Siemensbahn information

Siemensbahn (German for "Siemens Railway") is an abandoned 4.5 km rapid transit line of the Berlin S-Bahn in Berlin. It was opened in 1929 as a modern, grade separated, third rail electrified, double track, heavy rail branch line serving three new train stations, and closed in 1980.

The Siemens & Halske company privately financed the line to improve worker access to its industrial district in the eponymous Siemensstadt locality of Spandau. Siemensstadt not only was home to production and research facilities, but a private town with social and childcare services, housing tracts, sports venues, allotments, churches, retail and leisure facilities, all designed to modern architectural and social standards with minimal municipal oversight.^[1]

Planning and construction of the Siemens Railway were closely coordinated with Deutsche Reichsbahn and began in 1925 and 1927 respectively. Upon completion in 1929, Siemens handed ownership and control to Deutsche Reichsbahn for integration into the Berliner Stadt-, Ring- und Vorortbahnen ("Stadtbahn, Ringbahn and suburban railways") network. That newly electrified network was rebranded as the Berlin S-Bahn in 1930.

Towards the end of the Second World War, a bridge across the river Spree was destroyed, and one track subsequently removed as war reparations. By the time the line was fully restored in 1956, Siemens had relocated to Munich due to the division of Germany. Following the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961, the Deutsche Reichsbahn of East Germany remained in charge of a now bisected S-Bahn network. After decades of low ridership numbers and lack of investment, Siemensbahn fell into disuse in September 1980 when industrial action of East German railway personnel precipitated the abandonment of substantial portions of the West Berlin network.

The Siemensbahn north of the Spree crossing, including bridges, viaducts and ancillary buildings, is listed for conservation as a historic technical ensemble with the Berlin State Historical Monument Office (Landesdenkmalamt Berlin).^[2] There are plans to reactivate the line to serve a new Siemens research campus at the old Siemensstadt site as well as new housing developments. An eventual extension beyond Gartenfeld was anticipated during the original planning of the line but so far has not materialized, despite various proposals having been put forward over the course of almost a century.