Offenseer forest railway
From water to rail
A considerable proportion of the wood in the Salzkammergut was destined for the brewing huts in Ebensee. For centuries, the large brewing pans at the Ebensee salt works were heated with wood from the Offensee region, among other things. The wood was floated into the Traun valley with the help of water from the Offenseebach stream. Later, forest roads were built on which the wood was transported by horse-drawn carts. The timber was almost always transported by drift. Because the timber lost a lot of its value due to damage during the drifting process, the floating operation was discontinued. Horse-drawn carts were used to transport the timber on quickly built simple forest tracks. The unsatisfactory transport results led to plans for a forest railway in 1895. In this year, the company Siemens & Halske planned a narrow-gauge forest railway for electric operation. But it was not until 1899, when the forest dimensions were heavily muddied and unusable after a flood of the Grießeneckbach, when a new bed had to be dug for the Grießeneckbach and a 1.4 km long roller track was built to transport the debris, that the later forest railway was born. Forest railway operations officially began in January 1906. Horses pulled the empty wagons to the loading points, and after they were loaded, the 12 double sets, each with a load capacity of 3.5 tonnes, rolled to the Steinkogl timber yard.
In total, the Offensee forest railway consisted of the main line to Steinbachl and the side lines to Peserau and Brunneck. There were sidings in Steinkogl - including the locomotive shed -, Bernau siding, Offensee-Weidsteganger and Lochbach siding. With the side lines, the forest railway had a total length of 17.5 km.
The former imperial hunting lodge at Offensee was home to a children's sanatorium in 1919, which was later renamed Sonnenheilstätte. In order to be able to transport the patients, nursing staff and doctors, as well as the forestry staff, the forest railway had to be converted into a railway with 'limited public transport'.
During the monarchy, in the interwar period and in the German Reich, the Offensee forest railway was regarded as a model operation for a forest railway. The last train ran on the Offensee forest railway line on I0 July 1954. The forest railway line is still partly accessible today and gives an idea of what a wonderful experience a ride on the railway must have been.
