The Strausberg Railway (') is a light railway serving the town of

Strausberg Strausberg () is a town in Brandenburg, Germany, located 30 km east of Berlin. With a population of about 27,000 it is the largest town in the district of Märkisch-Oderland. History Strausberg was founded ''circa'' 1240, and in 1333 its firs ...

in Brandenburg, Germany. It links central Strausberg with the

Strausberg railway station Strausberg is the main railway station for the city of Strausberg in Brandenburg. It is served by the S-Bahn line . Overview The station is part of the Prussian Eastern line Berlin- Gorzów and is the southern end of the Strausberg–Straus ...

, where it connects with trains on the Berlin S-Bahn and the

Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn Niederbarnimer Eisenbahn GmbH is a private railway company operating regional train service in Berlin and Brandenburg, eastern Germany. It is owned by Industriebahn-Gesellschaft Berlin (66.92%) and four districts in the region (33.08%). The co ...

. Although formally constituted and regulated as a railway, the line uses tramway style rolling stock and is superficially indistinguishable from a tramway.

Overview

The railway is operated by the company '. This company also operates the

Straussee Ferry The Straussee Ferry (German: ''Strausseefähre'') is a passenger cable ferry that crosses the Straussee lake, near the town of Strausberg in Brandenburg, Germany. Overview The ferry service is operated by the Strausberg Railway, using the ferry ' ...

, an unusual electrically operated passenger cable ferry that crosses the Straussee lake from a landing close to the railway's Strausberg terminus.

History

The railway was originally opened in 1893, at which time it was operated by

steam locomotive A steam locomotive is a locomotive that provides the force to move itself and other vehicles by means of the expansion of steam. It is fuelled by burning combustible material (usually coal, oil or, rarely, wood) to heat water in the locomot ...

s and carried both freight and passenger traffic. In 1921 the line was electrified, and a new street based routing opened for the final length into Strausberg. The originally routing remained open for freight traffic and was also electrified. In 1926, the line was extended from Lustgarten to Jugendheim, but this section closed in 1970. Freight traffic ceased in 2005, and the original routing was closed, along with the rail connection to the main line network. The railway is of

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

, has a length of about , and is electrified on the overhead system at 750 volts. From south to north, the line serves stops at Strausberg railway station, Landhausstraße, Schlagmühle, Stadtwald, Hegermühle, Wolfstal, Käthe-Kollwitz-Straße, Elisabethstraße and Lustgarten. The depot is situated on the original route, and is accessed by a curve just beyond the Lustgarten terminus. The line had been mainly operated by three ČKD Tatra KT8D5 tram cars, built in 1989/1990 and acquired from

Košice Košice ( , ; german: Kaschau ; hu, Kassa ; pl, Коszyce) is the largest city in eastern Slovakia. It is situated on the river Hornád at the eastern reaches of the Slovak Ore Mountains, near the border with Hungary. With a population of app ...

in 1995. A prototype ČKD

Tatra T6C5 Tatra may refer to: * Tatra Mountains, a mountain range in Slovakia and Poland ** Tatra County, an administrative division of Poland in the region of the Tatra Mountains ** Tatra National Park, Poland, a national park in Poland ** Tatra National P ...

car, built in 1998 as a demonstrator for the United States market and operated on the New Orleans streetcar system for several months, had been acquired from

Siemens Siemens AG ( ) is a German multinational conglomerate corporation and the largest industrial manufacturing company in Europe headquartered in Munich with branch offices abroad. The principal divisions of the corporation are ''Industry'', '' ...

(the new owners of Tatra) in 2003 and had been used in off-peak service. Two older Reko-Triebwagen TZ 69 cars, built in 1969 and acquired in the 1980s, were still available for passenger service, and a third had been converted into a works car. The railway also owns an even older preserved passenger car, dating from 1925. The Strausberg Railway joined the delivery framework of the BVG Berlin Transport Company ordering 2

Flexity Berlin The Bombardier Flexity Berlin is a tram type constructed for the Berlin tramway network. It was developed by Bombardier Transportation during the late 2000s and is based on the Bombardier Flexity family of 100% low-floor trams. Overview The ...

trams on 5. September 2011. The two short double-sided two-cab trams were delivered in February and March 2013 replacing its older trams in daily service.

Photogallery

File:Ste16depot011005.jpg, Historic tramcar 16, dating from 1925, standing on the depot fan in front of the depot. File:Ste22vorstadt140804.jpg, A Tatra KT8D5 at Hegermühle station File:The Strausberg Tram, 1993.jpg, Historic tramcar in 1993 File:StrausbergTram2.jpg, Inner view of the tram

Notes

References

External links