Cogne – Eaux-Froides mine railway
| Cogne – Eaux-Froides mine railway | |||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| Route length: | 12 km | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Gauge : | 900 mm ( narrow gauge ) | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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The mining railway Cogne – Eaux-Froides ( French Chemin de fer minier Cogne - Eaux-Froides , Italian Ferrovia mineraria Cogne – Acque Fredde or Tranvia del Drinc ) was a railway that ran from 1923 to 1979 between the iron mines in the municipality of Cogne and the Fraction Eaux-Froides operated near Pila on the territory of the municipality of Gressan in the Aosta Valley in Italy .
history
The narrow-gauge works railway was built on behalf of the Cogne Acciai Speciali steelworks founded in Aosta in 1916 . This company came into being when the Italian industrial group Ansaldo took over Società Anonima Miniere di Cogne in Aosta, which had been active since 1909 . The steel mill in Aosta served until the 1970s to smelt the ore from the large magnetite deposit in the mountain range south of Aosta. The other raw materials needed to operate a steelworks were also obtained in the Aosta Valley: anthracite in La Thuile and lime near Jovençan , and the Cogne company is also building its own hydropower plants in the region to supply the company with electricity.
The pits Costa del Pino, Licony , Larsinaz and Colonna are located about 15 kilometers from Aosta at around 2500 meters above sea level east of the village of Cogne on the mountainside of Monte Creya . Because of their technical and historical importance, they are intended for candidacy as a UNESCO World Heritage Site. The area borders on the area of the Gran Paradiso National Park . Because the old, narrow road from the mountain village of Cogne to Aymavilles in the valley of the Dora Baltea for the removal of the ore from the long Cogne was not powerful enough, the company built the Erzbahn Cogne (1,562 meters above sea level) to its final stop in the alpine area Eaux -Froides (1515 meters above sea level) in the neighboring valley and between this place and the factory premises in the valley at Aosta train station (580 meters above sea level) there is a material lift .
The construction work on the 12 kilometer long railway line with a gauge of 900 mm began in 1916 and lasted until 1922. The first continuous run of a steam locomotive on the whole line took place on February 19, 1923. From the former loading hall near Cogne, where the valley stations of the now only fragmentary mine cable cars were located, the railway line leads out of the valley on the right side of the River Grant Eyvia to the village of Epinel . The middle section of this section leads through the 985 meter long Galleria di Crétaz tunnel . At Epinel, the tunnel begins under the Pointe du Drinc mountain range with the Drincpass with a length of 6,730 meters, and shortly before the Eaux-Froides unloading station , the train leads through the third Galleria di Charémoz tunnel , 510 meters in length. A peculiarity of the route is that almost three-quarters of it is underground.
Since the system was designed almost exclusively for the transport of materials, similar to a mine train, the Drinctunnel was excavated with a low clearance profile of only 8.5 square meters. As a result, the smoke from the steam locomotives was slow to leave the long tunnel, and so there was a fatal accident in November 1925, in which two railroad workers died of smoke inhalation. In 1926, the steam locomotives were replaced by electric machines powered by accumulators. In order to increase transport performance, the line was electrified by 1928 . In the shuttle operation of two freight trains, the railway transported around 1200 tons of iron ore daily.
When the ore railway ceased operations along with the mines in 1979, the municipality of Cogne looked into taking over the former works railway and converting it into an intercity tram for passenger transport on the one hand for tourist purposes and on the other hand as an alternative in the event that the valley road was due to avalanches and mudslides Is blocked. The planned railway would also have been an essential element in the museumisation of the mining complex of Cogne and would also have connected the ski areas of Cogne and Pila directly with each other. The track system was renewed by 2005 and extended by 800 meters to the specially built Plan-Praz intermediate station of the Aosta-Pila passenger cable car, which was built in 1957 - in the lower section parallel to the factory cable car that is no longer in existence. Three train compositions were purchased and made available, but never opened to traffic afterwards. Technical and administrative obstacles, unresolved safety issues and judicial investigations ultimately prevented an operating license for the new railway, and in 2020 the Autonomous Region of Aosta Valley began selling unused passenger vehicles.
literature
- Domenico Molino: La linea del Drinc. In: Italmodel Ferrovie , 1978, pp. 512-521.
- Claudio Castiglion: Ferrovia Cogne - Acquefredde. In: Tutto Treno, 1990, pp. 10-16.
- Claudio Vianini: La tranvia del Drinc. In: I Treni, 1995, pp. 12-16.
- Paolo Giorcelli, Cecilio Giorcelli: La Ferrovia Mineraria Cogne - Acque Fredde. Cogne 1998.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ The Cogne mine. Valle d'Aosta, accessed August 17, 2020.
- ↑ The mines of Cogne. fuss-spass.de, accessed on August 17, 2020.
- ↑ Il Bacino di Cogne minerario Poteva diventare Patrimonio Mondiale dell'Unesco. AostaSera, August 16, 2012, accessed August 17, 2020.
- ^ David Campione: In vendita il trenino verde di Cogne. In: Ferrovie.it, accessed on August 17, 2020.
- ↑ Sabine Bade, Wolfram Mikuteit: Ferrovia del Drinc in the Val di Cogne before the end? In: Unterwegs in den Western Alps, April 21, 2015, accessed on August 17, 2020.