Mountain railway
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A mountain railway is a railway line that traverses or crosses a mountain range . The route mostly leads in topographically difficult terrain over a mountain pass and has to overcome large differences in altitude , which is done not only by the steep incline but also by artificially extending the route. The construction and operation of mountain railways is more complex than railways in the lowlands . In contrast to mountain railways , mountain railways do not primarily serve a tourist purpose and are connected to the rest of the rail network.
Alignment
Most mountain railways have a line with gradients over 20 ‰. Standard-gauge main lines were designed with gradients of up to 35 ‰. In the case of the high-speed route Frankfurt – Cologne also 40 ‰, with the narrow-gauge railways the Bernina Railway holds the record with a gradient of 70 ‰. The mountain railways rarely have rack and pinion sections that enable narrow-gauge railways to incline up to 125 ‰.
Thus, the maximum gradient of the line is not exceeded, the route must means turns , hairpins , return tunnels or bends in valleys are extended. The routes usually have many engineering structures in the form of tunnels and bridges , as well as dams and cuttings . At higher altitudes, the route must also be protected from snow , avalanches and rockfalls , which is why galleries are often built. The top of the pass is often crossed by a crest tunnel. In order to limit the number of engineering structures, the routes have tight curve radii . For standard-gauge railways, the smallest curve radii are usually between 180 and 350 m, for narrow-gauge railways between 42 and 120 m.
business
The steep routes require stronger or additional locomotives for the trains or a division of the trains for transport over the mountains. Some railways use rack and pinion sections in sections to overcome steep inclines; in the past, the Fell system was also common.
The maintenance of the route in the mountains is more complex, because the transport of construction material in steep terrain is complicated and damage caused by the forces of nature often has to be repaired. Many mountain railways have an apex of over 1000 meters, so that snow has to be cleared regularly at higher altitudes.
history
The Geislinger Steige , built for the Filstalbahn between 1847 and 1850, is considered to be the first mountain railway crossing in continental Europe .
Another early mountain railway in Europe was the Semmering Railway , which opened in Austria in 1854 . The first mountain railway in Germany followed in 1856 , the Windbergbahn in the south of Dresden . In Switzerland , the old Hauenstein route opened in 1858 via Läufelfingen is considered the oldest mountain railway . The Brennerbahn , opened in 1867, is the highest standard-gauge mountain railway in Europe, which crosses the Brenner Pass at an altitude of 1,371 m above sea level . In 1868, the line over the Mont-Cenis , operated by locomotives according to the Fell system , followed, which was replaced in 1871 by today's Mont-Cenis railway with the Mont-Cenis tunnel . The Gotthard Railway followed in 1882, the Arlberg Railway in 1884. In 1885 the transcontinental railway connection in Canada was inaugurated. At the Kicking Horse Pass this route has a gradient of 4.5%, which was reduced to 2.2% in 1909 by the Spiral Tunnel . The Albula Railway has been running in the Swiss canton of Graubünden since 1903 .
In 1906 the Simplon line, initially operated with three-phase alternating current , opened as the first mountain railway to be electrically operated from the start through the tunnel of the same name . The electrically operated meter-gauge Bernina Railway , which opened in 1910 and crosses the pass of the same name at 2253 m above sea level, is considered the highest mountain railway in Europe . M. crossed. In 1913, the first mountain railway operated with single-phase alternating current was the Lötschberg line of today's BLS AG . In 1926, the Furka-Oberalp Railway, running west-east through the Alps, opened continuous operation with steam locomotives; electrification did not follow until 1941. Until the opening of the base tunnel in 1982, the line was only operated continuously in the summer months.
Towards the end of the 19th century, several mountain railways were built across the Andes in South America to connect the hinterland to the ports on the Pacific Ocean . Compared to the European railways, they reach much higher vertices. For a long time the Peruvian Central Railway was considered to be the highest mountain railway in the world with passenger traffic . In the Galera tunnel on the Callao - La Oroya route, it reaches a height of 4784 m, which can be compared with the top of Mont Blanc .
In 1976, over the widest part of was after 25 years of construction Dinaric mountain block leading Belgrade-Bar railway opened. Due to its length of 476 km and the immense expenditure of material and people for its completion, this is called the “giant among the European mountain railways” (Schneider Ascanio).
In 2005 the Lhasa Railway was opened in China , which has its apex at 5072 m. Because of the great height, the cars are equipped with an additional oxygen supply . This is to prevent travelers from suffering from altitude sickness .
literature
- Franz Kreuter: About railways in the mountains. Lecture given in Section Moravia in Brno. In: Journal of the German Alpine Association / Journal of the German and (the) Austrian Alpine Association , year 1884, (Volume XV), pp. 228–261. (Online at ANNO ). .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Mountain Railway. In: Catalog of the German National Library. 1986, accessed January 26, 2014 .
- ↑ a b c mountain railways. In: Röll: Encyclopedia of the Railway System. Retrieved January 26, 2014 .
- ↑ Mountain railways. In: Lueger: Lexicon of the entire technology. 1906, accessed January 26, 2014 .
- ↑ Michael Nold: The Infrastructure Diesel Locomotives Gmf 4/4 II of the Rhaetian Railway . In: Swiss Railway Review . No. June 06 , 2018, p. 308-313 .
- ^ Albert Mühl, Kurt Seidel: The Württemberg State Railways . 2nd edition, Konrad-Theiss-Verlag, Stuttgart 1980, ISBN 3-8062-0249-4 , pp. 40-42.