Only a few
copies left!
| System | ||||
|
Bielefeld has 320,000 inhabitants and lies in the east of the German land of North-Rhine - Westphalia, half way between Hanover and Dortmund. The Bielefeld Stadtbahn is a system similar to those operating in Stuttgart, Cologne, Frankfurt or Hanover, i.e. a network combining metro/subway and tram features. When construction of Stadtbahn tunnel sections started in the early 1970's in the near Rhine-Ruhr area (Dortmund, Essen, Bochum, etc.), Bielefeld built its first underground station Beckhausstraße, which opened on 21 Sept. 1971. After that further expansion of the underground network came to a halt due to financial problems. It was finally resumed in the mid-1980's when the north-south tunnel through the city centre was excavated. It opened on 28 April 1991 and included 4 underground stations, Jahnplatz and Hauptbahnhof (central railway station), which are used by all lines, and Wittekindstraße and Nordpark, which are only served by Line 3 trains heading for Babenhausen Süd. Hauptbahnhof was built as a major junction with four tracks, 3 of them on the upper -2 level, and one for Line 1 and Line 2 southbound trains on the lower -3 level. The last tunnel section for Line 4 from Rathaus to the Universität, with two underground stations Siegfriedplatz and Rudolf-Oetker-Halle, finally opened on 2 April 2000 after some delays. The surface extension to Lohmannshof opened on 29 Sept. 2002. In August 2021, lines 3 and 4 swapped their eastern termini, with Line 4 now serving the Stieghorst leg. The Stadtbahn network has a total length of 33.5 km and uses 1000 mm gauge. The seven underground stations all have high platforms, most surface stops now have high platforms too, but a few have not yet been rebuilt accordingly and therefore trains are equipped with folding steps.
|
||||
| Photos | ||||
 |
||||
| History | ||||
|
21
Sept 1971: Beckhausstraße
underground station (Line 2) |
||||
| Fotos | ||||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
| Books | ||||
|
Ch. Groneck, P. Lohkemper, R. Schwandl: RHEIN-RUHR STADTBAHN ALBUM 2: Gelsenkirchen, Herne, Bochum, Dortmund + Special Bielefeld. - Spring 2006, Robert Schwandl Verlag, ISBN 3936573 085
|
||||
|
||||
| Links | ||||
|
MoBiel - Stadtwerke Bielefeld (Tram Operator) Stadtbahn Bielefeld at Wikipedia.de 
|
||||
