Hello everbody, dear Team Ugra,
First off: wonderful work! I had not expected to be so excited about a DCS map of the place where I live.
Looking at the Leipzig area I noticed there might be something important missing that was very, very defining for the 80s here in “Mitteldeutschland”: The open-pit lignite-mining infrastructure.
In this screenshot (which is a view roughly north-to-south I presume, from Leipzig main station with the very well modelled Völkerschlachtdenkmal south-easterly direction) there are at least two lakes visible south of the city. These are the modern Cospudener lake and Markleeberger lake. Great places to swim nowadays!
But: These lakes did not exist in the 80s. These were active open-pit lignite mines. The pits were flooded in the early 2000s. In a mid-/late 80s scenario these mines would have been running at maximum capacity to feed the Lippendorf coal-fired power plant for the city, the heavy chemical industry to the south and west as well as provide traction power for the railway. Most houses in Leipzig were heated by ovens burning lignite-“Briketts”. In GDR economic planning terms this was a most critical piece of infrastructure as “Braunkohle” was the only domestic fossil fuel the country had. Wintertime slumps in production were compensated by deploying the army to the mines to avoid blackouts. Mig21 jet engines were used to de-ice railcars, tanks were used to shift the tracks for the excavators.
Look at this map: it overlays the modern infrastructure/terrain to the south of the city with the state of the mining pits in ca. 1987:
- Orange are the “reserved zones” into which the mining operation was planned to progress, this would be woods, fields or unlucky villages J
- Grey zones are the then-current mining pits where the excavators would be active. Please note how these very much overlap with the modern lakes!
- Green zones are the “recultivated zones”, the mine dumps being slowly reconditioned to be used a farmland.
This might be a bit nerdy but seeing the correct Trabis and Barkas on the street it would be a shame not to have this truly defining feature of the GDR society represented. The pollution coming from these ever-expanding mines, their ridiculous infrastructure (railyards!) and manpower requirements and the sheer destruction of the landscape they caused were a major factor in the protest movements of the late 1980s and in the collapse the of the GDR. There are lignite deposits under most of the southern sections of the city and it was considered to be just matter of time before the mines would swing north and literally eat the city. Just like they had eaten the villages in the south. Very hungry caterpillars.
In DCS terms, the mines would be very useful landmarks for navigation, they would be interesting places for helicopter operations and the power plants connected to them are strategic targets.
The lakes we see now are products of the deindustrialisation post-1990 and of the very sudden and radical progress of environmental protection achieved during the `89 collapse of SED governance. They are wonderful to have today but for the 80s vibe, you need pits, wastelands and cyclopean excavators (+ smog)!
PS: This also applies to the Lausitz / Hoyerswerda / Schwarze Pumpe regions in Phase 3! So these assets will be reused Plz PM me if you need maps/data for the GDR lignite industry of the 80s.
