Cotta – Cossebaude suburban railway

Cotta – Cossebaude
Route length:	5.311 km
Gauge :	1450 mm
Power system :	600 V  =
Dual track :	Cossebauder / Warthaer Strasse – Flensburger Strasse
Legend from Flügelweg from Altcotta Cossebauder / Warthaer Strasse inland Cossebauder / Warthaer Strasse towards town to Leutewitz Roquettestrasse Dresden city limits until 1921 Schunckstrasse Merbitzer Strasse Zschonergrundstrasse Zschonerbach Motorway A4 Berlin – Dresden railway line Flensburger Strasse Podemusstrasse At the urn field Dresden city limits from 1921 Gohlis (former tram station) with evasion Ludwigstrasse Cossebaude coupling point Status: 1989

The suburban railway Cotta – Cossebaude was an overland tram implemented by the Saxon state in the Dresden track width of 1450 millimeters , which from 1906 connected the then independent community of Cossebaude with the Dresden district of Cotta . In 1990, operations on the single-track stretch from the Flensburger Strasse stop in the Kemnitz district of Dresden to Cossebaude, which had been part of Dresden since 1921, were discontinued along the entire length and replaced by a bus line.

Route description

The double-track line turned out of town shortly before the confluence of the line from Löbtau to the right at the intersection of Cossebauder / Warthaer Strasse / Meißner Landstrasse and led in the middle of the Meißner Landstrasse, leading over a sharp right turn at the Kemnitz stop over the railroad to Stop at Flensburger Strasse in Kemnitz. From there, the line was on a single track, looking outwards from the city, on the right-hand side of the road with several diversions, also in road position, to the dome end point in the middle of the road in Cossebaude. At the Gohlis stop on the left was the former Gohlis tram station, whose entry and exit tracks were only built at street level.

There was no track connection from Cossebauder Strasse to Meißner Landstrasse (track crossing) for the scheduled operation of the line from Löbtau .

history

Prehistory and construction

Cossebaude, Dresdner Strasse. Location of the dome end point of the suburban railway, status 2016

Existing swivel chair switch, built in 1905, in Gohlis (2016)

After the Lößnitzbahn was completed in 1899, extensions of this route were planned. By 1902 there was to be a continuation from Kötzschenbroda via Naundorf to the other side of the Elbe to Niederwartha , Cossebaude and then to Cotta, which was still independent at the time. The Dresden tram A.-G. was already responsible for operating the 11.7-kilometer route. (so-called yellow ) have been considered. The left Elbe communities tried to get a tram, but the meter-gauge route failed because of the resistance of the local communities. It also became clear that the stretch from Kötzschenbroda to Cossebaude would not yield any returns for a long time. There was no industry between Cossebaude and Cotta, so the establishment of freight traffic for this section of the route was also ruled out. In addition, the inconvenience of changing between two different track widths became more and more evident, especially in the example of the Mickten tram station .

On May 4, 1904, the 2nd Chamber of the Saxon State Parliament approved Royal Decree No. 35 to build the route from Cotta to Cossebaude as a tram route in Dresden city gauge instead of meter gauge, while building a bridge over the railway in Kemnitz, but more Requests for expansion (extension to Niederwartha or the connection of other places) not to be approved or postponed. The representative of the government also stated that, purely in terms of inclination, there would be no roll-up traffic on this section anyway.

In 1904, construction began on the line, which also received a tram station for twelve railcars in the Gohlis district. As planned, the electricity was drawn from the Niederlößnitz power station .

The original route began in 1906 at the shoemaker's house in Cotta, where the city ​​tram ended at that time. The shoemaker's house was a popular dance hall and, until it was destroyed, was located near the mouth of the Weißeritz on Hamburger Strasse on the left-hand side. From there, the route initially led two-tracked 700 meters along Meißner Landstrasse and into Warthaer Strasse, before turning right at the next intersection into Roquettestrasse. The double-track section ended there and the line ran from here on a single track at the edge of the road to Cossebaude. After a right turn into Gottfried-Keller-Straße, the Meißner Landstrasse (now correctly: "Alte Meißner Landstrasse") was reached again in a left curve. From here it always led out of town to the right to the bridge over the railway in Kemnitz, which had been built especially for this purpose in the course of the tram construction and which was reached in a sharp right curve. On the bridge the track was in the middle position, after the bridge ramp it swiveled back to the right side of the road and remained there until the coupling point at Cossebaude.

business

The new tram was owned by the state and the Dresden municipal tram operated on the account of the state. Due to construction delays, the yellow was now absorbed into this, so that it was opened on September 27, 1906 with a line number - that of a line 21 (the yellow was given the odd line numbers in 1906, this was also retained here). The sale of the route by the Free State to the Dresdner Überland-Verkehr GmbH (DRÜVEG) in 1926 changed nothing in the operation of the route by the Dresden tram; In 1941, the DRÜVEG finally became the property of Dresdner Straßenbahn AG .

From 1938 the motorway feeder to the Reichsautobahn (today's Bundesautobahn 4 ) was built. For this purpose, a four-lane road that led through it from the beginning of the Bürstingpark in Briesnitz was rebuilt and provided with a double-track tramway, which now led to Flensburger Straße. Due to the outbreak of the Second World War , the transfer of the tram to this motorway feeder up to the confluence of the Pfaffengrund from the Cossebauder / Warthaer Straße was only made in 1941; the section via Roquette- and Gottfried-Keller-Straße to the connection to the motorway feeder was thus taken out of service. The dome end point in Roquettestrasse was preserved until the end of the 1940s, after which the tracks were expanded to remove track damage on other lines.

Line allocation

Line 21 was abolished on April 27, 1920, from this point in time until the line reform on May 4, 1969, with multiple changing endpoints at the other end of the line, line 19, partly supplemented by other lines, took over the operation of the suburban railway.

The line was no longer used regularly during the hyperinflation from May 8, 1923, and was completely stopped from December 3, 1923, and regular operation of line 19 could only be resumed from February 1, 1924. An “intermediate line” was set up to increase traffic density, with a line number increased by 100 (ie “119”). This began operations on May 22, 1928 up to the siding at Roquettestrasse, was extended to Gohlis tram station on May 19, 1931 and finally stopped on April 12, 1944 due to the war.

After the attack on Dresden on February 13, 1945, the line was one of those that could continue to be used due to its self-sufficient power supply from outside Dresden and the undamaged depot in Gohlis: On February 14, line 19 ran between Cossebaude and the Schunckstraße stop , from February 15, 1945 from Cossebaude to the “ Seidel & Naumann ” factory on Hamburger Straße, but only from March 3, 1945 to the Waltherstraße tram station . The air raids of April 17, 1945 mainly affected the western suburbs of Dresden and initially led to the cessation of operations, which from the following day was carried out again only from Cossebaude to Schunckstrasse . Apart from a further suspension due to a lack of electricity, it remained with an island operation until the suspension of all Dresden tram traffic on May 7, 1945 due to the invasion of the Red Army . On May 19, 1945 the route was used again by line 19.

On May 10, 1951, tram line 20 was reopened, which in addition to line 19 ran the suburban railway to the Gohlis tram station and was extended to Cossebaude in the rush hour from April 22, 1952. On May 1, 1954, the use of line 20 on the suburban railway ended, it was replaced by the commuter traffic amplifier line 51 to Cossebaude (from July 2, 1962 only to and from Gohlis tram station).

From 1954 the first Gotha and LOWA two-axle trains (also in mixed combinations) were used, although the route remained one of the main routes of the old MAN bi-directional vehicles until October 1973. In 1966, the Gohlis tram station was closed for scheduled vehicle use and was only used as a turning point on line 51 and to park damaged cars.

With the line reform on May 4, 1969, both lines 19 and 51 were abolished. The route was initially used by line 12. The increasing number of Tatra wagons led to an endpoint swap of line 12 with that of line 1 in its eastern and southeastern endpoint: Line 1 ran on the suburban railway from 1972 until it was closed in 1990. In this context, the Gohlis tram station was finally abandoned in 1972 and the old vehicles stationed there scrapped. From May 28, 1983, vehicles were used on Line 1 exclusively from the Mickten tram station .

Planning and decommissioning

In the 1970s and 1980s, various options for replacing the two-axle vehicles were discussed, especially since the coupling terminal in Cossebaude was the last in the Dresden tram network. In addition to the construction of a new track loop (block bypass) from Ludwigstraße in the direction of the Cossebaude train station, as well as the construction of a triangular track in Ludwigstraße in Cossebaude, among other things, converted T4D bidirectional vehicles were also under discussion, which were released in Gorbitz after the construction work was completed in 1988 were.

In 1989, a short extension from the terminal point to a track triangle in the “An den Winkelwiesen” development area was planned. In the 1990/91 annual timetable, the planned changeover to Tatra wagons and the simultaneous extension were anticipated and the following was noted in the timetable tables: "This timetable will come into force after the Cossebaude triangle has been completed". At this point, however, construction had not even started.

On the other hand, those responsible for the "VEB Verkehrsbetriebe der Stadt Dresden" acted very quickly in the then unclear political situation after the fall of the Wall in 1989 and before reunification : With the start of operations on December 2, 1990, operations on the suburban route were discontinued and replaced by a bus line.

The setting was accommodated by the fact that in the course of reunification the former trunk road 6 became a federal road , on which the lateral position of a single-track tram line was neither practically nor legally justifiable, and neither was a four-lane expansion in the localities from Kemnitz to Cossebaude for the foreseeable future would take place. In addition, the entire line was in need of renovation and due to the subordination of the transport companies to the Treuhandanstalt in the summer of 1990, no funds were available for the planned extension of the line from this point at the latest.

The route of the suburban railway 2016

former Gohlis tram station (2016)

With the construction of the road since 1990, the route has now completely disappeared after road renovations, with the exception of a small patch of paving underneath the Briesnitz Church (route until 1941). The almost complete track harp of the driveway to the Gohlis tram station (with recognizable hall entrances) and its building itself, which - at least 40 years after its closure - is used by a company, have been preserved. The same applies to the building in which the head of operations was based, in which there is a snack bar.

Most of the concrete lighting masts, which in GDR times carried the mast brackets for the contact line instead of the previous contact line masts, are still almost completely present on the (old) Dresden section of the line in Briesnitz, Kemnitz and Stetzsch. In Briesnitz and in Cossebaude some preserved house rosettes can be found, even within the section of the route that was discontinued in 1941. In the area of ​​the Alte Meißner Landstrasse on the right-hand side out of town, a lattice mast of the catenary, partly enclosed by a retaining wall, has survived to this day.

literature

• Hermann Großmann: The municipal importance of the tram system is highlighted in the career of the Dresden trams . Baensch, Dresden 1903. ( digitized version )
• VEB Verkehrsbetriebe der Stadt Dresden (Hrsg.): History of the Dresden tram . Verlag Tribüne, Berlin 1981, ISBN 3-88506-018-3 .
• Dresdner Verkehrsbetriebe AG (Ed.): 120 years of trams in Dresden . Dresden 1992.
• Dresdner Verkehrsbetriebe AG (ed.): From coachmen and conductors - the 125-year history of the tram to Dresden . Dresden 1997, ISBN 3-88506-008-6 .

Web links

• Line history of line 19 ( Memento from July 3, 2009 in the Internet Archive ). Retrieved September 26, 2016.
• On the trail of the former Dresden tram routes, upper part to the Cotta – Cossebaude suburban railway, on architektur-forum.de . Photos and information (including line tables, plug-in signs and then-now comparisons ), accessed on October 22, 2016.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Großmann, p. 149.
2. ^ Mario Schatz: Meter gauge trams in Dresden. Kenning Verlag, 2007, ISBN 3-933613-76-0 , p. 17.
3. ↑ Landtag protocols of the Saxon Landtag, Chamber II, session of May 4, 1904, pp. 1779–1785. Digitized . Retrieved October 4, 2016.
4. ↑ Protocols, p. 1779. Digitized version , accessed on October 7, 2016.
5. ↑ Photo on deutsches-architektur-forum.de. Retrieved October 22, 2016.