Horse railway Ceske Budejovice - Linz

Communication plans for the transport of goods from the Vltava and Danube rivers have been proposed since the time of Charles IV. ^{[1] [2]} , were discussed in detail even earlier than the times of Lothar Fogemont, at the beginning of the XVIII century . Offers were developed with three different canal routes, the implementation of which was never started either during the reign of Joseph I of Gabsburg , or even under his successor, Charles VI .

During the XVIII century, regular projects were proposed (Albert of Stendal, 1768, Walcher), but only : de: Joseph Rosenauer was able to build : de: Schwanzerberg Canal . However, this canal was suitable only for rafting woods.

The question of the connection between the Vltava and Danube rivers revived due to the successful construction of the Franz shipping channel between the Danube and Tisza. Its builder, Jan Jonas, a knight from Freyenwalde, encouraged the creation of the private Czech Hydrotechnical Society in 1807, ^[3] with whom Franz Josef Gerstner was elected Technical Director. First, he and the commission went through the entire territory through which it was planned to lay the future channel.

Then, at a general meeting of members of society, on March 31, 1808, he proposed to build a railway instead of a canal. However, this proposal could not be implemented then. This idea of Gerstner was further developed in a treatise of the Czech Royal Scientific Society in 1813, but the next step was only taken in 1819, when Gerstner managed to draw the attention of Count Philip Stahl, head of the commercial chancellery of the Austrian court. In the same year, Austria concluded with nine other states the Agreement on the Freedom of Navigation on the Elbe, the text of which included a proposal to connect the Elbe and the Danube with a canal or railway.

Gerstner’s son Franz Anton Gerstner , professor at the Vienna Polytechnic Institute, took on the project. On September 7, 1824 , he received the privilege for the construction and operation of the "railway" from Ceske Budejovice to Linz for a period of fifty years.

Gerstner began to realize this privilege in the spring of 1825; the first privileged company became the first railway company to commission the road under construction and where Gerstner was the construction manager. In the summer of 1825, the construction of the 64-kilometer section from Ceske Budejovice to the station Kerschbaum (near the border) began. Construction work moved quickly, because already in September 1827 it became possible to start the pilot movement between the stations Budejovice and Leopoldschlag. A year later, on September 30, 1828, regular (initially only freight) transportation began.

Since the construction turned out to be more expensive than originally anticipated, we had to look for a more economical solution, partly sacrificing the original proposed project. This became the reason that F.A. Gerstner transferred his functions : de: to Matthias von Schönerer . The road was built, but later the track was declared unsuitable, mainly due to the very small radius of the curves. ^[4] .

Transportation by rail between Ceske Budejovice and Linz (the third on the European continent) began on August 1, 1832. ^[5] .

Wagons drove out of the suburbs of Budejovice. There were 10 stations on the 128.7 km long track, of which 6 were “cross-linked”, where the horse teams were changing. Near the highway, security was placed in 52 guards; 800 horses, 762 freight and 69 passenger wagons were involved in the service. Cargoes - salt or wood - were transported along the line year-round. However, passenger transportation was possible only in the summer.

Passenger cars resembled stagecoaches with a number of seats from six to 24 in the first and second classes. The journey took 14 hours. Wagons departed regularly at five in the morning, and trains crossed at the Upper Austrian Kerschbaum.

The upper structure of the track was somewhat different from that adopted on modern lines. Longitudinal beams (rafters) were installed on the sleepers, spaced apart by one fathom (1,896 m), and on them, in turn, 3-meter-long iron rails. The gauge was 1106 mm. Sleepers were laid on stone blocks of a U-shaped profile, independent for each rail of the gauge.

By the time this horse-drawn carriage began in England and America, the fruits of the successful operation of steam-powered railways were already reaping, and in the following decades this new phenomenon also swept the rest of the world. The “Society of Western Roads of Empress Elizabeth”, which owned this horse in the late sixties of the nineteenth century, had to adapt to these circumstances and began to rebuild the horse railway line on a 1435 mm gauge to run trains on a steam locomotive. Reconstruction was carried out from 1868 to the winter of 1873 . Passenger traffic on this horse-drawn railway stopped on December 12, 1872 , and the Wartberg-Linz line was also closed. On December 20, 1873 , locomotives began transportation along the entire route from Budejovice to Linz.

• Milan Svoboda Začalo to koněspřežkou. Nakladatelství dopravy a spojů, Praha, 1968, 1. vydání.
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• Johann Brunner, Ivo Hajn. Lexikon koněspřežních železnic = Lexikon der Pferdeeisenbahnen. - České Budějovice: Jihočeské muzeum, 2007 .-- 175 p. - ISBN 978-80-86260-78-5 .

• Konespřežka České Budějovice - Linz (dokument: 1 , 2/2)