Guten tag: I was looking through a book tonight at my wife's bookshop on transit systems around the world. The Berlin U-Bahn and S-Bahn constituted a feature article, and there was some attention given to the the time of the Berlin Wall when the transit system was also split up. Well, despite my partial German ancestry (Neumeister family from, I think, the area around the Ruhr) my German is abysmal. I noticed on a DDR map of the system from the Cold War the severed line with arrows pointing toward the West Berlin sector segments of the system with the label "Anschluss siehe Nebenkarte" which, using a German dictionary and my very rudimentary knowledge of German as "Coming soon see the next map." Babelfish, which I always take with a grain of salt, said, "to connection see beside map," which sounds more like minimalist poetry than anything that one might find on a transit map. About the only thing most non-German-speaking Americans know about the word "Anschluss" is the annexation of Austria, which I am sure is not what is meant here. I ran a web search and all the pages that came back were auf Deutsche. Anyway, if anyone has any idea of a rough English equivalent I would be very interested. Also, if anyone has any first (or even second-) hand accounts of what it was like to ride the U-Bahn during the Cold War I would love to hear them. Danke schoen, Adam
I visited West Berlin in 1971 as a red-carpet guest of the West Berlin Press and Information Office, and they also bought me a ticket on a standard plain-vanilla tourist 3-hour bus tour of East Berlin suggesting I not volunteer the information that I was with the media unless they asked. Even inspired me to build a small N scale Berliner layout. In those days (West Berliners were celebrating/ memroailizing the 10th anniversary of building the Wall), there were TWO city rail transit systems, and BOTH were divided. The S-bahn ("city train") ran primarily on the right of way of the old German Reichbahn and often shared trackage with intercity trains. On the West Berlin side, the intercity trains were crossing from West Germany to West Berlin and crossing East German territory, with checkpoint at least twice in the trip. The S-bahn was owned and managed by the East Berlin (communist) government on both the east and west sides. I understand American servicemen were warned NOT to ride the S-bahn because it put them somewhat, at least potentially, under the control of East German authorities. Complicated diplomatic situation, because US/ Britain/ France and Russia all considered 4-power allies with occupation jurisdiction over "both" Germanys. The West Berlin S-bahn had one very important station, Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse, which was located PHYSICALLY in East Berlin. There was one east-west line whose run ended in the station. The track went on to the east but that was East Berlin territory. There was also one north-south line. Friedrichstrasse was in a section of East Berlin that jutted somewhat out to the west. The north-south line ran from West Berlin territory, oh, half a mile I guess on the south side of Friedrichstrasse into a tunnel and crossed under the Berlin wall underground. It stopped in the station, then emerged into the daylight and crossed over the top of the Berlin wall on the north going back intomWest Berlin territory. One could change from one line to the other without going through border formalities, or one could ride the north-south train and have a short look behind the Berlin without border formalities. But there was also a border crossing point INSIDE the station for pedestrians. This is considered probably the easiest crossing point for senior citizens. I understood that most elderly East Berlin pensioners were allowed to visit in the west with little problems. If they "escaped", they walked away from their pensions. Also, I read a historic book about an international community spying incident in which there was a group recruited in some Latin American country that broke up into small groups and traveled to West Berlin by inconspicious commercial travel, took the S Bahn to Friedrichstrasse and assembled in the station to be trained in Russia for some insurgency mission. There was an interesting children's book written in the 1920s or 1930s I think in which the Berlin S-Bahn played such as important part that a map of the system was part of the book. It was "Emil and the Detectives." There may have been a movie. Berlin also had a U-Bahn system (untergrunndt bahn/ "underground") which was built somewhat later than the S-Bahn system-- it was relatively new in 1971. Don't know if it was built in 1950s or 60s. That system was built and operated by the WEST Berlin city government on BOTH sides of the wall, but the parts were operated as separate systems. Apparently designed to be a unified system when and if the two Berlins ever got together... which they did at the end of the 1980s. I can tell you a lot more but I am supposed to go cook dinner. I shot many many color slides but I do not have any easy want to scan them to digital images and upload to railimages so I can't put them up immediately. Oh, and I saw steam (dampflok!) on our tour of the Eastern side and shot a few pictures, but one of my fellow passengers seemed very nervous about my shooting pictures from the bus of East Berlin railroad facilities!
I know there was still quite a lot of steam in West Germany in 1971, so I guess not much of it was around Berlin? Sorry if I'm hijacking...
link to Zoo Depot pic http://www.dredre.de/nahverkehrberlin/uploaded_images/Zoo.jpg link to Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse pic http://members.surfeu.de/hobbyuo/Fluggrafik/S_und_Fernbahnhof_Friedrichstrasse.jpg Berlin transit site w many S-Bahn pics http://www.berliner-verkehrsseiten.de/s-bahn/Bilder/Galerie1/Galerie2/Galerie3/Galerie4/hauptteil_galerie4.html wikipedia S-bahn site with pics, maps links Berlin Stadtbahn - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
