The Gmunden Tramway is a tram line in the town of Gmunden in Upper Austria, Austria. The tramway opened in 1894 and since 2018 the line has been connected to the Traunseebahn as part of the Traunseetram tram-train service. It is operated by Stern & Hafferl. The line's maximum gradient of 10.0% makes it one of the world's steepest surviving adhesion-only tram lines.

History

Construction work, directed by the engineers Josef Stern and Franz Hafferl, began on 25 February 1894. It took five months to build the entire tramway, depot and power plant. The single-track line ran 2.6 km, from the railway station (called the Rudolfsbahnhof at the time) to Rathausplatz (Town Hall Square), with nine stops. The line opened on 13 August 1894 as the first electric tramway in Austria and was operated by three electric railcars built by Hofwagenfabrik Rohrbacher in Vienna. Although the line runs in the street it was originally built as a local railway (Lokalbahn) and only legally became a tramway on 28 September 1937. The only operational change was fitting indicators to the vehicles. In 1975 the section of the line from Franz-Josef-Platz to Rathausplatz was closed to make more space for road traffic, leaving the tramway only 2.3 km long. The shortening of the route led to a drop in passenger numbers and the tramway was threatened with closure until in 1989 the association was founded to financially support and lobby for the tramway. There were several renovations in the late 1990s and the following decade, including the renewal of "Keramik" station and of the Tennisplatz – Franz-Josef-Platz route. Until its extension and connection to the Traunseebahn the line was unusual in that all platforms were on the same side of the single-track line and the cars that ran on it only had doors on one side.

Connection to Traunseebahn

In February 2013, the municipal council of Gmunden decided to link the tram to the Traunseebahn, a metre-gauge railway running from Gmunden to Vorchdorf. This involved building 700m of new track, including rebuilding a road bridge over the Traun, and replacing the rolling stock on both lines with new low-floor trams. Construction of a new double-track line from Franz-Josef-Platz to Klosterplatz (via Rathausplatz, the original terminus) began in 2015, followed by reconstruction of the Traun bridge in 2017. The first test trains ran over the new track in August 2018 and the Traunseetram from Gmunden to Vorchdorf began operation on 1 September 2018. The town section of the line (from Gmunden railway station to Engelhof station on the Traunseebahn) is served by four trams per hour on weekdays and two on weekends, with half of these continuing to Vorchdorf.

Rolling stock

Tramlink

The Traunseetram is currently operated by a fleet of Tramlink low-floor trams. Stern & Hafferl ordered eleven of these vehicles, numbered ET 121–131, from Vossloh España (now part of Stadler Rail) in 2013. Eight are used on the Traunseetram and the other three on the Attergaubahn. They are five-section 100% low-floor multi-articulated trams with a capacity of 175 passengers, including 60 seats and 15 folding seats. The first trams entered service on the Traunseebahn in 2016. One vehicle was brought to the Gmunden Tramway for tests on the 10% gradients, but the tram depot did not have space to store the new vehicles so they did not enter passenger service in the town until through services began running over the connection to the Traunseebahn.

Former fleet