[PRCo] Berlin, DE -- Tram Ride

Fri Dec 5 17:29:50 EST 2014

Forgot to attach the link to the last e-mail.   For those who like serious reading, here is a great piece comparing transportation in Germany with the USA.

     http://nhts.ornl.gov/2009/pub/demandforpublictransport.pdf

The graphs beginning on page 543 showing that transit riding in Germany is going up while ours is still stagnating are impressive.  Perhaps they are beginning to understand that oil is a finite commodity?   Or perhaps $8.50 a gallon gasoline has something to do with it?   Maybe when you have to pay for all those good roads, a monthly or annual streetcar pass looks good.

Or when the parking lot at the mall charges you to park your car because they have to pay taxes on the parking lot ….     
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Dwight made a comment about Berlin being no different than all the other major cities in Germany when it came to streetcars.   That is very true.   

The trolleys pretty much disappeared in the small German cities in the west in the 1960s.  Even some of the larger cities lost trams much later … Bremerhaven, a city of 123,000 with modern cars, lost it's in 1982.  Buses worked and they were cheaper.   Some of the smallest places like Pirmasens at Kaiserslatuern (K-town to Americans) lost theirs before the war.   But a basic hypothesis is that a German city occupies half the space of a similarly populated U. S. city and that makes them very good for public transport.   An eastern US city with 60,000 people might take up four square miles.   The Germans could pack over 100,000 people in the same space.  

Today, it appears, if my quick scan is correct, 34 or the largest 39 cities have trams or subways or both.   That takes us down to Mainz with 199,000 people.   Below that Kassel, Saarbrücken, Ludwigshafen, Potsdam, Heidelberg, Darmstadt, Würzburg, Ulm and Jena can be added to the list and now were down to almost 100,000 people.   Here is a nation a little bigger than New Mexico with trolleys all over the place….   The ubiquitous cream paint in the west and red paint in the east has vanished.   There is much more variety today.   I've tried to pick one link from each city but YouTube always gives you more if you are interest in wasting the entire weekend.

If I picked a link from each city, you would be bored to tears and so would I.   So I just picked the two other cities with heavy rail (you already saw a Berlin U-bahn link) … so here add Hamburg and Munich … and then I added all the other trolley lines in those states (Lower Saxony  and Bavaria) and one additional city state completely surrounded by Lower Saxony.   So we have 3 of the 16 states or Lander in Germany and we wind up with videos of railways in 

Hamburg, the second most populous city, lost its streetcars in the 1970s but it has a huge U-bahn and S-bahn network:   It is the principal city in Neidersachsen (or the state of Lower Saxony).

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wrMVnSPh8Yw

The largest city (Stadt) in Niedersachsen today that has trams is Hannover.  It was the first place to get Grossraumwagen or Large-room-cars.   The year escapes me but I think it might have been around 1958 and my recollection was that they were non-articulated double-truck cars.  Until then the common vehicle in Germany was a four wheel car towing legions of trailers (Anhangern).   When I first saw this city, my impression was that it was a place that had the shit bombed out of it and was rebuilt as a totally modern place.

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6tukHLi97NI

Then we have one more city … think of liverwurst or Baunschweiger.   Well the city is Braunschweig (or Brunswick in English) with about 40 route miles of streetcars serving a city of a quarter million people.  

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYI_-Ct0yEk 

However, completely surrounded by Niedersachsen is the city-state of Bremen, a city of 548,000 people.   Small place … just the 10th largest city in Germany.   :<)   If you like trains, you can also look for the S-Bahn videos.   There are four lines out of Bremen.   

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nl4onjSqRM

Munich (München in German) lost most of its streetcars but again, there is a huge U-bahn network.   The second link shows old and new, horse cars, modern cars, black and white, color and even the railway employees band.   Leider, es ist alles in Deutschesprache aber es ist nett.  (I told you it would help if you learn other languages.)  

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0C7UNf9Bodc

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfLJguimIeE  

Nuremberg (again, we messed with their spelling.   It's really Nürnberg)…. the S-bahn is under catenary here.   Nice trolley network.   Enough great museums for a couple of days including a post office / railroad museum. 

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxLe3uUwSQI

My memories of Würzburg include lunch in the Ratskeller (the basement of the city hall or Rathaus).  By wife wanted the Forellen (or trout).  She was  lead over to an aquarium and asked which one she wanted.  From swimming to on your plate in fifteen minutes.   Fish does not get much fresher than that!   Fabulous small city with many things to see.   

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne7Y_Uj4Rf8

Augsburg … if you don't want to pay for an expensive hotel room in Munich, then stay in Augsburg and take the S-bahn into Munich.   This is a special trip with a KSW car to Groeggingen.  (the oe replaces the umlated o when I'm too lazy).   What is a KSW?   Well, the word car was superfluous.   It is a Kriegstrassenbahnwagen wherein Kreig is war, Strassenbahn is street railway, and Wagen is car.   These were cars cobbled together after World War II for cities all over Germany from bombed out remains of older streetcars … basically new bodies with old guts.   Feel that dynamic braking?  Just like West Penn Railways, the drum controllers with accelerating ad braking points were common all over Europe until the 1960s an 1970s.   Many cities still have museum fleets that can be used for charters. 

     KSW tram in Augsburg

     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3U3ep6g6S4

By the way, in this nation a little larger than New Mexico are 16 states or Lander.   We have just covered the trolleys and subways in two of those sixteen lander and taken you to eight cities!   

On Dec 5, 2014, at 7:33 AM, Lattner, Raymond via Pittsburgh-railways wrote:

> Where are the potholes? Wow those roads are in great shape.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Pittsburgh-railways [mailto:pittsburgh-railways-bounces at mailman.dementix.org] On Behalf Of Herb Brannon via Pittsburgh-railways
> Sent: Thursday, December 04, 2014 6:10 PM
> To: Western PA Trolley discussion
> Subject: [PRCo] Berlin, DE -- Tram Ride
> 
> If you like German tram/trolley systems then take a look at this video. It is best viewed in "full screen" mode.
> 
> I was not aware that Berlin had such an extensive tram system. There are several different types of trams in operation. The system seems extremely well maintained.
> 
> Take note of the tram signal system and watch how it is coordinated with the motor vehicle traffic signals. The tram signals are very easy to figure out just by watching what happens at car stops and intersections. Note also the very fast, very smooth and very quiet operation of the system. This video is of Line 63. Check out some of the other lines on the YouTube page.
> 
> Berlin Tram Line 63 <http://youtu.be/pRJ4-4Lvpag>
> 
> --
> *Herb Brannon*
> 
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