History

1918 - 1926

In 1916, the Schoeller & Co wood grinding company in Hirschwang applied for a building permit for the construction of a 5km long railway connection to the South Railway due to a sharp increase in freight volumes.

Initially, a narrow-gauge light freight indiustrial railway was to be built for the temporary transport of goods and later for the construction of a standard gauge railway, which was to run largely on the same route. Because Schoeller was a main supplier of the royal Austrian-Hungarian army, the project was favoured by the state in the sense of the war economy, which facilitated the expropriation of the necessary land.

Despite the difficulties of the terrain, the material railway opened in 1918 with the help of Russian prisoners of war as workers.

The contracted construction company had been working on the construction of the Karawanken railway tunnel where they used electric mining locos because of the risk of firedamp. These came together with the electric overhead catenary to Hirschwang, where they remained until today.

These locomotives, built in 1903, are the oldest narrow-gauge electric locomotives in operation in Europe.. One of them is still in operation today and does its job without complaint despite its old age!

The power supply was provided by an iron catenary at a height of approx. 3m. The power system was specified with 500V direct current. Three of the above-mentioned electric mining locomotives were used for the freight transport. Originally, 24 light railway wagons served as freight wagons, wohose number was expanded by the purchase of freight wagons from the Austro-Hungarian Army War Railway.

From the industrial freight railway to the light railway

The ground works of the standard gauge railway were largely completed by the end of the war. In 1918 the bottom tunnel of the 428m long Artzberg Tunnel, in which the standard-gauge railway was planned to underpass the Atzberg mountain ridge between Payerbach and Reichenau, was already comleted, but not the ridge tunnel.

After the collapse of the monarchy, the works on the standard gauge railway were stopped and the industrial freight railway was closed. The entrances to the tunnel were filled in with soil, and wild rumours spread about the storage of war equipment in the tunnel until today.

In 1920, the wood grinding plant in Hirschwang including the railway was taken over by the Neusiedler AG für Papierfabrikation company, which transformed the wood griding plant into the actual paper production site. Neusiedler AG had the project of a standard gauge railway to Hirschwang re-examined from a business point of view. The calculation and profitability calculation resulted in enormous production costs and a high permanent deficit for the standard gauge railway. Therefore, it was decided to drop the project and in 1921 the project of an "electric narrow-gauge railway from Payerbach via Reichenau to Hirschwang" was submitted.

Due to the sharp increase in winter tourism, it was considered to adopt the narrow-gauge railway for passenger traffic. The 760mm gauge was kept, but the track got a new layout in some parts. Instead of the hairpin bends to overcome the Artzberghöhe, the two loops at Steinhofgraben and in Thalhof were planned to pass the Artzberg mountain ridge. The previously primitive catenary was rebuilt and raised up to the suited hight of the ordered railcar trains. In 1922, the concession for the "Lokalbahn Payerbach Hirschwang AG" was granted. Thus, the conversion to a local railway began.

1926 - 1963

For passenger transport, two electric railcars and four trailers were ordered from the Grazer Waggonfabrik (one trailers is still in operation today), which were in test-operation since 26 April 1926. The abandoned accumulator factory in Hirschwang was converted into a large locomotive and wagon shed with workshop, storage and staff rooms. It is still preserved in its original form today. In September 1926, scheduled passenger services were started. The railcars No. 1 and 2 and the trailers No. 11 to 14 are with the exeption of the electric engines the ident construction. They have 56 seats and a length of approx. 13m.

In 1926, Austria's first cable car, the Rax cable car, was opened, and the number of visitors increased rapidly. This required a better connection from the terminus in Hirschwang to the cable car. Therefore, the Lokalbahn built an extension through the village of Hirschwang to the so-called "Windbrücke"-bridge over the Schwarza close to the Rax cable car downhill station.

For a better change between the Lokalbahn and the Südbahn, the Lokalbahn was extended in Payerbach by 125m opposite to the station building of the South Railway and a pedestrian tunnel was built under the South Railway. The opening of the two extensions took place in 1927. Freight traffic was operated by the electric locomotives E 1 to E 3, which had already been used for the industrial freight railway, and in 1927 a more powerful locomotive, the E 4, was purchased for shunting on the factory grounds. The freight wagons were either bought second-hand or adopted from forest railways or other light railways.

The passenger service war operated by the two railcars and the four trailers. Passenger traffic always considered the connections of the South Railway. 16 trains to Hirschwang and back were in operation daily, the journey time was 19 minutes at a total of 6 stations. In terms of tariffs, the line was divided into two sections, the fare in 1963 was ÖS 1.50 per section; for a single ticket öS 3.00 and for the return journey öS 5.50. Passengers of the museum railway still receive the original tickets today, of course at a different price.

The year 1963 meant a regrettable turning point for the light railway. The railway tracks were declared by the railway authority to be no longer sufficiently safe for passenger traffic, despite decades of operation without complaint. The railway was prescribed a track renovation, which would have required investments of three million Austrian schillings. Experts reported that only the tracks on the 400m long part Hirschwang factory - Windbrücke was in poor condition. Because local railways do not make any profits, the prescription of investments was the death knell for passenger transport. On 1 July 1963, the passenger transport on the LBP-H was closed and the post office took over this lucrative connection to the Rax cable car with its buses.

There were no improvements for the passengers: the travel time is the same, the fare is much higher and passengers have to be crammed together during traffic peaks. Taking bulky luggage and skis with you was no problem on the train, but it is almost impossible on the bus. The fare is not collected during the journey, as in the train, but before departure,  and as a result, the bus often doesn't arrive at the sheduled time. A constant decline in the passenger frequency of the Rax cable car was the result.

1963 - 1981 (freight transport)

The six passenger vehicles were sold to the Zillertalbahn narrow gauge railway in Tyrol in 1964. There, the two railcars were scrapped and converted into freight cars. The four trailers continued to run - slightly modified - as passenger cars on the Zillertalbahn railway.

Due to the takeover of the freight traffic by road trucks, rail freight service between Hirschwang and Windbrücke was stopped and the railway tracks of the passenger service as well as the freight railway connections to the sawmill and the gravel plant of Ziag were demolished. This resulted in disadvantages for the touristic village of Reichenau, which faces now an increasing truck traffic.

The light railway passenger station and its tracks at Payerbach Ort (km 0.0 to 0.13) remained, but were left to decay and later partially demolished to gain space for a loading ramp was at Payerbach for better loading.

The old electric locomotives continued to be used for freight transport. However, due to a lack of maintenance work, the electric service had to be closed soon. Instead, the Heeresfeldbahn diesel locomotive D 1, acquired in 1972, was used. In order not to jeopardize the operation with only one locomotive, the L.B.P.-H. bought a second, almost identical diesel locomotive in Germany in 1978 with the help of the meanwhile founded association "Österreichische Gesellschaft für Lokalbahnen (ÖGLB)".

But the ÖGLB's support went even further: at the end of 1978, in a part of the light railway's fleet air brakes were installed. This saved the brakemen on the train. However, this attempt for rationalisation failed, as the majority of the compressed air connections were torn off within a short time due to careless loading and shunting work.

In the 1970's and the 1980's, the project of a transformation in a standard-gauge railway has appeared again and again. All these plans failed due to the high construction costs and the geologically extremely complicated terrain of the Artzberg, which was also the reason for the abandonment of the "Artzberg Tunnel" project in 1922.

In 1982, the railway facilities were already so neglected that freight traffic had to be stopped for safety reasons. On August 12, 1982, the last L.B.P.-H. freight train ran.

From 1977 untill today

It was already mentioned in the section "After the closure" that the association "Österreichische Gesellschaft für Lokalbahnen (ÖGLB)" was founded in 1977. Its goal is to support and maintain railways, especially narrow-gauge light railways. Initially, it was planned to support the LB.P.-H. in the rationalisation and safeguarding of freight rail transport and to offer a museum service as a tourist attraction on weekends.

For this reason, two steam locomotives and various two-axle passenger coaches were bought, which had no historical connection to each other or to the line.

Unfortunately, despite all efforts, the freight railway traffic was closed in 1982, so the line was completely handed over to the association. In hard manual work, the catenary, the tracks and finally two of the three electric locomotives from 1903 were made maintained and restored.

On 8 December 1977, the association made a first test run with the electroc loco E 2 and small, primitive industrial railway cars of the Schoeller-Bleckmann steelworks in Mürzzzuschlag. Finally, in the summer of 1979, the first season of the museum railway was opened with the steam locomotive FLORIANA and two passenger cars of the Mixnitz - St. Erhard local railway. In the following years, a number of vehicles were bought to restore them and to extend the range of the vehicles in service. Additionally, the heavily used tracks in the two narrow loops in the Payerbach - Reichenau section were reconstructed to heavy rail profiles.

Thousands of passengers used the train every summer, which only spurred the employees on even more. Of course, there were not only highs, but also lows. The roof of the large engine shed in Hirschwang was one of the biggest problems. Parts of the engine sheds date back to 1900 and was already leaking in many places.

There were also plans to extend the light railway back to the Rax cable car, on the route of the former freight railway track to the wood grinding shop. The new terminus would have been even closer to the station of the Rax cable car than the former Windbrücke terminus station. Despite already purchased land, finished plans, completed nature conservation procedures and even secured financing, the municipality of Reichenau prevented this project by a strict "no"!

In 1990, with the 17 km long Ybbsthalbahn mountain line from Kienberg to Lunz am See, the ÖGLB took over its second museum railway in Lower Austria. Of course, the steam locomotives are much better suited to this route and the Höllentalbahn should rather represent the time of the electric light railways.

The decade from 1990 onwards is a rather sad chapter in the history of the light railway. As early as 1992, museum railway service between Payerbach and Reichenau - the mor scenious section of the line - had to be closed due to the poor condition of the railway tracks. The reconstruction of the railway tracks progressed only slowly and ultimately led to the abandonment of some voluntarily workers. Passenger numbers declined, revenues fell and the state of maintenance of the railway deteriorated - a vicious circle.

From about 1994, a dozen voluntary employees formed a group in the ÖGLB, who have set themselves the goal of "reviving" this small, unique light railway. At first, with a lot of effort, even with bare hands, they tried to save what could still be saved. It is only thanks to the motivation of a few enthusiasts that the railway did not finally perished.

The efforts culminated in the initiation of the project "Revitalization of the Höllentalbahn" with funds from the EU and Lower Austria. This made it possible to repair the entire line for passenger transport service again until summer of 1999 by means of extensive new track construction, as well as a complete renovaion of the already extraordinarily desolate and partially collapsed roof of the Hirschwang engine shed.

A new diesel locomotive was bought, whose design corresponds to the locomotives of the L.B.P.-H. and which was necessary to operate the trains in the mountain section between Reichenau and Payerbach because the catenary had not yet been renovated there. In 2005, electric operation was resumed on the entire line. At the same time, as part of the Revitalization-project, the original electric railcar of the Höllentalbahn could be reconstructed on the basis of a preserved passenger wagon. It was ceremoniously put into operation in 2005. Since then, the majority of the museum trains are operated by the electric railcar, which presents itself as brand new. To prevent a new closure of the line, there has been a major track construction at changing sections of the line almost every year since 2000, during which sleepers from the L.B.P.-H. era were largely replaced. The largest of these construction sites took place in the winter of 2011/2012 in the Hirschwang area and included almost 400m of new track construction by hand. In this period, the sleepers and the decking of the Kurhaus Bridge were completely renewed additonally. In 2011, the wall renovation of the supports and pillars followed.

In 1979, the Höllentalbahn was the only museum railway in Lower Austria; in the same year, the last steam locomotives were just being quit regular operation on the main lines of the Austrian Federal Railways. From this point of view, it is understandable that steam locomotives were also procured for the Höllentalbahn at that time. In the meantime, times have changed, there are more steam-powered museum railways and numerous preserved and operational standard gauge steam locomotives. Therefore, the Höllentalbahn team today concentrates on the preservation of the original railway vehicles and facilities which represent the early electric traction and wants to show the Höllentalbahn as it once was, a modern electric local railway by the standards of the time.