Introduction

The nineteenth century, together with the rapid development of industry, brought an unprecedented expansion of railway construction. Alongside main lines, many local railways were also built, aiming to connect economically important towns to the main network. In the second half of the nineteenth century, Jáchymov also began to strive intensively for a railway connection. It was a district town with developed industry, especially the State Tobacco Factory, enterprises processing uranium ores, and later also radium production. A decisive impulse was the fact that the Buschtěhrad Railway reached nearby Ostrov in 1871. From there, however, passengers and goods still had to continue to the mountain town by road, which was slow and costly. The effort to establish a direct railway connection was therefore a logical step.

History

The mountainous character of the landscape indicated from the outset that construction would be neither easy nor cheap. Designers therefore sought a compromise between technical possibilities and financial costs. The line was conceived as a local adhesion steam tramway, which allowed its approval despite extraordinary gradients that a conventional railway would have struggled to meet. Savings were expected, for example, from the absence of a rack section on steep slopes and from efforts to minimize large engineering structures. In practice, however, it proved impossible to build the line without a tunnel and a greater number of small bridges and culverts.

In 1883, Dr. Russ obtained a preliminary concession. In 1884, the Prague company Schmied & Halama prepared a preliminary design, which was examined on 29–30 May 1884 by a commission led by Engineer Bazika and rejected because of the steep gradient. The town insisted on the construction, and a new revision was carried out on 6 February 1885 with a positive result. Estimated costs amounted to 407,000 gulden, or about 45,222 gulden per kilometre. Financing was secured by a loan from the Provincial Bank, guaranteed by a resolution of the Bohemian Diet of 14 April 1894. The final concession was granted on 5 September 1895, and the Vienna company E. Gross prepared the project and began construction in 1896. The planned construction period was eight months.

Work proceeded under difficult mountain conditions. In addition to local workers, labourers from Alpine regions were involved, especially Italians who had experience in building mountain railways and tunnels. Numerous cuttings, embankments, and retaining structures had to be created, along with 27 small bridges and culverts and 29 level crossings. The most significant structure became the tunnel on the slope of Šibeniční Hill before Jáchymov. Its excavation began on 25 September 1896. Due to the proximity of houses, dynamite could not be used, so the rock was broken manually. Even with continuous work, progress was only about half a metre per day. The 18.3-metre-long tunnel was broken through on 14 October 1896, and in 1898 its vault was lined from both sides to a depth of five metres by the company of František Kuliš from Nejdek. This structure became the shortest railway tunnel in the territory of today’s Czech Republic.

A police-technical inspection at the end of November 1896 revealed a number of deficiencies, especially the fact that the maximum gradient reached 52.6‰, which was 5.6‰ more than anticipated in the design. Nevertheless, on 21 December 1896, the first train was ceremonially dispatched in the presence of the Minister of Railways, and regular service began on 23 December. Final state approval did not take place until 7 July 1897, and the identified defects continued to be corrected for another year. Thanks to its gradient, the line became the steepest standard-gauge adhesion public railway in Bohemia and later also in Czechoslovakia.

The line ran from the station Schlackenwerth via the stop Schlackenwerth P.H., then through Unter-Brand and Ober-Brand to the terminus St. Joachimsthal. It overcame a height difference of approximately 219 metres, from about 386 metres above sea level in Ostrov to roughly 605 metres in Jáchymov. Around 1900, proposals appeared to extend it into higher parts of the Ore Mountains, for example to Pernink, Boží Dar, or Kovářská. An ambitious variant was also considered, including a viaduct over the Jáchymov valley and a tunnel more than two kilometres long through the Klínovec massif between Můstek and the forester’s lodge Partum near Loučná, which would have overcome a difference in elevation of about 300 metres. Because of the extraordinary technical and financial demands, however, all these projects were rejected. On 8 January 1902, the local railway was transformed into a joint-stock company.

In its early years, the main customer was the State Tobacco Factory, which was served by a separate siding. Each day, two freight trains and four mixed trains ran along the line. The importance of passenger transport increased after the opening of the spa in 1906 and the construction of the Radium Palace in 1912, when visitors from all over Europe began arriving in the town. Further planned development was interrupted by the First World War.

After the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918, the Czechoslovak State Railways took over the eight-kilometre line with its half-kilometre siding. Operation was difficult due to steep gradients and unsuitable rolling stock. Motor locomotives did not prove successful, and the journey took about half an hour, with speeds dropping to as little as ten kilometres per hour on the ascent. A parallel bus service was therefore introduced in 1924. Trains often became stuck in snow or had to wait for a helper locomotive. These problems were so well known that participants of the Little Entente conference in Jáchymov in 1927 refused to travel by ceremonial train and chose horse-drawn carriages instead. The highest passenger numbers were recorded in 1928, when about 300,000 people were transported.

In the 1930s, operations were gradually reduced, and in 1934 passenger services were suspended. In 1935, negotiations took place about their restoration, on condition that suitable railcars would be introduced and that the road would be separated from the railway in Horní Žďár. In 1937, a project for electrification was prepared but never realized. Passenger services were restored only by the Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1941, with up to twelve pairs of trains per day. Between 1938 and 1945, the line fell under the operating authority in Karlovy Vary, managed from Dresden.

The difficult gradients and the routing along slopes caused frequent operational complications and occasional accidents. From the period of German administration, for example, an event from 1940 is documented in which a freight train derailed and the steam locomotive together with its wagons slid down the slope below the railway formation. Surviving photographs show the overturned locomotive and scattered cargo beneath the line. Although it was a notable technical accident, it does not rank among disasters with a larger number of casualties but rather illustrates the operational challenges of this steep mountain local railway.

After liberation, traffic was briefly suspended, and in 1946 the complete closure of the line was considered. The situation changed, however, due to the need for intensive mining of radioactive ores and their transport. Passenger services resumed on 7 October 1946, and in 1947 the line saw eleven pairs of passenger trains, three pairs of freight trains, and six siding trains daily. The line thus reached its capacity maximum, and the key user became the Jáchymov Mines enterprise, which used it to transport miners, ore, and materials.

At that time, several sidings existed. In addition to the siding to the State Tobacco Factory, a siding was built in Ostrov in 1948 for transporting construction materials to a new housing estate; in 1954, another siding was constructed from Dolní Žďár to the Vykmanov camp near the Red Tower of Death; and in the same year, a siding in Ostrov led to Kovona. The line thus gradually acquired more of an industrial-connection character.

The final end came with the decision to rebuild the road in Horní Žďár and create a new route to Jáchymov. A government resolution of 8 June 1955 ordered the removal of the Dolní Žďár–Jáchymov section, the conversion of the remainder into an industrial siding, and the demolition of the station buildings. The last train ran on 3 August 1957. The preserved section then continued to serve as an industrial siding, mainly for the Škoda Ostrov company, from which newly manufactured trolleybuses were dispatched by rail. After production ended in 2004, the siding lost its importance, and in 2010 its last remains were removed.

Description

The line had a construction length of 8.653 km and an operational length of 8.054 km. It ran partly on embankments, partly in cuttings, and in places also on the road formation, mostly parallel to the road. Characteristic features included sharp curves, steep gradients, a short tunnel, and numerous small bridges. Near the route there were also interesting rock formations and viewpoints above the valley, such as the Braunstein – Maiden’s Leap area, connected with a local legend about a girl who supposedly jumped from the rock here. These natural and cultural elements gave the line a distinctly mountainous and romantic character.

Present Day

After the railway was closed, part of the trackbed was used in road reconstruction, but a considerable portion remained preserved. To this day, the stop building in Ostrov, the station in Dolní Žďár, the track keeper’s house in Horní Žďár, and the tunnel with several small bridges still stand. In Jáchymov, a small park was created on the site of the former station terrace, and the cutting of the former siding between the cultural centre and St. Barbara’s Chapel is still visible.

In 2013, a cycle path was built on part of the former railway formation between Horní Žďár and Jáchymov, and between 2015 and 2017 it was extended as far as Ostrov. It largely follows the original railway trackbed, so the route of the historic railway can still be traced today along almost its entire length.