Alumni Meeting at the Hamburg Hochbahn
19 participants came to this year's spring alumni spring meeting for the northern Germany region on April 22, 2016. They visited Hamburg Hochbahn's subway maintenance workshop.
Alumnus Christoph M. Schröder, who made this event possible, greeted guests before Manfred Hester, head of the Grundsatzreferat Schienenfahrzeuge, gave a detailed overview of the Hamburger Hochbahn company in general and the field of rail vehicles in particular.
Aside from many key performance numbers such as a subway track length of 104 kilometers, more than 200 million passengers annually, and 1,300 million passenger kilometers in 2013, we were also impressed by the annual efforts made to combat the graffiti on the vehicles.
The current fleet of vehicles is composed of 237 vehicles from the DT 3, DT 4, and DT 5 production series. Particular focus was placed on the newest series, DT 5, which has been produced since 2009 and currently has 46 vehicle in use. Mr. Hesters impressively described the technical details, which were then discussed among the participants.
After this theoretical introduction we split into two groups to visit the workshops, where we saw all of the vehicles that had been previously described. Mr. Hesters and his colleague, Jens Großmann, who led the second group, also provided detailed information about the engines, bogies, and wheel sets. A final highlight was a tour of some historical vehicles.
After over three hours we said goodbye, thanking Mr. Hester and his colleague profusely. Part of the group stayed at Halle 13, the public canteen at the Hamburger Hochbahn workshop, to discuss the tour and enjoy some food and beverages.