Why A Century-Old Forest Tram Still Beats The Bus

We ride the Thuringian Waldbahn from Gotha through forest and small towns, tracing its history and design while asking why systems like this are rare elsewhere. Along the way we test timed transfers, swap notes on fares, and weigh what rural mobility could look like in the US.

• route overview from Gotha to Waltershausen, Friedrichroda and Bad Tabarz
• single track operations with passing loops
• history from 1894 urban tram to 1929 Waldbahn
• fare simplicity with the Deutschlandticket
• regional rail links and service frequency
• lessons for rural transit in the US
• reflections on identity, tourism and everyday access

Chapters

• 0:18 Setting The Scene: A Forest Tram
• 0:34 Urban Trams Versus The Waldbahn
• 0:59 Route Overview And Service Pattern
• 1:25 Getting There From Jena To Gotha
• 3:10 Boarding And First Impressions
• 4:16 Timed Transfer To Waltershausen Line 6
• 5:36 Why A Tram In A Town Of 12,000
• 6:35 History From 1894 To 1929
• 8:03 Southbound To Friedrichroda And Fare Talk
• 9:43 Riding Through The Woods And Fall Colors
• 11:58 Lunch Break And Push To Bad Tabarz
• 12:46 End Of The Line: Bad Tabarz
• 13:56 Why This Exists And Where It Could Work
• 16:14 Reflections, Party Tram, And Support

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:18

This week on Transit Tangents, I'll take you on a journey riding the Turingen Waldbaum, a tram located in the city of Gutta, Germany, that literally runs through the forest. I've been excited to make this day trip, and I'm glad you're gonna be able to listen to it. All of this and more coming up on Transit Tangents. When you think of trams or streetcars, you probably think of transit lines running through fairly dense urban areas. On the show, we've ridden them many times in cities like Kansas City, Dresden, Vienna, and even in New Orleans, which was way back in one of our early episodes. Today, as you can tell, we are adding another tram to the list, but this one's pretty unique in that it doesn't just run through a dense urban area like this. This one runs through the forest. In addition to running through the smaller German city of Güte, where I am right now, this service literally runs through the woods, acting as a mini-regional rail connecting the small towns of Leine, Friedrichsrode, Walterhausen, and Bad Tabars. The service runs roughly every 30 minutes all day long. So today I'm gonna go ride the system, talk about why it exists, give a little bit of the history of it, see how it works, and talk about why we don't find things like this many places in the world. But first I have to get there, and that means heading to the train station. So I am currently heading from my apartment to the Jena Westbenhof. I boarded the regional train from Jena and rode it about 25 minutes to Erfurt. If you haven't liked this video already, please consider doing so. It helps get the show to be. But cool to be able to see the Christmas tree going up. Also, the like near the train station and the walk up, it was very quiet and a little glum looking, but the center square here is really cute walking around the downtown area. Alright, we're at the tram stop. Uh it should be here in about two minutes, and we'll be on our way to our first stop. To start, we're gonna ride up a few stops on the line to Walterhausen. We won't hit every stop today, but we will ride the line in its entirety. On the way to Walterhausen, we will pass the very small towns of Valwinkel and Lina, as well as a stop called Boxberg, which literally looks like it is in the middle of a field with just a shed next to it. They're very uh very retro feel inside. Love that you can go right to the back window and take a peek right out. When we get to Walterhausen, we might kind of quickly get off of this and quickly get on another tram. When we arrive there, there is a tram service in Walterhausen, despite it only having a population of 7,000 people. Uh, that is the number six tram. It seems like it actually has a timed connection with this tram, so it might be literally one minute we get off of this, get right onto the number six, and that will take us to the kind of city center of Walterhausen, and we'll pick it up from there. As we made our way out of Gouta, the double tracks turned into a single track line with small areas for trams to pass each other. We also made a unique stop with a loop in it to serve a local hospital. To my surprise, a few minutes later, we were passing Boxburgh, the station I mentioned earlier that essentially is in the middle of a field, and believe it or not, someone actually got off the tram there. I was genuinely surprised. Oh yeah, there's the number six right there. Pretty sure this is like timed so that we can walk her right across, which is pretty cool. So I was correct on the time transfer. We literally got right off the number four, basically walked across the platform, got onto the number six, sat down, and like 30 seconds later, we're now on our way into downtown Walterhausen. Now, is there anything in downtown Walterhausen? I have no idea. Okay, so we made it here to Walterhausen again, started on the number four, which is the Turingen Waldbahn. We had that quick time to transfer to the number six. The number six was kind of cool to be able to ride. I rode it a few stops up here and we're now in the city center. Uh Walterhausen dates back to the 8th or 9th century, which is pretty wild, obviously. Uh population of the city and then just kind of surrounding area is about 12,000 people, which again makes having the tram running here pretty wild, especially from an American perspective. A town of 12,000 people having rail public transit, um, pretty impressive. It runs from the Turingenwaldbahn stop up to the small train station that they have here in Walterhausen. That train station is served by just one regional train, which I believe is the RB48, which connects Freydrosche to Frottstadt. Um, it mirrors the Turingerwaldbahn for a little bit, but uh not in its entirety. That train doesn't run super frequently, but it does complement um the tram line fairly well, giving you multiple options to get kind of out of the city here, the small city, and into the rest of the public transit network in Germany. From here, we are gonna eventually hop back on the tram, but before we get too far, I wanted to talk a little bit about the history of this line because it is quite old. So in 1893, uh Ghutta decided they wanted to build their own electrified tram network. There had been previous attempts at building out a tram network, uh, it would have been a horse-drawn one, those never came to fruition. Uh so when they ultimately did build the tram network in Gheet, it was electrified right from the start, uh, which was in 1894 when it actually opened its first segment, uh, running only 2.7 kilometers from the uh Güte Hauptbahnhof to Walterhauser Strasse, essentially connecting downtown uh to the main train station in Goute. We literally walked that stretch today. So that was the first section. In 1897, it was ultimately decided that a rail connection was needed to connect a smaller, further out town that we're actually gonna head to today, um Bad Tabars, to Ghota. Eventually, the Ghouta tram operator was assigned to make that connection, and they started construction on the line that we have already started riding today in 1914. Unfortunately, construction stopped pretty quickly after it began in 1914 with the start of World War I. It didn't resume until 1928 before the Vaudbahn line officially opened in 1929. At one time there were plans for up to nine different lines kind of fanning out to different towns in the region. Unfortunately, they were not all built, and we have the system that we have today. Alright, let's get ready to get back on the tram. From here, we're gonna ride a few stops up the line to the town of Friedrich Rhoda. Friedrich Rhoda. Friedrich Rhoda. Fried F-R-I-E. Friedrich? So I haven't talked about how to pay for these yet. Um fortunately for us, uh, we have the Deutschland ticket, so all of these trams that we're riding today are covered by the Deutschland ticket. It's 58 euros a month, and you get to ride public transportation in any city or town across basically the entire country of Germany, as well as all the regional trains. So the two trains we took to get to Güte in the morning, as well as our trains to go home, uh, were all covered by the Deutschland tickets. So we didn't spend an extra dollar on transportation today. Uh, you can buy day passes, single rides, all that sort of stuff um for these trams as well. Uh, you'll notice on all of the different trams there are little things you can stamp your tickets. Um and it's basically an honor system here, though. You just need to kind of stamp your ticket as a validation, um, and then you will have occasionally a ticket checker riding the train to make sure you actually paid your fare. It is Saturday, but there really aren't that many people riding this in either direction we've gone. Um, I would imagine maybe during the week, though, if people are you know, this kind of connects the city center to the train station as well as the Turinger Valbahn south. I'd imagine maybe during the week if people are competing to work, they might be riding this more one way or the other. Um either way, it's a pretty cute little old tram. We waited a few minutes for the tram headed further south and made our way to Friedrich Rhoda. Quick shout out to at the average Joe5791 on YouTube who left a comment on last week's video saying he has now seen every episode of Transit Tangents and was wearing one of our shirts. We've done this every Tuesday since the start of January 2024, so that is a lot of episodes. Big thanks to him as well as the nearly 12,000 subscribers and 20 or so Patreon members and YouTube members. Both Chris and I really appreciate the support. So we made it here to Friedrich Rhoda, uh, just a couple minutes further down the line from Walterhausen, and it was super pretty going through the woods. This was like the most in the woods we had been on the tram so far. Uh hopefully how pretty it was kind of comes through in the video a little bit. We're catching the tail end of fall foliage here, which is a nice little treat before all of the leaves fall. A couple weeks ago, it probably would have even been more colorful, but glad to have been able to caught that. So uh here in Friedrich Roda, the population is roughly 7,000 to 8,000 people. So again, another pretty small town along the Turinger Waldbahn. Friedrichroda is also connected by the same regional train that is connected to Walterhausen. Um, it's again not the most frequent thing, but between the Waldbahn and that train line, those are the main ways that Friedrichroda is connected into the rail system, uh, connecting you to the rest of Germany. So while we were on the tram, I was kind of noticing who is riding, and for context, today is a Saturday, so less kind of work commuting going on, but a little bit more kind of tourism. Uh, you definitely see people bopping around to some of these small towns, but we also saw quite a few people with suitcases and whatnot too who are probably coming home from various trips and whatnot. So good to see that. Even when this initially opened, it was historically and even today, the Terengewald, which is kind of the foresty area that we're in, has always been popular for hiking and camping and all that sort of stuff. Um and it still is today. There are also just fully lots of people like myself who are here specifically to ride uh the Vaald Bahn. It is a really cool mode of transit. Um, and I think even Jerry, who is pointing the camera right now, would probably agree that it's been kind of cool, and he is not uh so much of a transit nerd as I am. So um anyway, we're gonna walk into Friedrich Rota here. We're gonna grab some lunch, uh, and then after lunch, we're gonna pop on the tram. We've got one more town further out, and we might do one other little stop on the way as well to get to the end of the line. I'm now full of schnitzel, uh trying to fight the food coma a bit. Uh we got a 15-minute or so walk to get back to the Valdbahn, and then we'll be heading to the end of the line, which is in Bad Tabars. Bad Tabartz. Alright, we made it back to the Valdbahn stop. We should be here in about five minutes, and then we'll head to the last stop on the line. So we officially made it to the end of the line. We are here in Bad Tabartz. I've said that like ten different ways, so apologies for getting it wrong, but uh this is the end of the Valdbahn. Uh this town here has a population of just over 4,000. So, again, another pretty small town uh that is just one of many that are connected into the rail network of Germany by this small tram that's been kind of unique. Um, it's been really fun to ride it all day. Uh, really just pretty scenes going through. It's also fun that it's single-tracked for much of it, and I don't know if it's gonna come through on camera, but these are fairly narrow. There are only two seats on one side, one on the other. When you see them coming, they look very narrow. So when you're kind of like winding through the woods, it just feels very surreal that you're kind of zigzagging your way through uh the hills, the mountains, the trees, and in some of the more urban areas, some of the buildings as well. So it's definitely been really interesting to ride around on. But we're gonna go walk around and just check out town a little bit before hopping back on this thing one more time to ride all the way back to Ghoto where we started our day. So there's one other thing that I kind of want to talk about here, and it is why we don't see trams used as transit like this basically anywhere else. And there are a few things that I can think of, um, and I also want to talk about some places in the US that like maybe something like this could work, but again, I don't I don't think we would ever do it. So the main reason why we don't see this elsewhere, at least in my opinion, if you think otherwise, let me know in the comments, but is that this is fairly old. This was established long before buses were kind of easy to make happen. I mean there probably weren't buses at all in the 1920s when this opened, 1929, maybe the the earliest ones. So this was built because the technology for these sorts of trams was around. It existed. Uh the electrify like the fact that this is electrified the whole way, these aren't even diesel running, these are electric trams running through the forest. Today, to serve towns the sizes of the towns we went through today, again, like where we are right now, population 4,000, even the bigger ones were population 7,000 and 9,000, you would never really justify using a tram or a train for the most part, and you would just use a bus to do it. Now, I think that this makes this area very unique. Lots of people come and visit this area specifically for this reason, ourselves included. Um, but today you would just see a bus. Now, when I'm thinking about places in the United States where it would be really cool to see something like this, um, I think immediately to like Vermont and New Hampshire. Uh I went to school in Vermont, I lived in New Hampshire and ran a small business in New Hampshire for a couple years. Um, and I lived in the more rural parts of both states where it's more mountains and rural, and a lot of them kind of feel very much like the area we're in right now. And this sort of thing could be great to connect small towns there. And even when you think of what the modern version of this would be, which as I said would be buses, unfortunately, those parts of the country are just served by how do I say, I guess like lackluster bus service. It's not that it doesn't exist at all, but the bus service that does exist, from what I can remember, we're talking like every two hours, maybe, to get you from town to town, and that's basically it. Whereas here in Germany, you know, towns like this are connected by the Waldbahn, but you also have small towns that are just connected by regional rail service that that tie into the rest of the country. Um, we did see that historically in places in New Hampshire in particular. There are areas that uh the train used to run through, and years ago there's a tangent here, but I I found uh an old historic like outdoor guidebook. Um I used to work in the outdoor industry in New Hampshire, and it had all this information on doing different hikes in the White Mountains in New Hampshire, but it had information on how to get there. And it talked about the trains rolling into Plymouth, New Hampshire, and then folks essentially switching to the different stagecoach lines that you would then like get on your stagecoach to these different smaller towns to then be able to go and do your hikes and whatnot. Transit of some sort did exist during a time period, um, but as time went on, automobiles became more prevalent everywhere. Um, the bus services in areas like this in the US kind of dwindled down and down and down. Uh, and now it's not non-existent, but it's very, very difficult to live without a car in parts of the country like that. So just interesting, I think, to try to make those comparisons to what I'm used to and what our kind of longer time viewers who are watching from the US are used to uh in comparison to what uh we have here in Germany. So um now though, uh we're gonna walk back over the tractor going by just to yeah, to really give the rural vibes. We are, I said to Jerry earlier, we wow, now it sounds like we're in the middle of a city. I was gonna say we're in the middle of nowhere, and now there's like the ambulance going by and well, I was gonna say that we're in the middle of nowhere, it probably doesn't feel like it now, but we really we truly are uh in a very small town right now, so to have the transit options that we have even from here is pretty great. So from here we're gonna walk on back over to the last stop on the Waldbottom line, and we are gonna ride it all the way back to Gouta, uh, where we'll then catch our regional trains back to Yena. So we're gonna arrive in Gheta at 4.28, and there's a train at 4.30 that we're hoping to catch. So wish us luck on the two-minute connection. Uh, one other cool thing that we just saw that I need to look more into, we literally just saw one of these trams call up that was all painted black with colorful LED lights on the front that said party bomb. Uh, and there were people drinking beers and playing music and everything, so maybe something you can look into to come do this on your own. But uh with all that being said though, if you haven't liked this video already, please consider doing so. It helps us out quite a bit. You can also leave a comment uh or subscribe. If you want to help us out financially to make sure we can continue doing these every week, the best way to do so is via our Patreon, buy us a coffee or the merch store, which is linked below. We're gonna hold on because we're going pretty fast through the through the woods here. But uh, thank you all so much for watching and enjoy the rest of your transit tangents Tuesday.

SPEAKER_02: 19:12

I'm saving that go public transit wherever we're set.

SPEAKER_00: 19:15

Watch me very slight delay on our tram, which had us worried about the two minute connection. There was also a delay on the regional train, so we're gonna make it just fine.