Nordhausen tram

Nordhausen tram
Combino two-way railcar 106
Basic information
Country	Germany
city	Nordhausen
opening	August 25, 1900
operator	Stadtwerke Nordhausen
Infrastructure
Route length	18.0 km
Gauge	1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Power system	600 V = overhead line / diesel engine
Stops	32
business
Lines	3
Clock in the peak hours	10 min (1,2) , 60 min (10)
vehicles	9  Combino , 3  Combino Duo
Top speed	50 km / h

The Nordhausen tram is a tram operated by Stadtwerke Nordhausen in the outer north of Thuringia . It runs on three lines within the city of Nordhausen and over the Harzquerbahn to the surrounding area to Ilfeld . The track width is 1000 mm.

history

The first 90 years

View from Kornmarkt to Töpferstrasse around 1912

Gotha car (1989)

An SSB GT4 at the Parkallee stop (2006)

In 1898 the city of Nordhausen, which at that time had around 35,000 inhabitants, agreed with Elektrizitäts-AG (formerly Schuckert & Co. in Nuremberg) that they would build and operate an electricity plant and a tram themselves. On April 1, 1920, the city became the owner of the company.

The tram service was opened on August 25, 1900 on a meter-gauge network of 5.04 kilometers in length. A line with a white signal led from the train station in the old town to the Kornmarkt and further over the Neumarkt to the Gehege am Geiersberg (2.6 kilometers). The other was a 2.3 kilometer long ring line that also ran from the train station - with a red signal - to the Kornmarkt, then through narrow streets to the Altentor and from there via Grimmel-Allee, where the depot and electrical works were located, to the Came back to the station. The cars in the opposite direction carried a green signal.

The first restrictions arose after the First World War. From January 29, 1922, the journey through the old town between Kornmarkt and Altentor was canceled; from 1927 onwards, the line to the enclosure also ended at Riemannstrasse. When the short section from Stolberger Strasse to Riemannstrasse was given up on July 8, 1934, the track was extended to Pfingstweg / Friedrich-Naumann-Strasse. Until 1945, the 4.25-kilometer network was used by a red line from the train station to Pfingstweg and a green line from the train station to Altentor. The 13 railcars acquired in 1900 were replaced by eight new ones in 1934.

The air raids on Nordhausen on April 3 and 4, 1945 destroyed power systems, overhead lines, rolling stock and track systems. Only 900 m of track network remained intact. It was restarted on September 2, 1945. After the occupation of Nordhausen by the Red Army in the summer of 1945, tram operations were transferred from the “Städtische Elektrische Werken Nordhausen” in 1949 to the “Kommunale Wirtschafts-Unternehmen (KWU) of the city of Nordhausen” and in 1951 became the “VEB (K) Verkehrsbetriebe Nordhausen ". Despite the severe destruction of the city, the tram was put back into operation at the previous extent of around four kilometers. There were only minor extensions in the 1980s; From October 7, 1981, line 1 continued from Stolberger Strasse 800 meters to the district hospital, and since December 21, 1983, line 2 has ended on Parkallee 700 meters from Altentor.

Development after the reunification

With the reunification of Germany in 1990, the existence of the tram was under discussion; however, it was decided to keep the tram. In the following years the rail network was completely renovated and new (initially old usable) vehicles were bought. On October 3, 1993, a new line was added, which leads 1.8 kilometers from Theaterplatz to the eastern part of the city.

Line 10 to Ilfeld

Line 10 on the connecting track to the Harzquerbahn

A Combino Duo at Niedersachswerfen

After reunification, efforts were made to link the two track networks of Nordhäuser Tram and Harzer Schmalspurbahn (HSB) in order to create a continuous connection based on the tram-train principle . This was easily possible because of the same gauges (meter gauge). At the 100th anniversary of HSB in September 1999, HSB and Stadtwerke Nordhausen signed a letter of intent to implement this project by the time the State Garden Show in 2004 . In 2002, construction work began to close this gap. A track was built from the tram stop Bahnhofsvorplatz along Oskar-Cohn-Straße to the sidings of the Harzquerbahn at Nordhausen Nord station, thus reaching the existing track system.

However, since the stretch of the Harzquerbahn to Ilfeld does not have a catenary and electrification was rejected, new vehicles with dual-power drive had to be procured for the section designated as line 10 . As part of the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the Nordhausen tram, the first Twino powered rail car was presented on June 3, 2000 . It was a GT4 railcar, enhanced with a five-cylinder passenger car diesel engine, which was used for practical testing of the dual-power drive. By May 1, 2004, the municipal utilities had purchased three Combino Duo vehicles . Within the city of Nordhausen, these draw their drive power directly from the contact line; On the tracks of the Harzquerbahn, the drive is diesel-electric. A BMW engine originally intended for passenger cars is installed for the diesel drive . The combination of meter gauge and diesel drive is unique in its form and is today - analogous to the models in Chemnitz , Karlsruhe and Zwickau - referred to as the Nordhausen model .

Since then, the trams have been traveling from the Südharz-Klinikum through the Nordhausen city center and across the station forecourt - for a distance of 11.4 kilometers, they use the Harzquerbahn track to the Ilfeld Neanderklinik stop . At the same time, the majority of the HSB railcars run to the station forecourt. This required upgrading of the vehicles and approval in accordance with BOStrab .

Line network

Since the completion of the long-planned gap to the Harzquerbahn in 2004, there have been the following three tram lines in Nordhausen:

line	course	length	Tact
1	Südharz-Klinikum - Rathaus / Kornmarkt - Nordbrand - Bahnhofsplatz	3.2 km	Mon. – Fri .: 10 min. Sat. – Sun .: 30 min
2	Parkallee - District Office - Nordbrand - Town Hall / Kornmarkt - Nordhausen Ost	4.6 km	Mon. – Fri .: 10 min. Sat. – Sun .: 30 min
10	Südharz-Klinikum - Rathaus / Kornmarkt - Nordbrand - Bahnhofsplatz - Niedersachswerfen Ost - Ilfeld Neanderklinik	14.6 km	Mon. – Fri .: 60 min. Sat. – Sun .: 120 min

vehicles

Current vehicle fleet

Combino 102 and 107 in Rautenstrasse

Since 2012, only new-build Combino vehicles from Siemens have been used in regular service , of which a total of twelve have been purchased since 2000. Six of these cars are way vehicles (101-104,108-109), three bi-directional vehicles (105-107) and three bi-directional vehicles of the type Combino Duo with dual power drive for the route of Ilfeld (201-203).

• Combino (one-way car) 101 + 102 (Siemens Düsseldorf, 2000)
• Combino (one-way car) 103 + 104 (Siemens Krefeld, 2002)
• Combino (bidirectional car) 105 + 106 + 107 (Siemens Krefeld, 2002)
• Combino (one-way car) 108 + 109 (Siemens Krefeld 2011)
• Combino Duo (bidirectional trolley) 201 + 202 + 203 (Siemens Krefeld, 2004)

Special vehicles

Historic railcar 23 (2014)

There are also two historical railcars and a party car:

• Historic railcar 23 (Wismar, 1934)
• Historic railcar 40 (Gotha, 1959 - 1969 ex Gera 143 - 1994 ex Nordhausen 43)
• Party car railcar 59 (Gotha, 1961 - 1991 ex Erfurt 154, built in 1986 with the Leipzig 1216 car body ) is in use in black paint.

Former vehicles

At the beginning of the 1990s, GT4 articulated vehicles were taken over from Stuttgart and Freiburg . Finally, four of these vehicles were still in use as a reserve:

• GT 4 (articulated one-way car) 79 (Stuttgart, 1959)
• GT 4 (articulated one-way car) 80 (Stuttgart, 1962)
• GT 4 (articulated one-way car) 81 (Stuttgart, 1964)
• GT 4 (articulated bi-directional car) 94 (Freiburg, 1965)

The one-way vehicles were handed over to the Iași tram in Romania in 2012 , and the two-way vehicle was scrapped in 2013.

• 

  Railcar 79

• 

  Railcar 80

• 

  Railcar 81

• 

  Railcar 94

literature

• Ekkehard Grimm, Paul Lauerwald, Arndt Forberger: 100 years of the tram in Nordhausen. 1900-2000 . Neukirchner, Nordhausen 2000, ISBN 3-929767-40-6 .

Web links

Commons : Straßenbahn Nordhausen  - Collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Website of Stadtwerke Nordhausen, operator of the tram
• Private photo gallery about the Nordhausen tram
• Photo page about the Nordhausen tram

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Der Fahrgast, PRO BAHN Zeitung, 4/2000, pp. 33–36 (PDF; 377 kB)
2. ↑ Car park list Stadtwerke Nordhausen - Verkehrs- und Stadtreinigungsbetrieb GmbH , on: http://www.tram-info.de , accessed on May 7, 2019