Linz Grotto Railway

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The “good porter” greets the visitors.
The dragon "Lenzibald" transports travelers through the grotto.
The lovingly designed dwarf figures do not recreate well-known fairy tales, but adventures and scenes from everyday life.
During the third and final journey through the grotto, the festival lighting is activated.
Replica of the main square in Linz. The fairytale dioramas are located in the side streets.

The Linzer Grottenbahn is a touristic fairytale world on the Pöstlingberg in one of the fortification towers of the city's Maximilian fortification ring .

An electrically powered train in the form of a dragon called Lenzibald travels on a circular path through the outer ring of the historic fortified tower. During two tours, the niches on the left and the right are illuminated, in which adventures from the dwarf kingdom are depicted. A final passage takes place with festival lighting.

In the cellar vault there are niches with life-size scenes from well-known fairy tales as well as a detailed replica of the Linz main square on a scale of 1: 7 with the shops from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries .

history

After the then Tramway- und Elektrizitätsgesellschaft Linz-Urfahr (TEG) had acquired the Fort Pöstlingberg of the Maximilian fortification built in the 1830s in 1897 and set up the mountain station of the Pöstlingbergbahn in one of the fortification towers , in 1906, at the instigation of the then operations director of the TEG, Franz Apparently, the grotto railway was built in another tower.

The track was built into the outer ring in the so-called Schartenstock of the fortification tower II. Walls and ceilings were designed like a grotto and provided with colored lamps. On August 6, 1906, the "Electric Tower Railway on Pöstlingberg" was opened. A motor vehicle with a dragon head and a trailer was driving on the circular course. At that time, a trip usually consisted of four laps - the grotto was illuminated in different colors on the first three laps, while the last lap took place in complete darkness - with the exception of an illuminated banner "No kissing". From 1911 living cave olms were exhibited in the cellar vault of the tower (the so-called magazine stock) . This show was expanded to become the “First Austrian Museum of Speleology” (opening on May 11, 1912). Due to the humidity, the cave museum moved to the Francisco-Carolinum in 1915. From 1917 to 1918 you could visit a war museum established by the War Welfare Office. After that, the basement remained unused for many years, until in 1936 a replica of the medieval Linz main square was created on canvas backdrops by the landscape painter Ludwig Haase . Fairytale dioramas with stuffed animals could be viewed in the niches.

On January 8, 1945, the grotto railway was destroyed by a bomb hit. The sculptor Friederike Stolz was commissioned with the redesign . According to their concept, the circuit of the railway became a "dwarf empire": niches with scenes from the life of the dwarfs were created in the walls next to the railway. Now, in the first two rounds, the niches on the right and left were alternately illuminated. During the third round, the entire grotto is brightly lit with colorful lamps. On May 1, 1948, the new grotto railway was opened.

From Easter 1950 the basement was also accessible again. The replica of the main square was bricked up on a scale of 1: 7 and now represents the state at the turn of the century 1900. In the "side streets" are the newly designed fairytale dioramas.

In 1995 the Grottenbahn dwarf family grew. The characters from the fairy tale Cindy with the Dwarfs from Pöstlingberg , which told the creation of the Pöstlingberg in an imaginative way, were new . The main character was the dwarf doctor Eiro, who greeted all visitors in the entrance area. This group of fairy tales was replaced by the installation The Crazy Fairy Tale Book at the beginning of the 2016 season .

Various modernizations in recent years (fire-breathing dragon, light and sound effects, etc.) have further improved the attractiveness of the grotto railway without destroying its nostalgic charm.

Technical

The total length of the route is 82.705 meters with a gauge of one meter. The current supply voltage is 60 volts at 50 hertz, which is supplied to the railway by means of a conductor rail and then increased to 380 volts in the kite using a transformer. In the past, the power was supplied with 600 V DC via a cable from the mountain railway. For safety reasons, the power supply was rebuilt in the 1970s.

The rectification provides 363 volts direct current. The regulation is carried out by series resistors as before. Due to the lower voltage, you can drive the kite more slowly today.

Trivia

  • Colloquially, one goes “sniffing dwarfs” when visiting the grotto railway.

literature

  • Christian Hager : On the Pöstlingberg! History and stories of the landmark of the state capital Linz . Linz 1997. ISBN 3-901123-90-3 .
  • Christian Hager: 90 years of Linzer Grottenbahn . in: Oberösterreichische Heimatblätter 50 (1996) 3, pp. 302–312, digitized version (PDF; 1.6 MB) in the forum OoeGeschichte.at

Web links

Coordinates: 48 ° 19 ′ 24 ″  N , 14 ° 15 ′ 27 ″  E