Construction
Construction began on 29 March 1910 after a certain amount of opposition and various difficulties had been overcome. The cost of construction came to about three million gold marks, which was entirely borne by von Steinbeis.
Over the two years that the line took to build, around 800 workers were employed, predominantly from Bosnia and Hercegovina and Italy. The task was demanding. For the so-called Hohe Mauer ("High Wall") alone, a 127-metre (417 ft) long, 17-metre (56 ft) high embankment was built just before the mountain station, requiring 10,000 cubic metres (13,080 cubic yards) of rock to be removed. A total of 35 tonnes (77,000 lb) of explosive were used.
The first train worked the line on 12 May 1912 and, on 25 May, the railways was formally opened. The Wendelstein Rack Railway is thus the oldest, working rack railway in Bavaria. [3]
Operation
The full journey on the original route took 75 minutes. In 1961, as a result of the growth in private car ownership, the section between Brannenburg station and the present valley station in the village of Waching was sacrificed because it crossed the federal road. At the same time the railway lost its connexion to the Deutsche Bundesbahn network. As a result, the length of the line was reduced to 7.66 km (4.76 mi) and journey times to 55 minutes.
In the years that followed it became clear that the line could not be operated profitably. As a result, in 1970, the Wendelstein Cable Car was erected running from Bayrischzell-Osterhofen to the Wendelstein summit, with the intent that it would replace the rack railway in due course. The attraction of the rack railway for tourism was however recognised and it was kept going.
In 1987, with help from the Free State of Bavaria, the local parishes, the district of Rosenheim and the parent company of Lechwerke, the line was modernised at a cost of 17 million deutschmarks. On conclusion of the work in 1991 the capacity of the line increased by almost 100%. Journey times were reduced to 25 minutes uphill and 35 minutes downhill, thanks to two modern double railcars. The trains are able to operate every half an hour. Today 20 employees work on the rack railway, but it is still reliant on equalization payments.
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The Wetterspitzen are three of the rocky peaks on a mountain ridge in the Wetterstein mountains in the central part of the Eastern Alps in Germany. They lie two kilometres, as the crow flies, southwest of Germany's highest peak, the Zugspitze, on the border between the Austrian province of Tyrol and the German state of Bavaria. The Wetterspitzen form the southwest perimeter of the Zugspitze ledge (Zugspitzplatt); below and to the east is the ski region on the Schneeferner with its research station, the Schneefernerhaus.
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Wendelstein is a 1,838-metre-high (6,030 ft) mountain in the Bavarian Alps in South Germany. It is part of the Mangfall Mountains, the eastern part of the Bavarian Pre-Alps, and is the highest peak in the Wendelstein massif. It lies between the valleys of the Leitzach and Inn and is accessible via the Wendelstein Cable Car and the Wendelstein Rack Railway. On its northern foothills rises the Jenbach, which becomes the Kalten on its way to the River Mangfall. Local valley settlements include Bayrischzell, Brannenburg and Osterhofen.
The Bavarian Zugspitze Railway is one of four rack railways still working in Germany, along with the Wendelstein Railway, the Drachenfels Railway and the Stuttgart Rack Railway. The metre gauge line runs from Garmisch in the centre of Garmisch-Partenkirchen to the Zugspitzplatt, approximately 300 metres below Zugspitze, the highest mountain in Germany. The line culminates at 2,650 metres above sea level, which makes it the highest railway in Germany and the third highest in Europe. It is also the railway in Europe with the biggest height difference: 1,945 metres, the lower half being open-air and the upper half being underground.
The Schneefernerhaus is a former hotel in the Alps, that is now used as an environmental research station. It lies immediately below the summit of the Zugspitze at a height of 2,650 m and was opened on 20 January 1931. It used to house the top station of the Bavarian Zugspitze Railway as well as a tourist hotel. There was then a cable car from the Schneefernerhaus to the Zugspitze summit. In 1938 a gallery for pedestrians was opened from the ridge station of the Tyrolean Zugspitze Cable Car to the Schneefernerhaus. From 1945 to 1952 the hotel was commandeered for use as a "recreation facility" by the US Forces.
Julius Mayr was a German physician, chairman of the German Alpine Club and writer who wrote a biography of the painter Wilhelm Leibl.
