Brunnen-Morschach Railway

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Brunnen – Morschach Railway
Rowan suit with locomotive No. 1 and sidecar above Lake Lucerne
Rowan suit with locomotive No. 1 and sidecar above Lake Lucerne
Route of the Brunnen-Morschach Railway
Route length: 2.04 km
Gauge : 1000 mm ( meter gauge )
Power system : 750  V 50 Hz  ∆
Maximum slope : 170  ‰
Minimum radius : 80 m
Rack system : Strub
Well – Morschach-Axenstein
Legend
   
 0.00 Well BrMB 437  m above sea level M.
   
 Grand Hotel access road
   
 Wasiwand (292 m)
BSicon exSTR.svg
   
 0.70 Kehr (Big Rank)
Dodge
BSicon exSTR.svg
   
 Sweeping (10 m)
   
 Reclining viaduct Axenfels (110 m)
   
 Axenfels Bridge
   
 1.20 Morschach-Axenfels 645  m above sea level M.
BSicon exSTR.svg
   
 1.30 Morschach-Depot
bypass
BSicon exSTR.svg
   
 depot
   
 Axenstein Bridge (10m)
   
 2.04 Morschach-Axenstein 705  m above sea level M.
Rack and pinion track segment in Morschach
Share for 500 francs in AG Elektro Bahn Brunnen-Morschach from September 1, 1904

The Brunnen – Morschach Railway (BrMB) or Brunnen – Morschach – Axenstein Railway was a narrow-gauge mountain railway in Switzerland . The cog railway led from 1905 to 1969 from wells up to the village Morschach and the hotel Axenstein.

history

The holiday resort of Morschach should be better developed, because the road opened in the 1860s could no longer handle the traffic from the two large Belle Époque hotels Axenstein and Axenfels . By 1888, several projects were developed to develop Morschach and Axenstein, including those for funicular railways working with water ballast , but also a project for a nine-kilometer cog railway from Brunnen via Morschach to the Fronalpstock. This project was granted a concession in March 1881, but failed due to funding.

In February 1896, Karl Hürlimann from Brunnen proposed an electric cogwheel train that should begin in the center of Brunnen and lead via Axenstein to Morschach. A month later, the construction company Fritz Marti from Winterthur presented a counter-project with a train that was to run from the Hotel Mythenstein at the end of Brunnen via Morschach to Axenstein. In July 1898, the Morschach local council received the concession for the Marti project on the condition that the train had to start in the center of the village and not at the Hotel Mythenstein, which was then dropped again in 1901.

The railway company was founded in Lucerne on November 20, 1903, and the construction contract was approved by the Federal Council on March 18, 1904, so that ten days later the construction of the railway, which was carried out by Franceschetti from Zurich, only the Wasitunnel was built by local construction company Favetto created from wells. The steel bridges were supplied by Bell Maschinenfabrik from Kriens, the electrical systems by Rieter from Winterthur.

The rack railway was able to start operating on August 1, 1905. The passenger numbers developed below expectations, which was mainly due to the unfavorable location of the valley station, which is far away from Brunnen train station. With the outbreak of World War I , the international tourists stayed away, which brought the railway to the brink of financial ruin.

The operation of the railway was strongly influenced by Otto Klein, who was depot manager when the railway opened and became director of the railway in 1917. He ran the railway well into old age and was the oldest railway director in Switzerland until he died on March 5, 1969 at the age of 95 and the railway was discontinued that same month on March 29. It was replaced by a bus line from Auto AG Schwyz (AAGS), which runs from the train station in Brunnen up to Morschach and to the valley station of the Morschach– Stoos aerial cableway .

The railway facilities were demolished until 1970. The route of the railway is still partially preserved. In Brunnen there is still the bridge over the access road to the Grand Hotel. The subsequent tunnel through the Wasiwand is also still preserved, but blocked off. It was temporarily used by a sewer pipe. The old route is accessible from the upper portal to the Kehr siding. Another preserved part of the route begins at the also preserved depot and leads almost to the location of the former Hotel Axenstein. There is also a monument ⊙ for the rack railway on this section .

route

The route of the train was only a good two kilometers long and served five stations. It led from the lakeshore in Brunnen, where it was connected to the ships of the Vierwaldstättersee shipping company , first through a 292 m long tunnel to the narrow road from Brunnen to Morschach. On this road, the train followed an overhanging rock face up to the village of Morschach. From there, after a short drive, she also reached the Hotel Axenstein above Lake Lucerne , from where the Rütli , the birthplace of the Swiss Confederation , could be seen on the other side of Lake Uri . In addition to the tunnel mentioned, the engineering structures on the route also included an underpass and four short bridges.

  • At the top left the Hotel Axenstein, the terminus of the train (stitch)

  • The Hotel Axenstein (photochromic print)

  • Valley station around 1905

Rolling stock

The entire rolling stock was put into operation in 1905. Locomotives and wagons were similar to the vehicles that were made for the Gornergrat Railway and the Jungfrau Railway. It came two Rowan trains used by an as needed Vorstellwagen could be strengthened. A third locomotive was kept as a reserve. Like the Schwyz tram, the rolling stock was painted light yellow with red letters.

Locomotives

The small two-axle locomotives came from SLM and had electrical equipment from Rieter. Two 100 horsepower AC motors driven by a common jackshaft to the centrally arranged underneath the locomotive bull gear. The locomotives were not equipped with a regenerative brake, although this could be implemented relatively easily with three-phase railways. Initially, the descent only took place with the two hand brakes on the driver's cab, which acted on the brake gear on the axle on the valley side. During the descent, the brake discs therefore had to be protected from overheating with cooling water from a container carried along. The locomotives were retrofitted with a DC resistance brake that worked independently of the overhead line , so that the pantographs could be lowered when going downhill . The locomotives weighed 10.5 t and were able to carry a load of 15.5 t at 9 km / h when traveling up the mountain at 170 ‰.

  • drawing

  • Inner workings of a locomotive

Passenger cars

The passenger cars had four compartments with outside doors without a passage inside the car. In each compartment there was space for five people on two transverse benches, so that the entire car could accommodate 40 passengers. From 1916 the closed compartments of the rowan cars were provided with heating.

  • C2 4–5 (Bautzen), Rowan wagons with two closed compartments for winter operation and two open compartments
  • C2 7–8 (Bautzen), only open compartments for summer operation
Freight wagons

The freight wagons were also used for the transportation of people at times and were roofed for a while from 1911. They were mainly used to transport coal and flour.

  • L2 10–11 (Bautzen)
Company car
  • Tower car X (BrMB)

Technology and operation

The meter-gauge track was equipped with the Strub rack and pinion system and was used by rowan suits , to which an additional presentation car was added if necessary. The company owned three two-axle two- motor locomotives, which were supplied with three-phase current with a voltage of 750  V / 50  Hz from two pole pantographs from a two-pole overhead line .

The power supply came from the Bürglen power station of the Altdorf power station via an 8 kV line that was reduced to the operating voltage of the overhead line by a transformer station at the depot. Of the four single-phase transformers installed by Rieter, each with an output of 75 kVA, only three were required in operation, one transformer served as a reserve. The energy supply was enough to let a train go uphill while another train was shunting.

The failure-prone transformers from Rieter were replaced in 1915 by two three-phase transformers with an output of 125 kVA, which were supplied by BBC. The voltage in the supply line to the transformer station was increased to 15 kV.

Initially, the train only ran in summer, with 26 to 54 trains running daily - at times every quarter of an hour. From October 1935, the trains ran all year round. Not all trains ran to Axenstein, many already turned in Morschach. Usually two compositions were on the way, in the last few years only one.

literature

  • Sandro Siegrist: Brunnen – Morschach-Axenstein electric cog railway . Prellbock Druck & Verlag, Leissigen 1996, ISBN 3-907579-01-1 .
  • Markus Dillena: Brunnen – Morschach – Axenstein cog railway . In: Railway amateur . No. 11/2019 , p. 482-491 .
  • Hans Waldburger: In memoriam Brunnen – Morschach – Axenstein . In: Railway amateur . No. 3/1969 , p. 90–92 ( eisenbahn-amateur.ch [PDF]).
  • The Brunnen-Morschach electric rack railway . In: Schweizerische Bauzeitung . tape 46 .
  • Hans Waldburger: The Brunnen – Morschach – Axenstein Railway . In: Swiss Railway Review . No. 1-2 , 1996, pp. 1–9 ( datacomm.ch [PDF]).

Web links

Commons : Brunnen – Morschach-Bahn  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Hans Walsburger, SER, section prehistory and construction
  2. ↑ a b Hans Rudi Lüthy-Pavan: Brunnen-Morschach-Axenstein-Bahn. In: The Narrow Track. Retrieved November 16, 2019 .
  3. ↑ Hans Waldburger, SER, section finances
  4. ^ Ruedi W. Immoos: Two records: The oldest railway director and the oldest civil registry official in the whole country worked and lived in Morschach. In: Photo blog on the Immoos website. May 31, 2016, accessed on November 16, 2019 (German).
  5. ↑ Schweizerische Bauzeitung, Part 1, p. 122
  6. ↑ SBZ, part 2, pp. 134–135
  7. ↑ Hans Waldburger, SER, section power supply and electrical systems
  8. ↑ Hans Waldburger, SER, section operation and traffic