On 18 March 1895, the world’s first public transport line operated by a motorised bus rather than a stagecoach was opened. And this did not happen in one of the world’s major cities, but in the “provinces”. The first motor bus operated in southern Westphalia between the towns of Deuz and Netphen and the district town of Siegen. Today, Deuz and Netphen – together with other towns – form the town of Netphen, and Deuz should not be confused with the well-known Cologne district of Deutz.
Amazing: the world’s first motor bus was operating in the provinces. How did that happen? Well, at the end of the 19th century, the first industrial companies had settled in both Deuz and Netphen. They had goods to transport, and their employees had to be brought to and from their workplaces. So they demanded a connection to the state railway – which never happened. When a railway was later built to Netphen and Deuz, it was the ‘Siegen District Railway’.
Four young entrepreneurs from Deuz and Netphen were concerned to learn that the state railway had rejected the construction of a line to their towns. So they looked for another solution. They founded a bus company. Knowing that Carl Benz had built his ‘Benz Patent Motor Car’ in 1885 – ten years earlier – they turned to Benz and ordered a ‘bus’.
Benz delivered a bus, which he named the ‘Landauer’. It looked like a stagecoach (without horses) and, like a stagecoach, could only carry eight passengers. The driver sat in front of the passenger compartment in the open air, protected from above by a roof, just like in a stagecoach. The journey from Deuz via Netphen to Siegen took one hour and twenty minutes, which meant that the bus could make five return trips a day, whereas the stagecoach had only offered one return trip a day. An interesting side note: although the motor bus was now available, the post office maintained its coach service.
In 1995, ‘100 Years of Siegen – Netphen – Deuz’ was celebrated for the first time with a large parade, which was attended by around 80 historic buses from Germany, Great Britain, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Austria, Sweden and Switzerland. In 2020, the 125th anniversary was to be celebrated accordingly, but Corona thwarted such plans.
Well, said the town of Netphen, then we’ll postpone the celebration until the next reasonably round date, 130 years after the first motor bus journey, in 2025.
And so, on the weekend of 13 to 15 June, there was a big celebration in Netphen. Once again, there was a parade of historic buses – the highest starting number was 107. The parade began in Deuz, circled the town of Netphen on a route through the Rothaar Mountains along its municipal boundaries, and ended in the centre of Netphen in front of the town hall. It also passed the sources of the Lahn, Sieg and Eder rivers – all three of which originate within a few kilometres of each other in the Netphen area and flow in very different directions: the Eder to the northeast, the Lahn initially to the east and the Sieg to the west.
The buses in the parade could also be viewed at ‘festival miles’ in Netphen and Deuz. The region, the ‘Netpherland’, was also presented there.
