Tilsit tram

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Tram at the German Church (around 1914)

The Tilsit tram ran from 1901 to 1944 in the East Prussian city ​​of Tilsit (now Sowetsk ).

The Elektrizitätswerk und Straßenbahn Tilsit AG was founded on June 14, 1912 by the Elektrizitäts-AG formerly W. Lahmeyer & Co. (EAG) with a capital share of 100% as a separate company for the trams and the electricity company in Tilsit. It was dissolved in 1936, i. H. The tram and power station were reintegrated directly into the EAG.

The electric tram was opened in 1901 in the town of Tilsit, which then had around 40,000 inhabitants, in the northeast of the Prussian province of East Prussia . It was built and operated by Elektrizitäts-AG formerly W. Lahmeyer & Co. (EAG) in Frankfurt am Main, together with the power station. The first vehicles for the Tilsit tram were delivered by the Uerdingen wagon factory. 1934-1935 six railcars were taken over by the Hagen tram .

The Tilsiter tram was laid out with meter gauge . Operations ceased in October 1944 due to the war.

There are only a few traces of the Tilsit tram left in today's Sovetsk, including some catenary rosettes on the pre-war buildings in the city center.

Resources

The meter-gauge route network was almost eleven kilometers long, with a total of four lines already running at the end of 1901:

  • Ring line 4.06 km
  • Hohe Straße - Splitter 3.96 km (extended to Waldfriedhof around 1913)
  • Waterworks - Jakobsruh 3.19 km (closed around 1910 between Hohen Tor and Jakobsruh)
  • Kasernenstrasse - Kallkappen 2.50 km (closed on October 17, 1937)

At the beginning of the war in 1939, only a 6.33 km long line was used from Engelsberg via Fletcherplatz (formerly Getreidemarkt) - train station - Stolbeck - Splitter to the forest cemetery. Its operations ceased in October 1944 when the front line approached the city immediately and a civil evacuation took place in Tilsit. Traffic was not resumed after the fighting ended. The whereabouts of the Tilsiter tram fleet is unknown.

The vehicle fleet in 1914 comprised 16 railcars, four sidecars and five special cars and in 1939 had shrunk to ten railcars, four sidecars and two special cars. However, an electric locomotive and three buses were added: Since 1937, two bus routes have been operated, including one to Kallkappen instead of the tram that was closed in 1937. In 1935, six Hagener Straßenbahn AG railcars were sold to the Tilsiter Straßenbahn.

The electric locomotive was used by the Ostdeutsche Eisenbahn-Gesellschaft (ODEG) for its trains, which ran from the Getreidemarkt (later Fletcherplatz) in Tilsit over the Memel to Miekieten, where they connected to the Pogegen – Schmalleningken small railway . This line remained in operation between 1919 and 1939, when the land on the right bank of the Memel was placed under Lithuanian sovereignty and Tilsit was a border town. The Kleinbahn had to cease traffic in 1944 due to the war.

In the earlier statistics (1914, 1928) two electric locomotives are operated by the ODEG. The overhead line of the railway to Miekieten belonged to the Tilsiter tram, but the rails to the Ostpreußische Kleinbahnen AG, whose operating company was the ODEG.

literature

  • Siegfried Bufe: Trams in West and East Prussia. Motorbuch-Verlag, Stuttgart 1985, ISBN 3-613-01082-8 .
  • Siegfried Bufe (Ed.): Railways in West and East Prussia. (= Ostdeutsche Eisenbahnen , Volume 1.) Bufe-Fachbuch-Verlag, Egglham 1986, ISBN 3-922138-24-1 .
  • Manfred Gesien: Old securities tell of home. Power station & tram Tilsit. In: Tilsiter Rundbrief , issue 34, edition 2004/2005, ZDB -ID 231082-x , pp. 46–50.
  • Ingolf Koehler: From the forest cemetery to the Engelsberg. In: Tilsiter Rundbrief , Issue 11, Edition 1981/1982, ZDB -ID 231082-x , pp. 20-29.
  • Ingolf Koehler: Electricity company and tram. In: Tilsiter Rundbrief , Issue 12, 1982/1983 edition, ZDB -ID 231082-x , pp. 45-48.
  • Henrik Karl Nielsen: By no means old cheeses. In: Tram Magazine , issue 12/2014.
  • Henrik Karl Nielsen: When the Russians came. In: Straßenbahn Magazin , issue 1/2015.

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