Weimar, the fourth largest city in German federal state Thuringia, is located in the “Thuringian Basin” and has about 65,000 inhabitants. It is best known for the two “poet princes” Goethe and Schiller and as the eponym of the first German republic (“Weimar Republic”). The famous “Bauhaus” school of architecture and art was also founded in Weimar, although it moved to Dessau after only a relatively short time.
Urban transport in the city is run by the Weimar public utility company (Stadtwerke Weimar). Today it is a bus-only operation, but the author – who comes from the “West” – still drove (or was driven) articulated trolley buses of the type “Ikarus 280 T” here at Whitsun 1990. The trolleybus system disappeared very quickly, until 2 april 2023 – the first western diesel buses had already arrived before, second-hand from Weimar’s Western German twin city Trier.
Recently, Weimar’s city parliament decided to convert the transport company’s bus fleet to buses powered by hydrogen via fuel cells. The first of these buses have been ordered, they are to be delivered in September 2023.
But Weimar did not want to wait that long. On 01 March 2023, the brand-new coach 467 of Regionalverkehr Köln (RVK), a Solaris Urbino 12 hydrogen, was on its way on the A 4 from the manufacturing plant in Bolechowo, Poland, to its new owner in the Rhineland. Weimar is located on the A 4 motorway, so there is nothing easier than taking a short trip off the motorway and to the depot of the Weimar public utility company. So that one could have a look at a Solaris Urbino 12 hydrogen.
The Weimar public utility company took the opportunity for a test drive, albeit a short one. The Solaris was a hit. And even MDR television was there. In the evening, the Solaris continued its journey to the Rhine.
