Black Forest Railway (Baden) - Route Details - Technical Characteristics

Technical Characteristics

The Black Forest Railway was the first mountain railway to use hair-pin loops, which artificially lengthened the line, but allowed for the grade to stay under 20 per mille at any point. Without this solution, the construction of part of the line as a rack and pinion railway, like the Murg Valley Railway or the Höllental Railway, would have been necessary. Between Hausach und Sankt Georgen, the railway ascends a total of 564 metres. The two towns are separated by only 21 kilometres in a straight line; the railway traverses 38 kilometres to make the trip.

As mentioned before, the line had to be constructed with the limitation that it could not leave the territiry of the Grand Duchy of Baden. Building the line via the town of Schramberg, in the Kingdom of Württemberg, would have made construction much less expensive and complex. However, this would have meant that Baden would have had to share control over the strategically important line with another state, and the clock-making industry in Schramberg would have gained an important advantage in their competition with the same industry in Furtwangen in Baden.

The route passes through numerous tunnels (37 alone in the section between Hausach and Sankt Georgen), but only travels across one large viaduct, in Hornberg. On its way from north to south, the line passes under the main European watershed twice, once via the Sommerau tunnel between Triberg and Sankt Georgen, which is 1,697 meters in length, and then via the Hatting tunnel, between Engen and Immendingen, which is 900 meters in length.

Also worth mentioning is the control and safety technology on display on the Black Forest Railway. Three different signal box types are in use: The mechanical type near Villingen, relay-controlled signal boxes near Triberg, and electronic examples near Immendingen.

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