Heidelberg 1974

Tramscape Tramway Photographs

Heidelberg, Germany


The historical city of Heidelberg is well known for its old university, castle and attractive city centre and is a popular destination for tourists. It was also the centre point of a number of tramways reaching out to neighbouring towns. In the 1960s and 1970s, the survival of the tramway was in serious doubt as the outer branches of the network were closed and trams removed from the picturesque Altstadt (above left), leaving Bismarckplatz (above right) the main access point to the city centre. In this photo an interurban tram of the OEG company in white and red livery is seen alongside one of Heidelberg's blue trams.		Happily, sentiment has changed, with a new urban route built in the 1990s (above) and plans now in place to re-extend the network to Kirchheim, Wiesloch and Schwetzingen. Also under serious consideration is the return of trams to the Altstadt, although use of Hauptstrasse has been ruled out.

Click on the years below to see the thumbnails
Click here to see the Heidelberg Tramway Photograph Catalogue

1974
1981
1984
1987
1996

A BRIEF HISTORY OF HEIDELBERG'S TRAMWAYS

Heidelberg's tram operators, the Heidelberger Strassen- und Bergbahn AG (HSB), traces it's existence back to 1887, when the private operators, who had built a 3.7 km urban horse tram network between 1885 and 1886, turned the operation into a limited company.

Heidelberg lies in the valley of the Neckar and is surrounded by much wooded hillside, being on the edge of the Odenwald. This beautiful setting as well as the attractiveness of the historical city itself made Heidelberg a popular tourist destination. To take advantage of the potential custom. the HSB successfully lobbied for a concession to build a "mountain" railway to link the city with the castle and Molkenkur. Granted in 1888 and opened in 1890, it resolved an issue which had been a hotly debated in the city since 1873 when proposals were first made by the Swiss engineer, Riggenbach. A second line linked Molkenkur to the popular Konigstuhl hill in 1907.

The HSB was taken into municipal ownership in 1901 when the city bought 75% of the company's capital, and the final decision to convert the horse tramway to electrical power was taken. Electrification led to an enormous growth in ridership and a confident HSB, which built a single track line to Handschuhsheim, a community north of the river which had been incorporated into the city in 1903. The line, opened in 1904, ran parallel to the track of the OEG company which had built an interurban service, which survives to this day, running through Heidelberg from Weinheim to Mannheim.

The next extension to the HSB network took place in 1905 when the independent operators of a line running south to Wiesloch were bought out. This single track "interurban" was opened in 1901 and operated in conjunction with the state railways who owned the ultimate concession for the route, and ran parallel to the HSB's urban tracks for a short distance along Rohrbacher Strasse.

Heidelberg was, and still is, a relatively small city and further growth involved linking further surrounding communities to the city. In 1910, tracks were extended from Rohrbach to Kirchheim and from Karlstor along the banks of the Neckar to Schlierbach. Tracks were laid on a new cross-river bridge with services planned to be extended into Ziegelhausen. Although this development never took place as the First World War intervened, the continuation on the southern bank to Neckargemund was completed in 1914. The war also put a hold on plans to extend to Schwetzingen in the west, although the Wiesloch line was substantially upgraded and a new alignment on Steubenstrasse in Handschuhsheim replaced the older route from Blumenthalstrasse to Gruner Hof .

HSB continued with it's expansionist plans after the war ended and in 1919, the planned Schwetzingen route was opened as far as Eppelheim. Realisation of the full plands had to wait until 1927, but in the meantime progress continued unabated. The community of Wieblingen, already served bythe OEG interurban line to Mannheim was incorporated into the city of Heidelberg in 1920 and a more intensive service was required. Although the OEG offered to double-track and electrify what was still a steam-powered service, negotiations failed and a new "urban" line was openewd from Schlachthaus in 1926.

The HSB and OEG shared several alignments in the city but until 1929 they operated their trams on parallel-running single tracks. A formal agreement was reached by which both tracks were used, but with each company retaining ownership of "their" track. For many years, the OEG retained separate tracks at Bismarckplatz in the city centre.

It was not until 1939 than a further line opened, although plans had been in place since 1928, when tracks were laid on the newly-built Hindenburg-Bridge at what is now the Ernst-Walz-Brucke. The new line was to provide a service to the newly developing area of Neuenheimer Feld, where it had been planned to locate a new cemetery. The cemetery was never built, but the tramway was - to a new destination, a large new hospital. The line was to be very useful very soon, for traansporting war wounded for medical attention.

Heidelberg emerged relatively unscathed from the Second World War and was able to restore services relatively quickly once peace had been restored. Only the line to the hospital was delayed awaiting the building of a new bridge, and trams returned in 1953. About a quarter of the pre-war tram fleet had been destroyed and with large numbers of passengers to carry and no money for new rolling stock, the HSB was under severe pressure in the early post-war years.

Long suffering passengers had to wait until 1955-56 for HSB to take delivery of completely new tramcars - 7 of the so-called Verbandstyp cars which were 2-axle cars little changed from wartime designs. They had been developed by a number of tram operators as a standard car to provide relatively cheap and quick replacements for wartime losses, but by 1955 they were becoming distinctly old-fashioned. Heidelberg remained loyal to the local tram and rolling-stock factory (Fuchs) which did not have a more modern design to offer, and would itself soon withdraw from tram building. Nevertheless, the trams were well received by the public, which had been becoming increasingly critical of the quality of service being offered.

The 1950s and especially the 1960s were the years of the so-called "Wirtschaftswunder", when Germany experienced a rapid economic expansion leading to much increased personal wealth. The motor car was becoming the mode of transport of choice and, backed by the motor industry, vociferous car-owner clubs such as ADAC and a local press generally hostile to trams, there was increasing pressure to scrap the tramway system altogether. The HSB was strongly pro-tram, especially under the leadership of Dr Fritz Bergmaier and continued its progressive policy despite the inadequacy of it's rolling-stock and rapidly rising costs (particularly wages and salaries).

The tram lobby won it's first big battle in 1955 when, after long debate, it was decided to build a tramway along the "Neue Strasse" (now the Kurfursten-Anlage) on land freed up by the re-siting of the main railway station to a new location outside the city centre. Thoughts of moving the station had gone back to the previous century. The overriding problem with it's central location was that the tracks were at grade rather than on an embankment and crossed the increasingly busy Rohrbacher Strasse just to the south of the city centre. The street-level crossing was to become an unacceptable barrier to "free" movement in an increasingly motorised city, but it had also been a problem to the trams since their inception. Turn of the century rules had restricted the possibility of tram movements across the railway tracks and had led to turning facilities being required to separate the northern and southern tram routes. The "railway problem" had also manifested itself near Karlstor where an at-grade crossing had meant that the Schlierbach / Neckargemund line had to terminate at Karlstor, with passengers having to cross the tracks on foot to change trams for onward services. This situation was only resoloved in 1933 through a realignment of the rail tracks.

With the decision to link the new Hauptbahnhof to the city centre with a tram reservation on the Neue Strasse came probably the one battle which would ultimately save the trams despite a number of defeats in the following twenty years. A new link to Bergheimer Strasse along Karl-Metz-Strasse was required and it was built alongside an expanded depot of the site of the old slaughterhouse. The latter part of the 1950s saw the line in Neuenheimer Feld extended by 400 metres from the hospital (Chirurgishe Klinik) to Bunsengymnasium, and the HSB order new six-axle articulated trams from Duwag after the success of trials with a new tram borrowed from Bochum.
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Despite mounting financial troubles, the HSB entered the 1960s in a mood of optimism. At over 45 km, the network was at it's greatest length. More trams were purchased (double-ended sets on this occasion as it was proving too costly to build turning loops for the single-ended trams bought previously) and an additional track in Handshuhsheim allowed the HSB to intensify their "urban" service alongside the OEG. The shock death of Fritz Bergmaier in 1961 was a strong blow in the war of wills with the anti-tram lobby putting the HSB at a disadvantage when, in 1964, the concession to run the tramway system came up for renewal. Although a scrapping of the system was not a serious proposition, one condition of renewing the powers was the closure of the Wieblingen line. A new 25 year concession was granted for some services, but for trams in Schwetzigen, Kirchheim and along Hauptstrasse, the city's main street, it was only 10 years.

Desirable improvements to the network such as routeing trams into Sophienstrasse to approach the increasingly congested Bismarckplatz in such a way as to enable them to turn into Hauptstrasse with minimal traffic disruption were shelved and the authorities turned to outside "Experts" for advice as to how they should proceed. Professor Nebelung of the Aachen Technical Institute was called in to examine transport in the entire Rhein-Neckar area including the larger neighbouring city of Mannheim. The final report recommended a reduction of the network, especially in the outlying areas, especially the increasingly old-fashioned alignments to Nussloch and Schwetzingen. The OEG would remain as a backbone of regional transport, and mirroring proposed developments in Mannheim, the possibility of running the OEG line in a short tunnel in Heidelberg was mooted. Very little was done as the financial squeeze tightened. A second report was commissioned, concentrating of the Heidelberg area and the Schaechterle Report made specific recommendations regarding the scaling back of services to a purely urban network, but also including the closure of the line to Bunsengymnasium, the line along Bergheimer Strasse and that along Hauptstrasse.

More trouble came in the form of public protests against fares increases in 1969 when services were blockaded by a combination of student activists and disgruntled citizens in actions reminiscent of the summer of protest the previous year. The city, owners of the HSB, had to increase what had been until then a relatively minor subsidy and scale back services and force the fares to rise in 1971 by which time the "Red Action" protestors had lost some of the enthusiasm of previous years. Drastic measures were necessary however and the General Transport Plan of 1973 confirmed the worst.

The closure of the link from Rohrbach to Kirchheim in October 1972 was the first stage in a massive pruning of the tramway network. July 1973 saw the closure of the line from Leimen to Wiesloch and the shorter link to Seegarten from Franz-Knauff-Strasse. January 1974 saw the end of services to Schwetzingen (and realignment including a short extension at the new terminus at Eppelheim). With the closure of the Schwetzingen route, Heidelberg was left without a terminus with a loop and the first batch of articulated trams, not being suitable for use elsewhere, were sold.

The most controversial closure of all, that of Hauptstrasse, was delayed until July 1976, but track and overhead was removed within six months. The tramways had reached their low point,. The HSB lost even more passengers. Hauptstrasse was turned into an attractive pedestrian only area, but was now poorly served by public transport and it was to here that a large proportion of tram passengers wished to go. How to rectify this "mistake" has exercised the minds of transport planners ever since.

In 1981, the HSB committed itself to the renewal of the tramways and in the following year restated their position by proposing a new extension - along Berliner Strasse from Bunsengymnasium northwards to meet the existing Handschuhsheim route at Blumenthalstrasse. In 1981 a short extension to Leimen Friedhof was opened - along the tracks closed in 1973 and the new line on Berliner Strasse came into operation in two phases : to Blumenthalstrasse in 1988 and to Hans-Thoma-Platz in November 1995.

Bismarckplatz was remodelled once more, with a combined tram and bus stopping area incorporating the OEG services which were also routed via Hauptbahnhof and Kurfursten-Anlage rather than Bergheimer Strasse following the redevelopment of the Hauptbahnhof tram station and a new chord linking the OEG directly with Hauptbahnhof.

As well as new lines, the HSB also modernised it's rolling stock fleet. In December 1988, they took delivery of 8 new Stadtbahn-M cars, which were of a design which had been very successful throughout Germany. 4 cars were for the new extension and 4 to replace losses resulting from a fire at the depot in August 1984. A further 12 low-floor trams arrived in 1994/95 and in 2002/03, 8 of the "Variotram" design sold by Bombardier .

The HSB now has an ambitious expansion programme on the drawing board, with tentative plans to reintroduce trams to Schwetzingen, Nussloch, Wiesloch and Kirchheim, with the much longer term prospect of realising much of the plans of a century earlier for a southern ring serving Sandhausen and Walldorf. Alternative plans to serve the Altstadt have been studied, but with tracks in Hauptstrasse definitely out of the question, a line to the eastern part of the old central area via Friedrich-Ebert-Anlage, currently served by buses, is the only realistic route. Residential development in the Neuenheimer Feld area has also led to plans being considered for a branch line from Berliner Strasse to be constructed.

The planned line to Kirchheim was opened for public service on December 9th, 2006. The 4.4 km line was opened just over 10 years after the decision to proceed after much discussion and argument over the exact routing of the service. it was not until July 2004 when construction started.The line runs from Stadtbucherei/Romerkreis, along Ringstrasse, crossing the railway tracks on the Montpellierbrucke, then following Carl-Benz-Strasse, Kirchheimer Weg and Schwetzinger Strasse, passing Kirchheim Rathaus and terminating at Kirchheim Friedhof. Due to the narrowness of the street through Kirchheim, part of the line is single-track only.

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