands were not allowed to be used on this route; therefore up to four own freight cars were attached to a locomotive.
Restrictions and cessation of traffic
From October 1, 1929, the city leased tram operations to the Gröba electricity association for 15 years . In the following period the freight track to the Elbkai was shut down; the freight trains now ended at Hahnemannplatz in the Triebischvorstadt . But passenger traffic has also been reduced considerably. After the old Elbe bridge was demolished in 1934, the tram ended on the left bank in Elbstrasse. Even after the new old town bridge was built, she did not receive a permit to use it and could no longer reach the station. As a result, passenger tram traffic ended on March 1, 1936. It was now served exclusively by buses that - after a trial run in 1906 - had been used by the municipal tram since February 23, 1928. There were twelve vehicles for this.
Freight traffic remained in operation for three decades after the Second World War . In the 1950s, the railway still carried almost 6,000 railroad cars in the city every year. This operation ceased on December 31, 1967.
The freight locomotive number 3 was initially kept in the Dresden Transport Museum, as was a freight wagon that reached the Hirzbergbahn association in Thuringia via the Langeoog island railway (number 19). The number 1 railcar was salvaged from private property in Keilbusch and now operates as the number 1 horse-drawn tram on the Döbeln tram . In Keilbusch, trailer number 14 is still on the same property. Some two-axle freight wagons are also said to be still on the north German museum railways, although it is not known whether these actually come from Meißen or whether they are just vehicles from the same lot. On June 27, 2012, with the dissolution of the local transport exhibition in the Dresden Transport Museum, the freight locomotive number 3 was transferred to the former tram depot on Meißener Jaspisstraße, today's building yard of the city of Meißen, where it can be viewed on certain days of the year.
The tracks in the former Heinrich Reich art mill in Triebischtal are still visible. Tram tracks can still be seen today during road construction work on Talstrasse or Ossietzkystrasse. There are also overhead line rosettes on some unrenovated houses .
Trivia
Two porcelain coins were issued for the passenger tram for a short time after the First World War. At the beginning of 1921, the Meissen porcelain factory made the 30 and 50 pfennig pieces . In the city administration it was said that it was not emergency money, but tram money . The pieces were officially introduced with an announcement in the "Meißner Tageblatt" on May 5, 1921. However, only the two pieces made of white bisque porcelain were accepted for use on the Meißner tram . The Böttger stoneware pieces with the same motif , on the other hand, were unemployment benefits. The coin designs come from Emil Paul Börner . Both coins quickly found their way into collectors' hands and thus disappeared from circulation.
literature
- The trams in the GDR. Berlin 1978, ISBN 3-87943-625-8 .
- Ludger Kenning: Narrow-gauge railways around Mügeln and Wilsdruff . Kenning Verlag, Nordhorn 2000, ISBN 3-933613-29-9
Web links
- Article about the preserved freight locomotive in the Meißen building yard on Meißen television
- Article about the Meissen tram on the city's website
- Film sequence about the Meißen passenger tram from the main train station to Neugasse on youtube