Emerging out of the Smoke of History
After the founding of the German Empire in 1871, the Berlin metropolitan region rapidly expanded into the largest industrial city in Europe. The Prussian Railway developed a dense network for urban, city-ring, and suburban transport.
With the fare reform of 1891, a larger segment of the population could afford to use the railway and do so more frequently. By 1900, however, the limits of traffic growth had been reached. Steam train operations could no longer support increased frequency, and the environmental impacts became unsustainable. Plans for electrification were initiated, leading to the first successful trial run of the S-Bahn in 1903 on the Lichterfelde Ost to Potsdamer Vorortbahnhof line. However, the outbreak of World War I halted this development.
Photo: Sigurd Hilkenbach Collection