In many towns, local public transport started with the sedan chair around 1700. One exemplar of the 'Sedan Chair Carrier Council Guild' (the Dresden Rats-Chaisenträgergilde) has survived.
The horse bus was the first means of local mass transportation. Like the Dresden 5-Pfennig horse omnibus (1838 to 1909), those buses already ran on given routes. Despite the competition coming from trams, in many places the flexible horse buses survived until into the 20th century, when they began to lose ground to the motor omnibus.
Besides, around 1850 horse trams became more popular in the increasing urban traffic. After all, riding on rails was more comfortable than riding on cobbled streets. Our museum displays a Dresden horse tramcar built in the United States and a Berlin double-deck horse tram car (both from 1886).
The steam tramway for passenger and freight transport was an attempt to use the traction technology of trains for urban transport as well.
In the 1880s, electrical trams started replacing the horse trams because they were much better suited to the traffic streams in the ever growing cities.The exhibition, among others, features the Leipzig railcar 64 dating from 1897 and the Dresden railcar 1702 Großer Hecht dating from 1931, which was a very modern design at the time it was built.
Examples of special trains are an electric locomotive from Meißen for inner-city freight transport built in 1899, a Dresden funicular railway car of the year 1934, and a model of the Dresden suspension railway running since 1901.
Taxi transport is represented by a 1934 Mercedes 200 and an EMW 340-2 of the year 1952.
