History of the Berlin S-Bahn
They circumnavigated the urban area in a three-quarter circle from Stettiner, the Hamburger, the Potsdamer and Anhalter Bahnhof to the Frankfurt train station.
[1] The core of this network, that is the cross-city ("Stadtbahn") East-West line and the circular Ringbahn, and several suburban branches were converted from steam operation to a third-rail electric railway in the latter half of the 1920s.
The first ideas for this project emerged only 10 years after the completion of the east–west cross-city line, with several concrete proposals resulting from a 1909 competition held by the Berlin city administration.
The projects do include: The Nazis' 1939 "World Capital Germania" planning called for services to eventually run as follows: Many sections of the S-Bahn were closed during the war owing to enemy action.
The Nord-Süd-Bahn tunnel was flooded on 2 May 1945 by retreating SS troops during the final Battle of Berlin[citation needed].
The exact number of casualties is not known, but up to 200 people are presumed to have perished, since the tunnel was used as a public shelter and also served to house military wounded in trains on underground sidings.
After hostilities ceased in 1945, Berlin was given special status as a "Four-Sector City," surrounded by the Soviet Occupation Zone, which later became the German Democratic Republic (GDR).
Since that town, now known as Lubin, was ceded to Poland under the terms of the Potsdam Agreement in 1945, 84 cars currently in the works were thus lost by Berlin.
[2] The first new railway line would be recorded in March 1947 after the war; yet while the car was hastily repaired, dismantled tracks and have been rebuilt, was already on the 7th[incomprehensible].
Although services continued operating through all occupation sectors, checkpoints were constructed on the borders with East Berlin and on-board "customs checks" were carried out on trains.
The West Berlin authorities were aware of this situation but did not impose stringent customs controls on such purchases out of political considerations.
Two armed guards were positioned at all ghost stations to ensure that no passengers jumped aboard trains or smashed windows to allow escape from East Berlin.
By contrast, during the same period, services on the S-Bahn in East Berlin were increased and new lines built as housing projects expanded eastward from the city centre.
These letters were occasionally followed by Roman numerals to indicate a short working or bifurcation in the service (e.g., A, BI, BII, C,) and are still used internally by the Berlin S-Bahn GmbH for timetabling and in conjunction with radio call-signs to each train unit.
Technically, a number of projects followed in the steps of re-establishing broken links in order to restore the former S-Bahn network to its 1961 status after 1990, especially the Ringbahn.
In December 1997 the connection between Neukölln and Treptower Park via Sonnenallee was reopened, enabling S4 trains to run 75% of the whole ring between Schönhauser Allee and Jungfernheide.
On 20 July 2009, known locally as "Black Monday," the S-Bahn service was significantly reduced owing to safety checks on the trains ordered by the German Federal Railway Authority.
[8] In January 2010, DB announced that they expected the system to resume normal service in December 2010 and employed 300 new staff in their workshops.
[9] In the same month, the Berlin transport Senator Ingeborg Junge-Reyer rejected an extension of the traffic contract with the operator Deutsche Bahn (DB) which is due to expire in December 2017.
[10] Rüdiger Grube, the head of the DB, announced that losses due to the S-Bahn crisis had reached €370 million at the end of 2010.
[11] MTR Corporation, National Express Group, Berlin S-Bahn GmbH and RATP Development had tendered for their procurement process, and were soon followed by train manufacturer Stadler Rail for their operations from 2018 to 2033.
The specific contracts are: Ringbahn - Stadtbahn - Nord-Süd Bahn - Starting in 2010, DB Netz is replacing mechanical train stops on the S-Bahn network with electronic balises.
