Schwetzingen – Ketsch tram
The Schwetzingen-Ketsch tram was a meter-gauge electric tram that ran on a 5 km stretch from Schwetzingen to Ketsch in what is now the Rhein-Neckar district .
history
The tram line was opened by the Rheinische Schuckert-Gesellschaft in December 1910 . This she brought in July 1911 as a co-founder of the Upper Rhine Railway Company (OEG). Since the railway was only used for passenger traffic, it was severely affected by the extension of the railway from Mannheim-Rheinau from Brühl to Ketsch in July 1912. During the period of high inflation , operations ceased in April 1923, and did not resume until May 1925. The railway was not economically successful, so in 1930 only half of the costs were covered by fare income. Due to financial problems, the company was finally shut down on March 31, 1938.
Route
The railway had a depot in the Schwetzingen Südstadt on the edge of the grounds of the Bassermann canning factory , where the Theater am Puls now has its venue. An operating line initially led through Marstallstrasse and Bismarckstrasse to the train station , where regular service began. It went on to Carl-Theodor-Straße and this further to the west. From 1927, a section of the Heidelberg tram , coming from Plankstadt and on to the castle , ran parallel to a section of around one hundred meters between the confluence of the bridge ramp and the so-called turntable . The Ketscher tram, on the other hand, turned south into Friedrichstrasse and continued to Bismarckplatz, where it bent west along Zähringer Strasse and the country road to Ketsch. After crossing the town on Schwetzinger Strasse, she turned north at the Catholic church, ending a few meters in front of the Enderle inn .
vehicles
The railway had three bidirectional railcars built by MAN with 20 seats and 27 standing places, the electrical equipment came from Schuckert . The two single-axle bogies made it possible for the vehicles to negotiate tight bend radii. After the operation had ceased, the railcars came to the Stralsund tram . One of the vehicles was destroyed in an air raid in the final phase of World War II, the other two rebuilt after damage. They were in regular service until the 1950s, one of the two then as a work car for two more years . The two sidecars of the Ketscher tram were sold to the Merseburg tram , the salt car to Łódź . Two more work cars remained with the OEG, where they were used in the rest of the network.
literature
- Dieter Höltge: Trams and light rail vehicles in Germany. Volume 6: Bathing . EK-Verlag, Freiburg im Breisgau 1999, ISBN 3-88255-337-5 .
- Jürgen Gruler: Three people from the Electoral Palatinate are making careers in Stralsund. Schwetzinger Zeitung, August 29, 2006. Digitized version on the website of the “Theaters am Puls”, PDF file, 224 kB
Individual evidence
- ↑ The last relics of the tram era. Schwetzinger Zeitung, January 12, 2013, accessed on February 18, 2018.
- ↑ Compare this contemporary photo on the website of a ketch photo shop, accessed on February 20, 2018.
