InTramCities with Gordon Stewart 

Dortmund in the 1970s
In the coal mining and steelmaking area along the Ruhr River in Northrhine-Westphalia a dense patchwork of large cities and smaller mining communities had grown up, stretching from Duisburg, the great inland port on the River Rhine in the west to the city of Dortmund in the east, with both cities being known also for steel and beer. With traditional industies in decline by the 1970s, but still of overwhelming importance to the area, good transport links were seen as essential for the future. Railways tended to follow the west-east axis and it was felt that north-south links throughout the area should be strengthened. The tramways tended to run on traditional street alignments which were becoming increasingly busy with car traffic and the relatively narrow streets afforded limited opportunities to create segregated high-speed transit corridors. The concept of a Rhine-Ruhr Stadtbahn was widely adopted with most of the urban area's major communities joining to form a company to develop a network of totally segregated lines. The idea was to create a genuine underground railway with no traffic conflicts and with third rail power delivery which would rule out street running. It was an ambitious plan which ultimately had to be abandoned, but by the 1970s, extensive construction work was underway to create tunnels for the trams to use using a specially designed "Stadtbahn B" car which would be able to use both tunnels and surface tracks.
Dortmund possessed a fine section of reserved track through the city centre along Kampstrasse (above, at Reinoldikirche, seen on August 6th, 1976) and tram 6 was one of thirteen Duwag trams which were only three years old at this point. They were, however, not suitable for the tunnel-based services which the authorities had in mind. 
Dortmund tram 53, also on Kampstrasse on August 6th, 1976, had come from a much earlier batch of Duwag trams which were outwardly almost identical to those delivered in 1973, but dated from 1959. It is seen negotiating a construction site associated with the east-west tunnel which would eventually lead to the withdrawal of trams from Kampstrasse.   
One Dortmund tram alignment which was sacrificed was that along Konigswall, seen here on August 6th, 1976 at Hauptpost. At this point tracks ran parallel to Kampstrasse and had no chance of being replicated underground. In 2020, the whole area is pretty unrecognisable from the scene 44 years earlier
Dortmund tram 88, from a batch delivered in 1988 passes along Konigswall running westwards with the Hauptbahnhof tram stop in the distance in front of the main railway station, seen in the right-hand distance. The massive "U" symbol towering over the city centre does not represent the future "U-Bahn" but the Dortmund Union Brewery.The tracks branching to the left lead to the city centre and Kampstrasse. Hauptbahnhof was not to be disconnected from the future network, with an underground station built as part of the mainline station complex on a line running north from the city centre.
Still in service in Dortmund was tram 434, built by Hansa in 1956 and only three years older than tram 53 but looking a lot older, being in effect two immediate post-war style two-axle trams joined together by a hanging centre section.
Dortmund : Hansastrasse, southern section, at the junction with Kampstrasse  on July 19th, 1977. Sacrificed at the altar of U-Bahn construction, such a scene  would find favour with most mid-sized cities considering their transport systems in the early quarter of the twenty-first century. Although the trams still have a bit of an ageless look, passengers are still required to take three steps up when boarding - a problem now overcome with all conventional trams in the twenty first century now having extremely low floors allowing level, or almost level, access for all
In 1977, this view of Kampstrasse in Dortmund still suggested that there was more construction going with the city's buildings than with its transport system ....
...... but close-by things were quite different. Tram 48, still in its unusual green livery one year after an earlier photo passes alonside the giveaway workings on Dortmund's Kampstrasse.
Another view of the tunnel excavations along Kampstrasse in Dortmund in 1977 which proceeded whilst trams still ran above
Tram 32 advertises a retail outlet whilst loading outside Dortmund Hauptbahnhof on July 19th, 1977. No construction work was evident here, but the whole area would be transformed once all the city's plans for the city centre had been brought to reality.
Dortmund tram 60 runs along Konigswall at the junction with Hansastrasse in a striking all-over advertising livery. The tracks in Hansastrasse had already been disconnected at this point.
By September 1979, track along Konigswall were still in operation but new trams designated as Stadtbahn-N (with the N signifying normal, standard, gauge) were increasingly apparent on the network. These trams were similar in appearance to the metre-gauge Stadtbahn-M version which had been introduced in Bochum and Essen amongst others.
Return to Dortmund 1984