Border force

A German mountain line that’s not in the Harz… Steam Railway takes the climb to the country’s highest town.

Germany’s mountain line to Oberweisenthal

You don’t choose Oberwiesenthal. Oberwiesenthal chooses you. Certainly, if you want snow with your steam. Even when elsewhere it’s not arrived or already dripped to mush, here it can be feet-high, and the battle against winter goes on.

That’s because at nearly 3,000ft up are a terminus, running shed and workshops, snuggled into a place connected to the world by just a narrow road and an even narrower railway.

Yet snow is not just a challenge; it’s also this 750mm-gauge branch line’s friend. After all, what better way is there to reach the sledge runs and ski slopes?

This is border country. Stand in Germany’s highest town and your mobile will probably claim you’re not even in the Federal Republic; so close is Oberwiesenthal to its Czech neighbour that some popular restaurants and shops are in neighbouring Louc˘ná pod Klínovcem, separated only by a stream and some signs. Looming above is the 3,985ft Fichtelberg, reached by cable car and the secondhighest mountain in the Erzgebirge (the ‘Ore Mountains’). Here, Saxony melds into Bohemia; Prague is closer than Berlin. Even Chemnitz – the old Karl-Marx-Stadt – is more than 30 miles to the north.

Yet hear the two-cylinder drum of an engine snaking uphill through the valleys, or its hooter

echoing from country to country, and there’s no doubt which part of the map the railway is on.

Not even as much as 11 miles separate the terminus at Oberwiesenthal from the timber canopies of the main line junction at Cranzahl, but the feel is very different. The junction is where walkers and skiers swap flash red railcars for steam heat and the thud of doors you slide open yourself. But in that short distance, this branch packs in a lot – not least the spidery metal construction of the 120yd-long Hüttenbach Viaduct just east of Oberwiesenthal station. It also climbs nearly 800ft (net) over its length, undulating at an average of 1-in-72.

Strange attraction

“It’s perhaps my favourite narrow gauge line, because of the variety it packs in,” says photographer Gordon Edgar, who first visited with a Steam Railway trip a quarter-century ago.

“There are rolling meadows lower down, pine forests, and open slopes higher up – filled in winter with skiers – so it’s special, and not just for enthusiasts. Plus there’s a strange attraction about it being on a frontier; and snow in winter is virtually guaranteed.”

“On the other hand,” Gordon concedes, referring to the line’s modern-day branding, “I hate that it’s called the ‘Fichtelbergbahn’, with large yellow lettering on the carriage sides!”

That might make photography a challenge – but it’s also an incentive to go for the ‘dark side’ and try the many opportunities for backlit shots.

Yellow branding wasn’t a problem before state-owned Deutsche Bahn was able to offload the operation onto a local bus company in 1998. That was when the ‘Fichtelbergbahn’ name and related vinyls first appeared, though more recently some coaches have again appeared in more classic (and plain) Deutsche Reichsbahn green.

Other than such things, what you see here has in many ways changed little: the first 2-10-2Ts arrived way back in 1929, and the modified post-war version that now dominates made its debut in 1952. Nor have the stations suffered the

There’s a strange attraction about it being on a frontier; and snow in winter is virtually guaranteed

kind of modernisation that has appeared elsewhere; outsized black and white name boards and chilly brick waiting shelters still await their passengers.

One building that has gone though is the tumbledown old engine shed at Oberwiesenthal, replaced by 2004 with a much larger structure that allows this railway to undertake its own overhauls rather than rely on DB’s Works at Meiningen. With the takeover by what’s now the tongue-twisting Sächsische Dampfe is en bahn ge sells cha ft of two further operations from DB – at Freital and Radebeul – that now includes the engines that run there too.

These days, Cranzahl’s timetable is broken into high and low seasons, with but a single engine working back and forth during the latter. However, that doubles in high season – the trains crossing in the woods at Niederschlag. Indeed, at certain times in winter, demand from holidaymakers heading into the hills is so high that both trains are double-headed. Sadly though, in recent times that has meant one runs steam-plus-diesel. Avoid that particular spectacle though, and this is a line that’s still very much worth the trek.

Plus, not half an hour away, is another with maybe even more atmosphere. But that’s for another time…

This is a railway that divides much of its time between rural country and long drawn-out villages. On the morning of February 15 2019, the steady drumroll of No. 99.1794’s exhaust casts a familiar sound across Neudorf near Cranzahl.

DAVID WILCOCK The introduction of ‘transporter’ wagons in 1906 allowed standard gauge freight to be moved over the 750mm gauge line until the practice ceased in 1992. On March 10 2016, 2-10-2T No. 99.1772 hustles a short ‘mixed’ near Niederschlag.

Just before Oberweisenthal station, the spidery 120-yard Hüttenbach Viaduct soars above the stream that gives the structure its name. As the evening sky darkens on February 14 2019, No. 99.1773 has almost reached its final stop, nearly 3,000ft up.