Prague – Lana horse-drawn tram
The Prague - Lana horse-drawn railway was the third public horse-drawn railway line on the European mainland after the Saint-Étienne – Andrézieux and the Budweis – Linz – Gmunden horse-drawn railway. She was commissioned in 1830 and from 1855 gradually through the steam railway operation of the Buštěhrad Railway replaced. The last horse-drawn tram rolled in 1869.
history
In 1825 a joint stock association was founded in Prague to operate a horse-drawn railway between Prague and Pilsen . The primary purpose of this railway was to transport wood from the Kladno and Lana forests to Prague and as pit wood to the coal mines at Kladno and Buschtiehrad . In addition, the sandstone from Doksy could also be transported to Prague in this way.
On July 30, 1827 , Emperor Franz I granted the association the privilege to operate.
The track was laid out in a gauge of 1120 mm. The first 25 km section linking between the station (now Station. Praha-Dejvice) 50 ° 5 '49.3 " N , 14 ° 23' 58.5" O before Písek or Brusker Tor (Písecká / Bruska brána) in Prague with the provisional destination station south of Kladno and Maßhaupt (Kročehlavy, now a district of Kladno). This station 50 ° 7 ′ 41.1 ″ N , 14 ° 6 ′ 49.2 ″ E , later in German “Weiche”, in Czech synonymous Vejhybka or Výhybka, is today the (main) station of Kladno. The line began operating in March 1830. In 1831, the expansion of the road from Prague to Chodkov improved the connection between the train station and the Piseker Gate with the Lesser Town and Charles Bridge .
In 1832 the operating association went bankrupt. Ownership and privilege were taken over by Karl Egon II zu Fürstenberg in 1832 , the owner of the Lana forest and the largest creditor of the railway company. In 1834 public transport had to be stopped due to inefficiency and the route quickly fell into disrepair.
In 1836, the timber merchant Schimann rented the route, of which only 12 km were operational due to distortion of the gauge. In return for the necessary repairs and the economically necessary extension, the prince guaranteed the timber merchant a transport volume of 16,000 to 20,000 fathoms per year over 20 years.
Schimann carried out repairs, after which the line was used for the transport of wood and coal until 1863.
Kaspar Maria von Sternberg won the French engineer Joachim Barrande as one of the project engineers , who examined and revised the present plans. In the future , the railway was to connect Sternberg's coal mines near Radnitz with Pilsen and Prague via Lana (Czech: Lány ) and the Pürglitzer Forest . The possibility of a continuation to Budweis to connect to the local horse-drawn railway to Linz was also considered.
After completion of the second section, the railway , which had been extended and repaired via Katschitz ( Kačice ) and Rinholetz ( Rynholec ), both in Okres Rakovník , to the Lana Deer Garden , began operating again on September 14, 1837. The original project of a continuation to Pilsen was dropped.
In 1839 Emperor Ferdinand I released the railway from the obligation it had previously entered into to extend the route to Pilsen .
In 1846, Prince von Fürstenberg was granted the privilege to build a branch line to the Buštěhrad coal mines and an extension to the state railway station in Prague. Because of the revolution of 1848, the project was postponed except for the connection from Kladno-Weiche to Kladno-Stadt.
The owners of the coal mines around Kladno preferred a railway line from Kladno to Kralupy , further down the Vltava than Prague.
On November 20, 1855, the Buschtěhrad Railway Company (BEB) , founded in 1852, finally won the concession, largely in the hands of the coal mine owners. Fürstenberg had to agree that a steam train from Kladno to Kralupy was first built, which went into operation on November 5, 1855. The previous branch line between Kladno and Vejhybka (Kladno-Výhybka) was also included in the steam operation .
In 1863, the BEB also received the concession to convert the old horse-drawn railway between Prague and Vejhybka to steam operation and standard gauge, and in 1867 the corresponding concession for the Vejhybka– Lány section . During the upgrade, the route was partially changed.
Bridges and dams of the sections of the horse-drawn tram that were not taken over into steam operation are still preserved today.
Time comparison
A quarter of a year after the opening of the Prague – Vejhybka line, on June 28, 1830, the train service between Givors and Rive-de-Giers on the first section of the Saint-Étienne – Lyon line began, also with horse power . It was the second railway line in France. However, after trial runs since 1829, locomotives have also been used in freight train service since 1831.
At the time of the second opening of the Central Bohemian horse-drawn tram, Belgian Mechelen was already a railway junction for steam-operated routes to Brussels , Antwerp and Dendermonde , two weeks later it was extended to Ghent (see history of the SNCB ). The first section of the Leipzig-Dresden Railway had also been in operation since April 1837 .
literature
- Otakar Kirsch: History koněspřežné železnice Praha-Lány. In: Stochov. Ed. V.Březina -Stochov 2004, pp. 365-371.
- Elmar Oberegger: The Austrian Horse Railways. -Sattledt 2007 (publications of the information office for Austrian railway history 1).
