Edited by IPC Prešov | Košice and Žilina Regions
In the footsteps of the funicular railways
Country: Slovakia
Region: Žilina Region
Type of inspiration: History
Inspiracja
We find the funicular railways in places with inaccessible terrain. They are characterised by the presence of a siding at the point where a steep gradient is crossed, and the train then changes direction and continues along the track that led to the siding. The procedure is relatively simple to describe. At the point of the bottleneck there is a turnout on the track where the train stops, the turnout is switched and the train continues on. On some of the more complicated lines, there is also a switching of the locomotive to the opposite end of the train. Overcoming a large elevation over a short distance was used in the past on the railway to weigh timber harvested from the surrounding forests.
A typical example was the Beskid Mountains, whose too narrow profile made it impossible to make serpentines on it, as there was no room to make curves. Today, we have an 11-kilometre section of the historic forest railway in this region, which together with the Orava part of the railway form the former Kysuce-Orava forest railway, and this system is one of the only two preserved in the whole of Europe. The historic forest railway is part of the Vychylovka open-air museum, where tourists can admire several exhibits near the track. The maintenance of this popular Slovak rarity requires considerable technical skills of the operators, which is why its maintenance, but especially its development, is complicated, despite the bold plans of the operators. The locomotives located in Vychylovka can still today accommodate overcrowded tourist carriages, which in the past were used exclusively for the transport of timber.
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