No trains have trundled along the Siemensbahn’s tracks since September 1980. The S-Bahn line was run by the East German state railway company, which pulled the plug on services in response to a strike from workers unhappy that their hours were cut.

The East German state railway ran all the S-Bahns across Berlin even after the division of the city into East and West. West Berliners boycotted the service after the Berlin Wall went up in 1961.

This wasn’t good for business. The S-Bahn operators lost millions sending empty trains around West Berlin. So when their workers went on strike in 1980, they gladly shut down nearly half their services in the walled-in part of the city. The Siemensbahn never got going again.

The line ran from Jungfernheide through the S-Bahnhöfe of Wernerwerk and Siemensstadt to Gartenfeld. It was built primarily for the workers of the Siemens factories that gave the area its name. Construction began in 1928 and services started on Dec. 18, 1929. They could get things done in those days.

There are plans to revive the Siemensbahn. Some of the overgrowth has been cleared away, and there’s even talk of building new bridges and extending the line. We'll see. It's hard to keep plans on track in Berlin.

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Music from: "You caught me at a bad historical moment" by MUQDISHO.

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