Riesa tram
| Riesa tram | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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 Tram Riesa 1914 at the terminus at Albertplatz
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| Route length: | 2.10 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 1000 mm ( meter gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The Riesa tram connected the peripheral train station of the Saxon town of Riesa with the city center from 1889 to 1924 and was always operated as a meter-gauge horse -drawn tram .
history
In November 1838 the Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie put the Riesa station together with the Oschatz- Riesa section of the Leipzig-Dresden railway line into operation. In 1844 the first station building was added and in 1880 it was rebuilt. In 1875 and 1877 the station was connected to the Riesa – Elsterwerda and Riesa – Nossen lines. The train station is about two kilometers from the center of the old town. As early as the 1880s, the first considerations about building an inexpensive local means of transport arose and initially a horse-drawn bus line was set up. On May 29, 1889, the Riesaer Straßenbahngesellschaft AG was founded by private investors, which was entered in the commercial register on May 31, 1889. On July 6, 1889, the contract with the Royal Saxon State Railways was concluded, which allowed the construction of tracks in front of the station on the premises of the State Railways, a little later the concession was granted by the city of Riesa for 50 years.
Construction work began in August 1889, and the operating regulations for the horse-drawn tram were published by the police on November 14, 1889. The meter-gauge route initially led from the station forecourt via Bahnhofstrasse and Wettinerstrasse to the corner of Pausitzer Strasse.
Opening and operation until the end of the First World War
The single-track line was opened on November 16, 1889. The August Schneider forwarding agency at Bahnhofstrasse 23 provided the horses and coachmen required, and a warehouse of the forwarding agency was used to store the wagons. The fare was 10 pfennigs, which had to be thrown into the driver's payment boxes, there were no conductors, they were held as required.
On May 15, 1890, the only extension of the route across the main street to Albertplatz took place. The track length was now 2.1 km, the track length 2.25 km. In addition to both endpoints, there were two other turnouts. On May 31, 1891, the contract with the forwarding company Schneider was terminated, the company took over the position of horses and coachmen itself. After a decision by the council, construction of its own depot in Niederlagstrasse began. At this point in time, the storage and storage of the wagons at the Schneider freight forwarder finally ended.
Only long after the turn of the century began negotiations on electrification, which were conducted with the city between May 1910 and March 1911, but were broken off without result because the company was unable to finance the conversion of the route to heavier vehicles. Negotiations about the extension of the route also remained unsuccessful.
During the First World War, drivers were drafted, on the one hand, and on the other hand, the traffic increased so much that conductors had to be deployed and driven in two horses. Two additional cars were also procured. On July 4, 1917, permanent stops were finally introduced.
After the First World War and cessation of operations
In the years after the First World War, the railway had to raise fares several times in order to get inflation under control. Nevertheless, on May 6, 1922, full operation was discontinued. The city prevented a permanent cessation by taking over the shares of the company on May 12, 1922, then managing the other assets and the company as a municipal company and reopening it as this on May 25, 1922.
Nonetheless, the problems were only partially solved: The negotiations with the Berlin tram to take over wagons to renew the wagon fleet were unsuccessful, the conductors were abolished and once again only driven with one horse and finally the terminal at the station was simplified on August 29, 1922 by expanding the points . Despite all these measures, on January 7, 1923, the company was completely closed and the horses were sold or taken care of elsewhere. At the end of the inflation, the city signed a contract with the haulage owner Rühle to resume operations, which he reopened on March 12, 1924 with the old timetable. Due to the obsolescence of the facilities, considerations began for a bus operation, which was introduced on October 5, 1924 with an hourly change. It proved itself and so it was continuously introduced and on October 15, 1924 the tram was officially stopped. A few horse-drawn trams only lead to the 1924 annual fair to protect the buses, after which it was finally over on October 21, 1924. From 1926, the rails and switches were finally removed so that they could be used in the company's own building yard.
vehicles
When operations opened in 1889, the horse-drawn tram had two passenger cars that had been built by Herbrand in Cologne and which were supplemented by another similar vehicle in 1891. Two more used vehicles followed in 1917, but their origin, year of construction and manufacturer are unknown.
The first two vehicles from 1889 were taken over by the city's building yard as mobile building sheds, the other vehicles were sold as scrap in 1922.
The color of the cars was dark green with white contrasts and decorative stripes, and there was advertising on the vehicles from June 1922.
Riesa light rail
To commemorate the tram, the Riesaer Stadtbahn eV association has been active since 2001 , which regularly runs a natural gas-powered locomotive with rubber tires and summer sidecars with rubber tires on the route of the former horse-drawn tram.
literature
- Joachim Mensdorf: Riesa . In: Gerhard Bauer (Ltg.): Tram archive. Part 2: Area Görlitz / Dresden transpress VEB Verlag für Verkehrwesen, Berlin 1983, without ISBN, pp. 201–203.
- Michael Kochems: Riesa . In: Michael Kochems: Trams and light rail vehicles in Germany. Volume 18: Saxony (1) - East . EK-Verlag, Freiburg 2017, ISBN 978-3-8446-6854-4 , pp. 281–285.
