S-Bahn - Name and Some History

Name and Some History

The name is an abbreviation for the German "Stadtschnellbahn" (meaning "city rapid railway") and was introduced in December 1930 in Berlin. The label was introduced along with the reconstruction of the suburban commuter train tracks - the main line Berlin Stadtbahn (English: City rail of Berlin) was electrified with a 750 Volt third rail in 1928 (some steam trains ran until 1929) and the circle line Berliner Ringbahn was electrified in 1929. The electrification continued on the radial suburban railway tracks along with changing the timetable of the train system into a rapid transit model with no more than 20 minutes per line where a number of lines did overlap on the main line. The system peaked during the 1936 Summer Olympics in Berlin to a train schedule below 2 minutes.

The idea of heavy rail rapid transit was not unique to Berlin. Hamburg had electrical railway between the central station ("Hauptbahnhof") and Altona was opened already 1908 (however it was using overhead lines changing to third rail later) and in 1934 the system was adopting the S-Bahn label from Berlin. The same year Copenhagen S-tog opened its first line. Vienna had its "Stadtbahn" main line electrified in 1908 as well using the term "Schnellbahn" (rapid railway") since 1954 - the label S-Bahn was sometimes used as well, but officially the name only switched to S-Bahn Wien in 2005. During the 1930s a number of S-Bahns were opened in Germany, but often this was just a name change of previously electrified local train lines.