The Pöstling mountain railway in Linz/Austria – integrating three vintage cars into the city's tram network

This line which is considered one of the steepest long-distance adhesion railways in the world with a gradient of up to 11.4 percent along almost its entire route used historic vehicles which originally had a one-metre gauge.

These were to be integrated into the city’s 900 mm gauge network under a project launched when Linz was chosen as the European Capital of Culture in 2009.

The new traveling gears we built for the three vehicles in 2011 met the latest engineering specifications and were designed for gradients of up to 11.4 percent. To ensure high electrodynamic braking performance, two large brake discs – specially developed for this project – and four track brakes were installed per axle for work in conjunction with two 50 kW high-torque traction motors.

The axle spacing is 2,000 mm, the diameter of the pinions 700 mm. HeiterBlick was also responsible for cabling work and fitting parts of the interior of the revamped old car bodies made largely of wood.

Advantages:

• customized solutions implemented to high engineering standards
• new traveling gears for integration into a city tram network
• development and construction of four completely new traveling gears
• revamping of historic, largely wood-built coach bodies