The network opened on 12 May 1880: It was a horsecar system owned by the society Reymer & Masch, named Potsdamer Straßenbahn-Gesellschaft and consisted of a pair of lines. 1907 saw the introduction of electric trams which ran on a new line of 8 km. In 1908 the network was composed by 4 lines and in 1949 by 5. At the end of the 1950s, new streetcars models were introduced, the Gothawagen, produced in the Thuringian town of Gotha by the Gothaer Waggonfabrik. In the 1980s, a pair of new routes were built: in 1984 through the new residential center in Babelsberg and in 1988 from Am Stern stop to the new south-eastern residential area in Drewitz. The Czech trams Tatra KT4 were introduced in 1993, and the modernCombino and Variotram in the 2000s.
Network
The Potsdam route network is a standard-gauge railway. It is 28.9 kilometers long and has 63 stops. The track length is 59.6 kilometers. It is driven by five main and two amplifier lines. It is almost continuously double tracked, only the Nauener Tor is crossed by means of a gauntlet track. The network consists, as of December 2017, of 7 lines: The tram lines 91 to 96 operate on all days according to a uniform timetable scheme. This should give passengers better visibility. The basic scheme of the tram lines is a 20-minute-cyclic schedule. The timetable of the tram lines are coordinated at the linking points Potsdam Hauptbahnhof and Babelsberg station with the Berlin S-Bahn. Lines 98 and 99 are amplifier lines that only operate at certain times. They are only a part of the timetable scheme. Line 99 goes in the evening, but then only in the section Babelsberg, Fontanestraße ↔ Potsdam Hauptbahnhof. On Line 92, extra rides are offered throughout the route in the rush hour. As a result, lines 92 and 96 run at 6/7/7-minute intervals, which in turn means that line 91 and 92 as well as 96 and 93 do not drive at an interval of 10 minutes. The network is navigated with uni-directional vehicles. There are turning loops at all terminal stops. Exceptions are Glienicker Brücke, which is crossed by a triangular junction, as well as Schloss Charlottenhof and Potsdam Hauptbahnhof, where the tramcars can be turned around by a block bypass.
