Drachenfels Railway
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Steam railcar at the valley station (1883) |
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Electric railcar at the summit station |
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Preserved steam locomotive 2`` at the valley station. |
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Electric railcar climbing the mountain |
The
Drachenfels Railway or
Drachenfelsbahn is a
mountain railway line in the
North Rhine-Westphalia region of
Germany. The line runs from
Königswinter to the summit of the
Drachenfels mountain at an altitude of
289m (948ft).
The line is
1.5km (0.9mi) long and has a
rail gauge of
1m (3ft3in). It is a
rack railway, using the Riggenbach design to overcome a height difference of
220m (722ft) and a maximum gradient of 20%. The line is electrified, with overhead supply at 750
V DC. The service is operated with a fleet of four four-wheel electric railcars, built in
Rastatt between
1955 and
1960, plus a fifth identical railcar built by the railway itself in
1979. The railcars were modernised by
SLM in
1998-
9 and can operate either singly or in pairs.
The line opened, with steam traction, on
July 13 1883. It was converted to electric traction in
1953, with steam trains retained for use in times of peak traffic. On
September 14 1958 the railway suffered a serious accident when a steam train derailed, resulting in 17 deaths and ending the use of steam on the line.
*Web page
http://www.werkbahn.de/eisenbahn/zahnrad/drachenfels.htm, retrieved 4th March 2005, 19:00 GMT.
*Web page
http://www.hochschulstellenmarkt.de/info/d/dr/drachenfelsbahn.html, retrieved 4th March 2005, 19:30 GMT.
*Wikipedia article
Drachenfelsbahn (in German), last updated 15th February 2005, 12:19.
*Book
Europe's Greatest Tramway Network, by F. Van Der Gragt, published (in English) by E. J. Brill of Leiden, Netherlands, 1968, no ISBN, page 120.
*
Drachenfelsbahn website
