“Around the World in Trams” continues in Germany with more stunning historic images from 1975.
Rostock Hauptbahnhof was a complete transport interchange, with buses supplementing the trams and trains. There is a reasonable queue of passengers waiting to depart by both urban modes, while the terminating tram on route 12 looks to be full and standing.
Car 53 was a four-wheeled ET54, built by VEB Gotha in 1955 and based on a 1950 design from LOWA of Wildau. It is seen with two matching trailers on a working of route 12, which ran north to Marienehe, an S-Bahn station on the Warnemünde line. Today the route has been extended to twice its length and its outer terminus is now the Mecklenburger Allee turning circle, in a housing estate not far short of Warnemünde itself. Service from the station to Mecklenburger Allee is currently provided by route 5. Bus 342 is from the Hungarian manufacturer Ikarus.
Today tram facilities at Rostock Hauptbahnhof have changed completely. The turning circle outside the station has disappeared, replaced by a stop in a 350m long subway below the station and at right angles to the main line tracks. The 2003 subway, with direct lift access to the platforms, allows trams to continue on the other side of the railway to two new termini at Campus Südstadt and Südblick, the terminus of route 5 from Mecklenburger Allee.
Photograph by Donald Brooks, 11th August 1975