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Austrian Railway Group |  | ||
Mariazellerbahn |
Although the Mariazellerbahn was built from the main line junction at Sankt Pölten to the town of Mariazell in order to cater for pilgrims and tourists visiting the pilgrimage church of Our Lady of Mariazell and the sanctuaries nearby, its secondary purpose was to link the area to the main line at Kapfenberg, north of Bruck an der Mür.With the best-known pilgrimage church in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Mariazell attracted thousands each year, and was perpetually overcrowded. In the late 1700's over 300,000 made the journey each year to the church and chapel, which had been founded in 1157. The railway was promoted to help move relatively large numbers of people to and from Mariazell without them having to stay in the town for several days. Pilgrims from the south, from Hungary, and from Croatia, often had a long and uncomfortable journey, and the extension south of Mariazell was designed to shorten the journey time dramatically. The first section of this link, the 7.2 km. long extension to Gußwerk, opened concurrently with the rest of the line, to goods trains in December 1906, and to passenger trains which commenced operation the following May. However, the rest of the line was never built, although plans were drawn up, and some parcels of land purchased. After the First World War there was neither the political will nor economic need for the connection, and following the emergence of the Soviet Bloc, even the flood of pilgrims from other countries slowed to a trickle. |
Gußwerk Station in 2005 
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The section of line south of Mariazell, which passed closer to the town centre but without a station there, climbed the valley of the Salzatal by using a side route and doubling-back on itself to gain height. Stations were provided north of Rasing, where there was a quarry, and near Sigmundsberg, which served a farming area. The line terminated on the east side of the town of Gußwerk. Electrified with the rest of the route in 1911, this section depended on goods traffic to sustain it, and when this declined in the late 1980's, a decision was reached to close this end part of the route. The last train ran in 1988, and by 2003 the derelict line had been dismantled for recycling. Since closure of this part of the network, goods traffic on the whole line has ceased.The Mariazell tramway, a standard-gauge line between Mariazell station and the Erlauf Lake, may be extended back along part of the old trackbed nearer the town centre. Also at Mariazell, a second extension was built but never opened, and is now used as a pleasant walk from the station into the town centre. | ||
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Updated 10th April 2005