Das Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk - Gotha - July 24

[BikinGlynn]

Gotha Railworks

Another from my solo trip this year, not a huge amount here but was quite a relaxed explore considering its town centre proximity.

Master locksmith Fritz Bothmann founded his first carousel-producing company in 1883, but due to expansion and his decision to leave his own company, this was not to be the last. He opened a new factory on what used to be Kohlenstraße, now Südstraße. Like his first factory, however, this one also later turned to wagon construction and offered jobs to 350 employees. After the First World War, however, Bothmann gave up his company and sold the site on March 23, 1922 to the "Central European Sleeping Car and Dining Car Company", or "Mitropa" for short, which was founded in 1916.

The site was equipped with around 700 m of track, a transfer table and a station connection. Almost 700 people, including many skilled workers, found work here to work in the workshop to repair the wagons. Gotha lived up to its status as a railway junction. The current value of the factory complex with its 310 sleeping cars, 271 dining cars and 7 saloon cars was already around 900,000 Reichsmarks. After the company had made more and more profits, plans for constant expansion were inevitable until the company reached the limits of its own capacity and opened a second "Mitropa" factory in Falkensee near Berlin.

But the Second World War arrived and by 1944 only 83 employees were repairing hospital and front-line carriages. They also took part in the "Go 225 flying wing project". After the war was lost and the bombings were survived almost unscathed, the company went back to repairing sleeping and dining carriages and also contributed to reparations. Before the company was handed back to "Mitropa" in 1948 with 325 employees, two mobile meteorological stations were built for the Soviet Union under the Soviets. In 1945 even the saloon car of the last German emperor, a Soviet trophy, ended up on the factory premises in Gotha, but financial resources were too limited to put it under museum protection.

Finally, in 1964, the plant was incorporated into the German Reichsbahn and renamed "Reichsbahnausbesserungswerk Gotha", or "RAW" for short. Only 34 years later, the site closed and not much remained of what was once Thuringia's most important production and repair site. It is hard to believe that it will be used for a new purpose when you consider that Deutsche Bahn AG has been trying to sell the site since it closed.

Loved this slidey trainy delevery thingy.. Im sure thats its proper name.

Thats it from here thanks for looking​