Berlin-Siemensbahn

Images from Siemensbahn line can be viewed here.

The name ‘Siemensbahn’ goes back to the German company Siemens & Halske who built the railway line in Berlin between
1927 and 1929.  

The Siemensbahn started at Jungfernheide station, where it had a connection to the U- and S-bahn, on the U7/S41/S42 lines.  From here it runs westwards and branches off at about the same level as the ring road, and then heads northwards across the river Spree
 and first reaches Wernerwerk station.  After the railway station, it spans an extensive 90-degree angle, runs to the west, where Siemensstadt station and then to the north-west.  After about one kilometre, it reaches the terminus station of Gartenfeld. 

The track is almost its entire length elevated above the surrounding areas, apart from the terminus at Gartenfeld. 

As early as 1905, the Siemens Group had a company-owned station set up for its employees so that they could get to work faster.  The station opened as a Fürstenbrunn (later: Siemensstadt Fürstenbrunn).  When the plant moved to the northern area of Siemensstadt in the 1920s, the plant management was looking for an alternative
solution.  In 1925 Siemens and the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG) agreed on the construction of a new line; Siemens provided the land for the railway to
 be built upon. 

Construction began in 1927 and was completed two years later.  On December 18, 1929, the first trains ran. The trains were powered by ground
fed electric rails.  Approximately 17.000 members of the Siemens workforce used the to and from their jobs. 

A development plan by Albert Speer provided for a transfer station at the end of the route. During the Second World War, the line was damaged, with the Spreebrücke being completely destroyed by the Wehrmacht.  During September 1945, the bridge was replaced with a makeshift bridge.  At that time, the Siemens freight railway had already been provisionally connected to the S-Bahn station Gartenfeld via a wooden ramp.  Until the April 28, 1948, the S-Bahn rail freight transport took place mainly during the night hours.  The line remained until March 1950, mainly because Siemens repaired S-Bahn cars for the Deutsche Reichsbahn. 

Two-track operation was resumed on December 3, 1956 after the construction of the new Spree bridge. The previous user figures were no longer achieved because the Siemens Group had moved its headquarters to Munich. Following this, the route became one of the least used in the entire Berlin railway network, and as a result, the trains were withdrawn to Jungfernheide. After the Reichsbahnerstreik (general workers strike) in September 1980 all traffic on the line ceased. 

During August 1995, the section between the district border to Spandau and the railway station Gartenfeld was put under state protection. In 2005, the railway dam between the branch and the southern part of the Spree river was partly removed, and no new cross-link structure was built over the Spree river. 

Since the decommissioning, Deutsche Bahn and the districts of Spandau and Charlottenburg Wilmersdorf, have carried out only a few maintenance work on the decaying and changing tracks, the substructure and the railway stations.