Mödling and Hinterbrühl Tram or ''Mödling and Hinterbrühl Local Railway'' ( German: ''Lokalbahn Mödling–Hinterbrühl'') was an electric

tram A tram (also known as a streetcar or trolley in Canada and the United States) is an urban rail transit in which Rolling stock, vehicles, whether individual railcars or multiple-unit trains, run on tramway tracks on urban public streets; some ...

way in

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

, running 4.5 km (2.8 mi) from

Mödling Mödling () is the capital of the Austrian Mödling (district), district of the same name located approximately 15 km south of Vienna. Mödling lies in Lower Austria's industrial zone (Industrieviertel). The Mödlingbach, a brook which rises ...

Hinterbrühl Hinterbrühl () is a town in the district of Mödling in the Austrian state of Lower Austria. It is home to the Seegrotte, a system of caves including Europe's largest underground lake. During World War II, a satellite camp of Mauthausen concentr ...

, in the southwest of

Vienna Vienna ( ; ; ) is the capital city, capital, List of largest cities in Austria, most populous city, and one of Federal states of Austria, nine federal states of Austria. It is Austria's primate city, with just over two million inhabitants. ...

. The

gauge Gauge ( ) may refer to: Measurement * Gauge (instrument), any of a variety of measuring instruments * Gauge (firearms) * Wire gauge, a measure of the size of a wire ** American wire gauge, a common measure of nonferrous wire diameter, especia ...

was . Opened in October 1883, it was the first tram and railway in the world that was run with electricity delivered by an

overhead line An overhead line or overhead wire is an electrical cable that is used to transmit electrical energy to electric locomotives, Electric multiple unit, electric multiple units, trolleybuses or trams. The generic term used by the International Union ...

in permanent service. It was the first electric tram and railway in Austria, and it was the second one installed for definitive service. The operation ceased in March 1932. The approval had been granted by the k.k. Ministry of Commerce in 1882. The tram was built and run by the ''Südbahngesellschaft'' (the private

Austrian Southern Railway The Austrian Southern Railway () is a long double track railway, which linked the capital Vienna with Trieste, the former main seaport of Austria-Hungary, by railway for the first time. It now forms the Southern Railway in Austria and the Spi ...

Company) that operated the main line from Vienna to

Trieste Trieste ( , ; ) is a city and seaport in northeastern Italy. It is the capital and largest city of the Regions of Italy#Autonomous regions with special statute, autonomous region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia, as well as of the Province of Trieste, ...

, including the standard gauge railway station at Mödling. Electric traction operating at 550 volts DC was chosen. As for lack of space, parts of the trackway had to be laid on public roads. The

metre gauge Metre-gauge railways ( US: meter-gauge railways) are narrow-gauge railways with track gauge of or 1 metre. Metre gauge is used in around of tracks around the world. It was used by several European colonial powers including France, Britain and ...

single track rail of the tram had several turnouts. The overhead line was bipolar and consisted of two downwards open tubes, in which the two

pantograph A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a Linkage (mechanical), mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a se ...

s hang like aerial trams. This technique had been introduced by

Ernst Werner von Siemens Ernst Werner Siemens (von Siemens from 1888; ; ; 13 December 1816 – 6 December 1892) was a German electrical engineer, inventor and industrialist. Siemens's name has been adopted as the SI unit of electrical conductance, the siemens. He fou ...

in his experimental Electromote trolleybus concept. After a test on October 18, 1883, the regular service in the first section between Mödling and Vorderbrühl Valley started on October 22, 1883. As a condition for permitting the traffic through the narrow part of the valley in 1884, the authorities ordered the availability of a steam engine as emergency traction. In 1885, the line was completed to Hinterbrühl. In 1903, the line was modernized and the bipolar overhead line was replaced by a unipolar wire. The new contact supplies were

bow collector A bow collector is one of the three main devices used on tramcars to transfer electric current from the wires above to the tram below. While once very common in continental Europe, it was replaced by the pantograph. Origins The first bow colle ...

s. Since 1912, the revenues exceeded the expenses. In 1927 a bus service was installed in the valley. The competition became precarious for both. In 1923, the Austrian Ministry for Trade and Traffic decided that the tramline had to be closed down. The last tram on the line ran on March 31, 1932.

Bibliography

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Modling And Hinterbruhl Tram Tram transport in Austria Electric public transport Defunct railroads Mödling and Hinterbrühl Metre-gauge railways in Austria 1883 establishments in Austria 1932 disestablishments in Austria

See also

Bibliography