Deutsche Bahn accelerates the Siemens – Berlin train – Latest news

Berlin. The entrance is barred and reinforced by steel sheets. In the stairwell are debris and rubble. The platform also offers an image of the jammers. The guard house is demolished, the roof rotten. The rails have been disbadembled for a long time. When you enter the Wernerwerk S-Bahn station at Siemensdamm, you have a blurred idea of ​​the Herculean work of reopening the Siemensbahn, which was closed in 1980.

This is exactly what the Berlin Senate and Deutsche Bahn want to address after about 40 years of sleep. The background is the determination of the Siemens group to invest about 600 million euros in a future campus located in the huge factory Spandau. In Siemensstadt, not only many new innovative jobs have to be created, but also apartments. In this context, the Senate and the railways are checking whether and how quickly the old S-Bahn connection can be put back into service.

"I have the impression that everyone has the will to do it," Berlin Railway Commissioner Alexander Kaczmarek told Siemensstadt on Tuesday. Previously, there had already been a meeting with representatives of the Federal Railway Authority and the Protection of Monuments. This will depend very much on how quickly the railway line, which is nearly five kilometers long, can be reactivated. The big advantage: despite repeated attempts by the railway, the line was not designed for rail traffic. There are therefore acquired rights. A long and costly plan approval procedure is therefore not necessary, at least for most of the route.

However: Structurally, the path opened in December 1929 still has a long way to go before the trains can circulate again. Therefore, the railway first wants to hire experts for a specific inventory. In particular, they should evaluate the condition of the railway embankment, the railway stations and especially the viaducts. In order not to disrupt traffic on the factory premises as much as possible, most of the route was constructed as a raised railway. Steel structures are listed today. A replacement could be expensive.

In the end, the financial needs can not be seriously estimated until after the inventory, the manager of the railways has responded to the appropriate requests. Its timetable is to submit a concrete proposal to the Senate for the reconstruction of the Siemens railway, including a cost calculation by the end of next year. The money would then probably increase the land. The lengthening of the railway line required by the district of Spandau up to Gartenfeld, where many new apartments are to be built, is not yet decided. "There were plans for this in the 1920s," said Kaczmarek.