KLEINBAHN

Bergbahn-Gesellschaft Kleinbahn · Sankt Alben · Gegr. 1907

One car falls, so the other can climb.

A funicular above Sankt Alben: 1,212 metres of steel rope, 696 of climb, and a lever that has been warm since June 1907. Both cars hang from the same rope over the summit wheel — you drive them together or not at all. Ease the lever forward. Stop at every halt. The mountain keeps a book.

Winch room · Bergstation · line 1 of 1 TALSTATION WOLFGRAT GALERIE BERGSTATION II I

Winch lever · Fahrschalter

TAL ▼ ▲ BERG HALT

Rope speed

−4 0 +4 M / S

Counterweight

I II ONE ROPE

Altitude · m ü. M.

CAR I743M
CAR II1439M
Tal Wolfgrat Galerie Berg
Drag the lever — or focus it and use ↑ ↓, 0 for neutral Drizzle on the valley slates; the pines drip.

Die Strecke

The mathematics of the mountain are simple, and very old.

1,212M
Length of line
696M
Vertical rise
74%
Steepest grade
2CARS
One rope. Always.

Two cars are lashed to opposite ends of a single steel rope, and the rope is laid over a wheel at the summit. When one car descends, its weight hauls the other up. The winch at the Bergstation does not lift anything — it only settles arguments: a few horsepower to cover friction, a brake to say when the conversation is over. Everything else is gravity, lent from one side of the mountain to the other.

The Kleinbahn opened on 12 June 1907 with water ballast: the upper car took on nine hundred litres at the summit, grew heavy, and sank home. Electricity arrived in 1923 and the water stayed in the stream, but the principle never changed. The cars meet at the passing loop — the Begegnung — at exactly half past the mountain, every trip, in every weather. Drivers of forty years still nod to the other car. It is considered bad form not to.

01Talstation Booking hall, wood stove, the guestbook's first page. 743 m ü. M.
02Wolfgrat Request stop above the tunnel. Campanula in the rope-groove. 1,008 m ü. M.
03Galerie Inside the avalanche gallery. Sleet on the roof, most months. 1,175 m ü. M.
04Bergstation Winch room, summit terrace, and the wheel that holds it all. 1,439 m ü. M.

Das Gästebuch

Stop at a halt, and the book opens to its page.

1 of 4 pages open

Talstation

My husband built the winch and would not ride until I had ridden first. So I rode. The valley looked up at us like a face. I have agreed to be impressed.

— GRETE ALMER, ENGINEER'S WIFE

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Stop at Wolfgrat · 1,008 m

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Stop at Galerie · 1,175 m

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Ride to Bergstation · 1,439 m