Malbergbahn
The Malbergbahn - also known as the Malbergbahn Bad Ems - was a funicular railway that ran from June 5, 1887 to 1979 between Bad Ems and the hotel on the Hohen Malberg . Since this year the traffic of the railway, which was declared a technical monument on December 7, 1981, has been idle. The train ran without an accident until its last day of operation.
The Kurwaldbahn , which opened in 1979, is located on the opposite bank of the Lahn .
history
In 1872 the city of Bad Ems decided to build a hotel on the 350 m high Hohen Malberg to compensate for the absence of numerous foreign spa guests. In order to make it accessible from a traffic point of view, the decision was made to build a "funicular railway with water overweight drive" ( water ballast railway ) and the Malbergbahn AG was founded in 1885 for this purpose . The operating company was entered in the commercial register in Cologne on December 3, 1886 under the name MAG .
The construction work for the hotel and funicular began as early as November 1886. On June 5, 1887, the Malbergbahn was officially opened. In 1926 the concession of the Malbergbahn AG company was transferred to the hotel for 25 years. When the contract was not extended in 1951, the railway became the property of Stadtwerke Bad Ems . Up to the day it was hired, the railway was busy and always well used. The hotel on the mountain, the café and the zoo could only be reached on foot or by train.
When TÜV Rheinland found serious defects in 1979 due to the age of the railway and the city was financially unable to remedy them, operations were temporarily suspended. On December 7, 1981, the Malbergbahn was declared an industrial monument and operations have been inactive ever since. In the meantime marked by vandalism , it was superficially renovated in 1999. On June 20, 2000, the Bad Ems City Council decided not to put the railway back into operation.
A railway car is now on the area of the mountain station, which is no longer accessible due to the risk of collapse. The other is in the valley station, it has since been renovated.
- Vandalism and decay
Car in the valley station in 1978
Car in the valley station in 2008
Rotten car in the mountain station 2013
Mountain station 2013
Car in the mountain station 2019
Car in the mountain station 2019
Mountain station 2019
Route of the train 2019
Mountain station 2019
Mountain station with car 2019
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
.jpg)
Since 1982 a support association with around 150 members has been trying to maintain and restart the Malbergbahn.
The valley station and the car located there have been renovated since 2014 and are currently used as a café.
technology
The Malbergbahn was a water ballast runway with a rack ladder according to the Riggenbach system . This served as a brake rack for braking and regulating the driving speed, and when the vehicles were at a standstill also as a parking brake . The double-track line had a gauge of 1000 millimeters (meter gauge ) and was 520 meters long. With a maximum gradient of 54.5 percent (545 ‰), it overcame an altitude difference of 260 meters. The top speed was 7 km / h until 1963, from 1963 12 km / h , the average speed was 5.4 km / h. The pull rope consisted of 6 pre-formed (“Tru-Lay-Neptun” version) strands of 19 wires on a fiber core. The railway was driven by water power , the process water was pumped up from the valley to a storage basin on the mountain.
See also
Web links
- Website Förderverein Malbergbahn & Görlitz Foundation
- Photo gallery of the current state
- Video documentation on Youtube from 2019
Individual evidence
- ↑ Super user: Malbergbahn Bad Ems. Accessed June 20, 2018 (German).
Coordinates: 50 ° 20 ' N , 7 ° 43' E