Frankonia cable car
Coordinates: 50 ° 34 ′ 19.8 ″ N , 12 ° 47 ′ 19.9 ″ E
The Frankonia cable car was a cable car in Beierfeld that was only used for freight transport . It connected the Zwönitz – Scheibenberg railway with Frankonia AG , which at the time was by far the largest industrial company in Beierfeld.
history
The location of the Beierfeld station on the Zwönitz – Scheibenberg line, which opened in 1900, was extremely unfavorable for Beierfeld. Due to the great gradient of the access road to the village, shipping of goods in particular was difficult. Therefore, among other things, the construction of a trackless railway or a pure freight railway to Schwarzenberg station was dealt with , but these variants failed already in the planning phase.
Due to the First World War , there was a shortage of horses for forwarding purposes. In particular for Frankonia AG, which produced military articles, the situation developed worse and worse, as urgently needed deliveries of goods accumulated at the Beierfeld train station.
After the project of a freight railway failed again in 1916, Frankonia AG preferred to build a cable car from autumn 1916. Although other industrial companies in Beierfeld were opposed to a cable car, because with the construction of the cable car Frankonia AG as the largest potential partner would have lost all interest in a freight train and the freight train project would have finally failed, in February 1917 the first surveying work for a Cable car started.
The cable car was built according to the Bleichert system of the company Adolf Bleichert & Co. First, the approximately 1.1 km long cable car with a right-angled intermediate station was built by soldiers from March 1917. A storm in November 1917 destroyed twelve completed masts of the cable car, so that construction work was delayed considerably. In February 1918 the route of the cable car was finally changed again, the intermediate station, which was later used as a stable, was omitted and the train now ran straight from the junction at km 9.795 of the Zwönitz – Scheibenberg line to the Frankonia AG factory. After the technical acceptance of the cable car in May 1918, operations began on June 15, 1918.
Even during the inflation of 1923 there was a decline in production at Frankonia AG. After the company in the Great Depression went bankrupt, the company was set to the cable car altogether.
remains
The cable car was completely dismantled by 1934, today only the foundations of some masts and the remains of the mountain station can be seen.
literature
- Eberhard Schramm: The Upper Ore Mountains Lookout Railway. The Stollberg – Zwönitz – Scheibenberg route. (= Regional Transport History , Volume 14.) Eisenbahnkurier-Verlag, Freiburg 1996.