by Wolfgang Auer
On July 8th, I managed to do a trip to both Kapfenberg and Graz. While I dare to claim to know the latter city and its transit system very well, I never actually rode on a trolleybus in Kapfenberg before. I thought, a short report about that trip could a bit liven up my postings in this list. So, if you don't mind, here it is:
At 08:58, I leave Wien Südbahnhof in quite a full train, heading to Bruck an der Mur. Since a group of children leaving for vacancies has reserved a large part of the carriage I chose, I unfortunately only find more room in the smokers' section (I am tired of changing the carriage). Nevertheless, the train journey is exciting -- the unique Semmering mountain route is as great as ever. During the last hour of the journey, I already intensely look forward to the Bruck system, not without being a tiny bit worried about the stay there -- even though I already was in Bruck now and then, I never managed to take a ride with the trolleybuses.
After the arrival in Bruck at 10:57, I am going to buy an appropriate ticket for Kapfenberg. A view into my briefcase suddenly prevents me from adding myself at the short queue in front of the railway tickets desk -- there are only 40 ATS (well, some 3 USD) in the briefcase...
Well, a short walk to the cash dispenser outside of the railway station quickly overcomes this problem, and since I want to spend the afternoon in Graz, I equip myself with a 24h-ride-at-will ticket for all zones between Bruck/Kapfenberg and Graz (both included, of course :-) that costs 190 ATS (that's 13.7 EUR, 14.9 USD, 22.1 CAD, or 28.4 NZD, resp.) So, also the railway trip between both cities is paid.
The trolleybus system of Kapfenberg/Bruck unfortunately does not directly serve the very important Bruck train station (there's no passenger train at all that doesn't stop there!), but only passes some 500m away in the "city" of Bruck. The walk to the city is not spectacular, but I take advantage of it to check my camera. After the arrival at the next trolleybus stop, I see a trolleybus already standing there, so I hurry up to catch it. As I will see later, this very
trolleybus is the only one running late for the whole stay, so in this case, I had quite luck :-) Even though POP systems now are *very* much the standard in the German speaking world, I didn't know, in how far this applies for such a small system, too, so I show the driver my ticket. He smiles in a way that I immediately know that this system is POP-based, too, and after having taken a look at the second and third door, it's obvious: "Nach 19:00 bitte beim Fahrer einsteigen", i. e. "After 7 pm, please board at the driver's door [and show him your ticket]".
The articulated trolleybus I am now riding with on the intervillage(?) section to Kapfenberg is one of the ex-Potsdam vehicles (made in 1993). It's middle-floor with a very nice interior that is mainly based on a combination of shades of bright yellow. The optical stop announcement facilities unfortunately are taken out-of-order, and there are neither driver-based nor automatical acustic stop announcements. In my humble opinion, this is quite a shortcoming for a system that has such varying stop distances, as I will learn later!
The trolleybus is quite full, and there are lots of pupils riding. After that impression, I wonder about the headways, since I couldn't take a look at the stop where I boarded this bus. However, absorbed in those thoughts, I almost don't realize that we enter Kapfenberg. And I am very impressed -- the streets, where our long articulated trolleybus now runs are just wide enough for the bus per se and a sidewalk that maybe is half a metre in width on each side! We pass Koloman Wallisch-Platz, the historical heart of Kapfenberg with city hall and all similar facilities to reach Europaplatz, where we enter the highway-style four lane street which is typical for the section that is shared by both trolleybus routes. Even though Europaplatz is the main stop of the whole system, I only leave one stop later at Kapfenberg Stadion (stadium) to take some looks at the facilities.
The overhead wire is very interesting. A large part of it is a typical K&M flexible installation, but there still exist a lot of older poles with fixed-mounted overhead wires, the latter obviously still dating back to the poor postwar era. I also take a look at the stops per se. They are of good quality, in my opinion; wherever it is feasible, there's a large glass shelter, containing good timetable and other information.
The timetables are quite good for such a small city: Main route 1 runs every 15 minutes during working days, and only in the evening, the headways are strange and irregular (we call that "Hinketakt", i. e. "limping frequency"); initially I am rather shocked by the headways of the other trolleybus route 2: The timetable says that there only operates a bus once or twice an hour, apart from more dense headways at peak hours. However, this eventually proved to be deceiving, since those poor headways only apply to the eastern leg of route 2, which serves Böhler Werk VI and thus mainly has to meet the demands of shift workers. The western part of route 2, running to Redfeld, eventually turned out to base on 15 minute headways, too; the trips that don't are through-running turn at Kapfenberg Europaplatz (see below).
Well, it lasts a few minutes until the next trolleybus arrives: Time to walk a bit -- the historical centre of Kapfenberg is only a few 100m away. There, I manage to take some pictures of the incredibly narrow, one-way street sections. The area between the trolleybus streets is pedestrianised and gives a good occasion to have a short rest. While I take a photo, an older man passes by and says in deeeep Styrian accent "Mouchst a gouts Buüdl, wous?" ("Machst ein gutes Bild, nicht wahr?", i. e. "You are taking a good picture, don't you?"). I feel like in a different country. German is a funny language, with so intense local differences within so short distances.
Time just flies. I manage to take some more looks at the impressive Europaplatz facilities. A diesel bus on route 1 [1] takes me to another intermediate stay at the stop with the funny name "Mörtl". The stops are only a few 100m away from each other in Kapfenberg, but if you miss the Mörtl stop, you have no chance to alight for, hmm, maybe 2km.
[1] As far as I can judge, there is only one spare trolleybus available to equip all trips with electrical vehicles, if at all. By the way, it is the only articulated diesel bus of the Mürztaler Verkehrsgesellschaft...
So I take another photo in a nice scenery, before the next trolleybus to Bruck arrives. I have good luck -- it's the newest trolleybus, specially manufactured for Kapfenberg only in 1995! The interior is based on bright yellow again; the vehicle is a typical low-floor vehicle of the second generation (no abstruse construction to accomodate all equipment any longer, but still many pedestals). The trolleybus is less full than the earlier trips were, but still very respectably frequented! However, it's the first time on this day that there are both seats of a row free! After standing for two hours, I am very grateful about that and happily take a seat. On the ride back to Bruck, I try to watch the overhead facilities as far as it is possible. Funny -- the same mixture of old fixed and newer K&M installations, even on the overland section. Nevertheless, we reach a velocity of at least 50km/h, probably even more, even under fixed wire!
In Bruck, it starts to rain a bit again, but after 5 minutes, I reach the railway station again. I could have used a diesel bus there, too, from the city of Bruck, but the very decent timetables in Kapfenberg already informed me that I would have missed my train with the next bus.
After those great two-hour stay in Bruck and Kapfenberg, I leave at 13:10 in a local train to Graz to meet a friend and take a look at the tramway system that will suffer from quite hurting temporary closures during the whole holidays. But that is another story that does not meet this group's charta -- and you surely are already tired of reading this report :-)
Best regards from Wien, Wolfgang
P. S.: According to my sources, Kapfenberg has some 24,000 inhabitants, while Bruck only has 16,000. Please note that European city borders tend to quite enclose the complete significantly populated area rather than to exclude "suburbs".