Robertsfors – Sikeå railway line

Robertsfors – Sikeå hamn
Route length:	9 km
Gauge :	750 mm ( narrow gauge )
Maximum slope :	10  ‰
Legend 0 Robertsfors Rickleån Wood loading bay Alternative point Sikeå Mountain (250 m) Wood loading bay 9 Sikeå hamn

The Robertsfors – Sikeå hamn railway was a narrow-gauge Swedish railway line . It was the first railway in Västerbotten .

The line was built by the ironworks Robertsfors bruk in Robertsfors, founded in 1758, primarily for transport to the port in Sikeå. At times, the isolated route served local passenger traffic . In 1900 it was one of the first in Sweden to be converted to electrical operation. Today there is still a piece of track and many vehicles that are exhibited in the hut museum.

history

The Robertsfors ironworks was founded in 1758 by the two British industrialists John Jennings and Robert Finley. The cabin, which was powered by the water power of Rickleån , was 8.5 kilometers from the nearest port in Sikeå. This poor traffic connection had a negative effect on the blast furnace , forge , mill , workshop and sawmill . All transports to and from the port of Sikeå had to be carried out by land with carts .

In 1857, almost 100 years later, the Claes steelworks gave Adolf Adelsköld , who later became the most famous private railway builder in Sweden, the order to plan a route from Robertsfors to Sikeå. After several years of correspondence, he received the concession to build the railway on March 16, 1863 . However, financial problems at the ironworks postponed the start of construction by 15 years. In the meantime it has been investigated whether the connection on the road could be carried out with a steam tractor called ånghäst (steam horse ). It proved impossible to use it on the roads in the area.

The plant did not have enough capital to have a company build the railway. That is why the work was carried out by permanent staff. In practice it was difficult to do this work at set times. So construction went very slowly. Construction was completed for the first time in 1878. Rolled steel rails could only be bought for 2500 meters. These were moved from the port in Sikeå to the coastal road. Another two kilometers were equipped with self-cast rails, the remaining part of the way to Robertsfors got wooden rails. The goods were transported on these wooden rails in horse-drawn carts. This required reloading at the intersection of the different track systems.

When Gustaf Tundal became the new chairman of the iron and steel works, one of his first tasks was to equip the entire line with steel rails. He had calculated that a horse could pull four times more on steel rails than on wooden rails and seven times more than on the road. This meant that steel rails could significantly increase the capacity of the line. This work was completed in 1881. In this form, however, Tundal saw the route as a temporary measure. Before he left the management position again in 1889, he had the line converted to a gauge of 750 mm. The rails weighed 11.78 kg per meter and the distance between the sleepers was 0.55 meters. Through his English agent Charles Bell, he bought a steam locomotive that was named after him Charles . The locomotive with the B wheel arrangement had a track width of 750 mm. It took about 15 minutes to travel between Robertsfors and the port.

number	Surname	design type	Wheel alignment	Manufacturer	Fabr.-No./ year of construction	Special
	CHARLES	Tank locomotive	B t	Dick, Kerr & Co., Preston	762 1889	Scrapped 1918/1919, boiler as steam engine in the mechanical workshop and later on a tug on the lakes to Norsjö used

Routing

According to a drawing from 1898, the route began in Sikeå at the harbor and at the timber loading area. In the direction of Robertsfors it had an incline of 10 ‰. At an adjoining level crossing in the same direction there was a gate with a gear drive to protect road traffic. After about 1.5 kilometers from the harbor, the route on Sikeå Mountain led through a 250 meter long and 3.42 meter wide tunnel that was built to protect the tracks from snowfall from the mountains. Shortly after, the route crossed the road where a signalman's house was built for the gatekeeper. Approximately in the middle of the entire route there was an alternative point . At the smithy, the route was divided into two parallel sections and passed the 54 meter long, 5.30 meter wide and four meter high shed for locomotives and wagons. The tracks led in the direction of Rickleån to the blast furnace, the mechanical workshop and a further 700 meters to the saw. There was a loading bay with two tracks. The Rickleån had to be crossed over a bridge to the end point at the mill.

First, ore and iron were transported to the blast furnace and forge. Later the freight shifted more to wood and wood products. Sawn and planed wood and pulp were brought to the port of Sikeå, raw wood was transported to the saw and pulpwood, sulfur and lime were transported to the sulphite factory. After this branch of industry was shut down in 1948, the traffic consisted only of wood and pulpwood from Robertsfors to the sawmill in Sikeå.

Start of electrification

For the mechanical workshop, a turbine was installed on Rickleån in 1893 with a 10 HP single-phase alternating current generator with a voltage of 1000 volts . The electricity was produced for the lighting in the workshop, and it also powered the saw and the drive of the flour mill. The plant was one of the first of its kind in Sweden and was built based on a model of a power plant in Hagaström ( Gävle ). Shortly afterwards it was recognized that unimagined possibilities can be realized with electricity. Plans that the railway should run on electricity were drawn up in 1899 and 1900. Electrification was decided on January 27, 1898 . In 1900 the old power station was replaced by a new one in the same place. From this point on, there was enough power available to run the railway electrically.

Electric locomotives

The first electric locomotive that was bought was called the Starkotter . It was probably Sweden's fourth locomotive with four engines that together achieved 90 hp. The locomotive could be briefly overloaded without being damaged. The trains usually consisted of about thirty freight cars with a total train weight of 150 tons. Passenger traffic was occasionally carried out on the route, for example the church procession (kyrkotåg) to the church in Robertsfors on Sundays. There was also a car for the " fine people " and another for the workers. After an accident, passenger traffic was stopped again in 1915.

The following two locomotives, John Vale and Herman Behrman , which were bought two years later from AEG in Berlin , were used for internal shunting between the mill and the sawmill. These were built in 1898 and 1899 and originally commissioned by Domnarvet – Kvarnsvedenbanan . There they did not meet the requirements and were returned to the AEG. The names are named after people from the region. Johan Vale (actually Giovanni Franco or Ivan Anz , son of the Croatian Viceroy Nikola Frankopan) was a bailiff under Erik von Pomerania and Herman Berman (also Herman Behrman ) was a Swedish landowner and commander under Engelbrekt Engelbrektsson during the Kalmar Union .

number	Surname	design type	Wheel alignment	Manufacturer	Fabr.-No./ year of construction	Special
	Star otters		B 'B'	Luth & Roséns Elektriska AB	1900	operational museum vehicle
	Johan Vale		B.	AEG , Berlin	117 1899	Delivered in 693 mm gauge to Stora Kopparbergs Bergslags AB for the Falun - Domnarvet railway line , No. 1; 1901 back to AEG, Berlin - there converted to 750 mm; Acquired by Robertsfors AB in 1902
	Herman Behrman		B.	AEG, Berlin	125 1899	Delivered in 693 mm gauge to Stora Kopparbergs Bergslags AB for the Falun – Domnarvet railway line, No. 3; around 1902 back to AEG, Berlin - there converted to 750 mm; Acquired by Robertsfors AB in 1902; 1963 at the Swedish Railway Museum , Gävle . Meanwhile again as a non-drivable exhibit in the Bruksmuseum in Robertsfors
	Femman			AEG, Berlin	1914	operational museum vehicle
	Ettan		B 'B'	ASEA	175 1929	for track service, operational museum vehicle
	Tvåan		B 'B'	ASEA	179 1929	With additional battery for wooden loading tracks without overhead lines, rollable museum vehicle
	Trean		B.	ASEA	188 1930	rollable museum vehicle

In addition, 67 new steel wagons were procured for timber transport in 1930.

Shutdown

When the timber rafting on Rickleån was closed in 1961, the traffic on the route also decreased. Tvåan was used for shunting traffic in the impregnation plant in Robertsfors. After they were closed in September 1961, the rails were dismantled down to the remains of the track today. In many cases, however, the course of the former route is still clearly visible.

Of the seven existing electric locomotives, Starkotter and Herman Behrman were given to the Svenska Spårvägssällskapets museum in Malmköping. Starkotter has meanwhile returned to Robertsfors via the Railway Museum in Gävle. A passenger car was set up together with the Johan Vale next to the locomotive shed in the ironworks museum, as were the four other locomotives and some freight cars.

Current condition

Around 600 meters of the former route are still available in Robertsfors. You can see the embankment at Sikeå, the embankment next to the waterfall at the hut, the railway bridge with the associated rails and the renovated locomotive shed with locomotives and wagons.

It is planned to restore the railway and then to run a museum between Sikeå and the hut area in the summer. In the meantime, a footpath and bike path have been laid out on part of the former railway embankment.

literature

• B. Boethius: Robertsfors brukshistoria. 1921.
• K. Eriksson, O. Kellgren, B. Sundin: Västerbotten genom tiderna. 1994.
• E. Forsgren: Histories om Robertsfors. 1997.

Individual evidence

1. ↑ data at historiskt.nu (swed.)
2. ↑ Robertsfors Bruksjärnväg. Archived from the original on August 21, 2010 ; Retrieved February 5, 2016 (Swedish). 
3. ↑ Original customer of the locomotives ( Memento from August 21, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
4. ↑ Data from Svenska Spårvägssällskapet (swed.)
5. ↑ ^{a b} according to AEG delivery list, but correct for Domnarvet – Kvarnsvedenbanan (PDF; 12 kB). (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on February 5, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
6. ↑ Data from Svenska Spårvägssällskapet (swed.)
7. ↑ ^{a b c} Locomotive list of preserved Swedish locomotives (Swedish), (PDF; 39 kB). (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on February 5, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  
8. ↑ cessation of operations according to historiskt.nu (see also other source)
9. ↑ Cessation of operations in Kommunikationer i Västerbotten (Sweden) (PDF; 1.2 MB)
10. ↑ Description by Vegvärket (Swedish), PDF; 1.4 MB. (No longer available online.) Formerly in the original ; accessed on February 12, 2016 .  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  

Web links

• Bertil Boethius: Robertsfors Bruks Historia. (PDF) 1921, p. 7 , accessed on February 5, 2016 (Swedish). 
• Description of the Sikeå storage area (Swedish; PDF file; 54 kB)
• Description of the port of Sikeå (Swedish; PDF file; 86 kB)
• History and photos (swedish)
• Situation map
• Description of Lärarhandledning till den Västerbottniska Kulturhistorien (Swedish; PDF file; 3.41 MB)