Achensee Railway | Zillertal Railway

Jenbach is a small mountain resort that was formerly the centre for non-ferrous metal mining, on the railway from Kufstein on the German frontier to the Brenner Pass and Italy, where it is joined by two important but contrasting narrow gauge lines.

 

The Achenseebahn, established in 1889, is a metre gauge line, built on the Riggenbach rack railway system, that extends 6.7 km north, and connects with steamers on the lake from which it takes its name. Motive power is provided by three steam locomotives built in Vienna in 1899, and by a fourth built to the same original design in 2005.

 

The Zillertalbahn was built to a gauge of 760mm between 1895 and 1902 and extends 32 km south to Mayrhofen. Between 1928 and 1976 it carried ore from a magnesium mine at Tux. In 1965 it was extensively modernised in order to handle materials for the construction of a reservoir for a hydro-electric power station, and the company is now a wide-ranging transport concern, operating buses as well as the railway. Diesel railcars maintain the normal service on the Zillertalbahn, but three steam locomotives by Krauss of Linz, the earliest of them dating from 1900, are used on appropriate occasions.

Achensee Railway | Zillertal Railway
Achenseebahn AG
Bahnhofplatz 1-3
6200 Jenbach
Austria
+43 (0) 5244 - 62243
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