Deutschlandsberg forest railway

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Deutschlandsberg forest railway
Route number (ÖBB) : 922 01
Gauge : 760 mm ( Bosnian gauge )
Geographical data
continent Europe
country Austria
state Styria
Route-related data
Legend
   
 0.0 Deutschlandsberg sawmill Liechtenstein 838  m above sea level A.
   
 1.3 Deutschlandsberg tunnel 306 m
   
 1.8 Laßnitz bridge
   
 Buchwald water station
   
 4.3 Fischerbauer water station
   
 Fischbauer Bridge
   
 6.9 small tunnel 35 m
   
 Imhof water station
   
 Parhofer Bridge
   
 9.9 Open ground at Deutschlandsberg cable car loading station
The east portal of the 306 m long "Prince Franz Liechtenstein Tunnel"
Forest railway line and cable car in the Laßnitztal northwest of Deutschlandsberg, around 1937

The Deutschlandsberg forest railway , also known as the “Prince Liechtenstein Forest Railway in Laßnitztal”, was a forest railway (gauge 760 mm) between Deutschlandsberg and Freiland in western Styria and was operated until 1959. The builder and owner of the forest railway was the forest administration of Prince Liechtenstein, which owned extensive forests in the Koralpe area and had the railway built between 1920 and 1923.

In 1930 the federal government issued a permit for combined freight and public passenger transport . In addition to the transport of wood from the forest administration, there was also limited public passenger traffic from 1931.

The migration of wood transport to the road forced the company to cease operations in 1959, and from 1961 to around 1963 the track systems were dismantled.

History and construction

The first route studies included several variants, so a route through the hermitage was also considered or a route from the Peuerlhof area in Schwanberg. The total length was planned to be 41.5 km. The "Weststeirische Holzverwertungs-Actiengesellschaft" was founded to finance the construction, the railway construction could get the status of a favored building, which would have made expropriations possible. However, the route led almost entirely over the territory of the Liechtenstein family, whose forests were to be made more accessible and thus usable by the railway and which provided the necessary land free of charge. The benefit was tied to the condition of building a sawmill in Deutschlandsberg. This plant was built north of the Wieser Bahn station in Deutschlandsberg, it is still in operation as of 2016 . The sawmill is connected to the Deutschlandsberg train station by a standard-gauge siding; this has nothing in common with the narrow-gauge forest railway, its tracks were not connected to the forest railway.

On May 21, 1921, the construction contract was awarded to the Redlich & Berger company; the groundbreaking ceremony took place on June 22, 1921. The first test drive took place on October 22, 1922, and the route was officially put into operation on January 29, 1923. For the route in the Laßnitz valley, eight wooden bridges were initially built, which were later exchanged for reinforced concrete bridges. For a train journey, in addition to the engine driver and the stoker, a train driver and three brakemen were provided.

During the construction period, the railway staff comprised between 25 and 1818 workers and 10 to 64 civil servants, overseers and engineers. An increase in illegitimate births of 33% has been published during the construction of the railway. For the construction, a material train was led through the hermitage west of Deutschlandsberg to the west portal of the tunnel.

On June 2, 1922, an application was made to build a cable car from the terminus of the railway line in Laßnitztal to the forester's lodge Kupper. The original plan was to extend the railway line in the Laßnitz valley. This failed because of the costs. The cable car was 2.72 km long.

In 1927 the construction of the feeder line I (Waldbahn II), gauge 600 mm via glassworks in the Bärental on the Koralpenkamm, began. In 1928, the 12 km long feeder line II (Waldbahn III), also 600 mm gauge, to the Landsberger Brendl near the Hebalm was tackled.

Route

The starting point of the line with a total length of 9.9 km was the steam saw of the Fürst-Liechtensteinische Forstverwaltung (to the north adjacent to the Deutschlandsberg station of the Graz-Köflacher Railway ).

Starting from the sawmill in Deutschlandsberg, the train led via Mitteregg through a 306 m long tunnel (today there is a shooting range in the tunnel, the tunnel sign says 311 m) and on a bridge over the Laßnitz, the piers of this only reinforced concrete bridge of the railway are today still there. It continued along today's forest path up to the Fischerbauer (today Tonis Fischerhütte), over the Fischbauerbrücke and after a 35 m long breakthrough over another larger bridge to the Freiland terminus (former saw of the Herk farm). There was the valley station of the cable car that brought the logs from the two upper sections of the route. The Gasthaus Riederer at this train station was built in the 1940s and was demolished in 1960 after the railway was closed. The route overcame an altitude difference of 235 m. It had eight larger and 18 small bridges, 25 bridges were made of wood, one concrete bridge was available. The longest bridge was 75 m long, the average gradient 2.35 ‰. The locomotive's supplies could be replenished at four water points.

Longer parts of the forest railway line between the large and small tunnels were destroyed in 2008 by the construction of roads and power stations. There are now two small hydropower plants on the railway line that provide the local power supply. A power plant, that of "Wasserkraft Spieler GmbH", was replaced in 2018 by a new building, the dam wall of which is located at the point where the second bridge of the forest railway previously led over the Laßnitz.

business

The railway transported around 20,000 to 25,000 solid cubic meters of wood annually.

In 1929, limited public transport was introduced on a trial basis and approved in 1930. In addition to the employees of the railway owners and the officials of the local authorities and their relatives, the residents of the communities bordering the railway line were entitled to travel. The fare is given as 1.20  shillings .

On July 27, 1959, passenger traffic was stopped, and in 1961 the rest of the operation of the railway was also stopped. The railway was unable to hold its own against the competition from trucks, which were becoming ever stronger and more off-road.

gallery

  • Bridge pillars of the forest railway as silent witnesses of the railway operation

  • Forest railway line

  • Forest railway line of the northern branch on the Stoffkogel below the forest road that was built later

  • The route of the southern branch of the feeder lines (here: near glassworks) can still be seen and is used as a road over long distances

Locomotives

  • Steam locomotive with the wheel arrangement Ct, Jung 3191, built in 1922, the locomotive had an output of 50 hp with a dead weight of 7.53 t.
  • From 1940 a type RL 3 locomotive from Orenstein & Koppel AG, Berlin plant with the serial number 21270/40 was used. This locomotive came to the Gleinstättner Ziegelwerke in 1965. On December 5, 1978 it was taken over by the Carinthian Railway Friends Association in Althofen , and since 1984 the locomotive has been in the possession of the Mining and Works Railway Museum in Graz .
  • 45 hp Deutz 11852/23 diesel locomotive
  • an Austro-Daimler - wood gas -Lok
  • another Deutz locomotive, 22 hp
  • a JW 20 diesel locomotive from Jenbacher Werke .

Passenger cars

  • 1 passenger car for 10 people from 1922 to 1931
  • 1 passenger car for 18 people from 1931. This car was built in 1913 by the Ringhoffer works in Prague for the Mixnitz – Sankt Erhard local railway and was acquired by the Waldbahn Deutschlandsberg in 1930 (purchased in 1931). After they were hired, it was set up as a play device in a kindergarten in Deutschlandsberg until 1982, after which it was restored and taken to the Gurktalbahn , where it was one of the wagons on the steam train. In July 2013, with the support of the municipality of Stainz, it was exchanged for another passenger car and has since been part of the car fleet of the bottle train on the Stainzerbahn . The car belongs to the C series (this designates a 3rd class car ), it originally had the car number 1 and the serial number 83265, it is 6.7 m long. The car weighs 3715 (according to another source 3750) kg.

Freight wagons

  • 18 sets of double trucks
  • 2 four-axle platform wagons
  • 1 ballast wagon
  • 1 four-seater trolley for descents

Feeder routes

The wood was brought from the Bärental in the headwaters of the Schwarzen Sulm , the Höllgraben (southern branch) and by Hofbauer and the Stefflpeterbrendl on the Stoffkogel in the Osterwitz community via rail lines with a gauge of 600 mm to the Kupper loading point, from where it was 5 km long cable car to the valley to Freiland. The northern branch of the railway had its track end on the northern slope of the Stoffkogel in the catchment area of ​​the Stoffbach and Rettenbach on the border with Carinthia, near the Stoffhütte, 1424 m.

There were also a number of feeder cable cars and other facilities such as giants and simple, gravity-operated railways, as well as several brake mountains in the region, the traces of which can still be discovered today. For example, at the chapel built in 1923 above Tonis Fischerhütte, there is a two-meter-wide path with set walls, which may have been a track. In any case, there were plans for several route variants.

Four internal combustion engine locomotives from various manufacturers (including Orenstein & Koppel , Austro-Daimler and Deutz ), as well as a motor trolley for the forester, were used as vehicles on the feeder routes .

literature

  • Gerhard Fischer: Branch lines in the area around GKB. 1. The Prince Liechtenstein Forest Railway. In: turntable. The PR and staff magazine of the Graz-Köflacher Bahn und Busbetrieb GmbH. Edition 76, December 2016. ZDB -ID 2181683-9 . Pp. 10-11.
  • Karl-Heinz Unger: The Deutschlandsberger Waldbahn 1922–1963 . Diploma thesis at the University of Graz. Graz 2014.
  • Gerhard Fischer, Andreas Fischer: 90 years of the Prince Liechtenstein Forest Railway and Saw. Deutschlandsberg 2012. Simadruck Aigner & Weisi. (Brochure for the lecture on December 8, 2012 in the Laßnitzhaus Deutschlandsberg)
  • Christian Oitzl: The Deutschlandsberger Waldbahn. Memories of a narrow-gauge railway. (PDF; 3.4 MB) Turntable. The staff magazine of the Graz-Köflacher Bahn und Busbetrieb GmbH. No. 27, Graz, June 2006. pp. 14–15.
  • Manfred Hohn : Forest railways in Austria. Slezak publishing house 1989, ISBN 3-85416-148-4
  • M. Riederer, G. Riedlsperger, J. Tamaschek: Freiländer Ortschronik. Self-published by the community of Freiland near Deutschlandsberg in 1988

Web links

Commons : Waldbahn Deutschlandsberg  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

credentials

  1. ↑ a b c http://www.gkb.at/downloads/drehscheibe27juni2006.pdf
  2. ↑ https://www.eisenbahntunnel.at/inhalt/tunnelportale/92201-deutschlandsberg.html
  3. ↑ Announcement of August 9, 1923 , Provincial Law Gazette for Styria of August 28, 1923, Issue 23, No. 93, p. 140.
  4. ^ Fischer: Forest Railway. Pp. 17-19.
  5. ^ Fischer: Forest Railway. P. 19.
  6. ^ Fischer: Forest Railway. P. 20.
  7. ↑ Weststeirische Rundschau No. 50, year 2012 (December 14, 2012), 85th year, ZDB -ID 2303595-X . Simadruck Aigner u. Weisi, Deutschlandsberg 2012, p. 3.
  8. ↑ a b c d West Styrian Rundschau . No. 9, volume 2013 (March 1, 2013), 86th volume, p. 2.
  9. ^ Fischer: Forest Railway. Pp. 22-23.
  10. ^ Fischer: Forest Railway. Pp. 24-25.
  11. ↑ Weststeirische Rundschau No. 46, volume 2008 (November 15, 2008), 81st volume, p 4.
  12. ↑ Weststeirische Rundschau No. 45, volume 2008 (November 8, 2008), 81st volume, p. 2.
  13. ↑ Weststeirische Rundschau No. 35, volume 2018 (August 31, 2018), volume 91, p. 3.
  14. ^ Fischer: Forest Railway. P. 27 (today's value about three euros)
  15. ^ For the latter five locomotives: Locomotive statistics Pospichal.net (queried October 1, 2013).
  16. ^ A b Manfred Hohn: Forest railways in Austria. Verlag Josef Otto Slezak, Vienna 1980. p. 160.
  17. ^ A b Walter Krobot, Josef Otto Slezak , Hans Sternhart: Schmalspurig durch Österreich. History and fleet of narrow-gauge railways in Austria from 1825 to 1975. Slezak publishing house, 3rd edition Vienna 1984. ISBN 3-85416-095-X . P. 304–305 (sketch with dimensions on p. 304)
  18. ↑ Flascherlzug received the Liechtenstein forest railway wagon . In: Weststeirische Rundschau . No. 30, year 2013 (July 26, 2013), 86th year, ZDB -ID 2303595-X . Simadruck Aigner u. Weisi, Deutschlandsberg 2013, p. 15.
  19. ↑ The illustration of the route by Manfred Hohn: Waldbahnen in Österreich , Verlag Slezak, Vienna 1989, ISBN 3-85416-148-4 , is a little too short in this detail because it only shows the status of the route after around 1950 in the provisional Edition of the Austrian official map 1: 50,000 reproduces: Sheet 188 Wolfsberg. Published by the Federal Office for Metrology and Surveying, Vienna (regional survey), map correction 1940, individual supplements 1954. However, the railway was operated until 1959 and apparently extended.
  20. ^ Gerhard Fischer: Osterwitz. a miraculous place in the high pürg. Life, joy and suffering of an area and its inhabitants. Osterwitz 2002. Editor and publisher: Osterwitz community. Production: Simadruck Aigner & Weisi, Deutschlandsberg. No ISBN. Pages 126–137, for route planning see page 128.
  21. ↑ http://unipub.uni-graz.at/obvugrhs/content/titleinfo/301967