Braunschweig’s tramway runs on the highly unusual track gauge of 1,100 mm. Following the demise of the trams in Kiel and Lübeck, Braunschweig is now the only German operation travelling on this unusual track gauge. As a result, both Kiel and Lübeck, which ran on the same gauge, handed over trams to Braunschweig when they ceased operations. At least one tramcar came from Kiel, which was numbered Tw 116 in Braunschweig, while several KSW and superstructure sidecars came from Lübeck, two of which were also converted into single-unit sidecars with modern Düwag folding doors to be used behind six-axle articulated tramcars.
Braunschweig came up with the unusual gauge because the horse-drawn tramway in Braunschweig (then the capital of the Duchy of Braunschweig) was originally a British company. 1,100 mm seems to be a wonderful British measurement. And the British gave Braunschweig’s trams another curiosity at the beginning: they did not run on grooved trams, but on perforated trams. Holes were made in the carriageway into which the ‘pickle wheels’ of the trams fitted. Sounds good, but it often led to derailments. Which is why the grooved track was soon adopted.
Today, Braunschweig is the only tramway in the world that runs on 1,100 mm track, apart from the Santa Teresa toruista tramway in Rio de Janeiro.
Articulated tramcars
Brunswick’s tramway got its first articulated tramcars around 1960. Their history is also curious enough. They were delivered in 1957 as four-axle large-capacity tramcars from Linke-Hofmann-Busch in Salzgitter. But it wasn’t long before it was realised that articulated tramcars would be better. So the large-capacity tramcars were sent to Credé in Kassel, where they were lengthened into six-axle articulated tramcars. (Braunschweig had just had it with conversions at the time: due to the ban on bus trailers, its sixteen bus trailers from Luther & Jordan in Braunschweig and from Faka in Salzgitter were sent to Gaubschat in Berlin and ‘assembled’ there with sixteen Büssing 6,000 T and 6,500 T from 1952 and 1955 to form articulated buses. The articulated coaches with a former Luther & Jordan looked quite harmonious, while the front and rear coaches of one coach with a former Faka trailer did not quite match visually.
New acquisitions
For a long time, Braunschweig stuck with the six-axle articulated tramcar, which liked to pull a trailer behind it. This was abandoned in 1995: from then on, three-part articulated tramcars were used instead of the sidecar trains. They are now (almost) thirty years old and are to be replaced by new trains. Especially as they will be well over thirty years old when the new trams arrive in Braunschweig.
The new trams will be ten metres longer than the existing vehicles. BSVG (Braunschweiger Verkehrs GmbH) says that thanks to this extra ten metres in length, they will also be able to carry forty more passengers.
Until now, Braunschweig’s trams were 2.30 metres wide. This meant that Braunschweig and Bonn, for example, had identical Düwag articulated tramcars in terms of dimensions, Braunschweig on its 1,100 mm gauge, Bonn on standard gauge (1,435 mm). However, with the new generation of trams now in the pipeline, Braunschweig wanted to switch to a car body width of 2.65 metres. This is not quite so simple: the track centre-to-centre distances are too close together due to the previous narrow car bodies, so that wider trams could come into ‘enemy contact’ when meeting another tram. The tracks therefore have to be moved apart for the wider trains. This has been done for years when work has to be done on the tracks anyway.
But there is still a lot to do. The BSVG therefore submitted an application for funding to the Lower Saxony regional public transport company to subsidise the ‘moving apart’ of the tracks. This was initially rejected with reference to the budgetary situation of the public authorities. Instead, it was suggested to BSVG that the funding application be ‘put on hold’ for the time being in order to ‘revive’ it when the financial situation improved. However, the BSVG was not prepared to agree to this. Managing Director Jörg Reincke believes that the new tracks are not needed at some point, but now. That’s why the successors to the lanes built in 1995 will once again only be 2.30 metres wide. They are due to be delivered in 2029.
BSVG then wants to replace its 2007 trams from 2035. And their successors will actually be 2.65 metres wide and the infrastructure will have been gradually adapted by then.
