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The trackless Bielathal motor railway
From 1901 to 1904 the “Gleislose Bielathal-Motorbahn mit elektrischer Oberleitung” – the Trackless Bielathal Motor Railway with electric overhead line – ran from Königstein into the Bielatal: an electric bus running on two contact wires, in other words an early trolleybus. It was built by the Dresden engineer Max Schiemann. It was the first trolleybus in Saxony, the first system in the world with trolley-pole current collectors of the kind trolleybuses still have today, and it had the world's first trolley lorry. It was planned to run all the way up to the Schweizermühle, almost to the doorstep of the Hammergut – but that section was never built.
The route
Max Schiemann applied for the line on 11 June 1900; it was approved on 2 February 1901 and passed its inspection on 5 July 1901. Services started on 10 July 1901: from the Viaduktplatz in Königstein, today's Reißigerplatz by the station, 2.5 kilometres up the valley to the paper mill at Hütten. On 18 August 1901 a further 300 metres or so were added to the Königsbrunn cold-water spa, and from 16 February 1902 a 1.6-kilometre goods line led to Königstein goods station. At its longest the line measured 4.4 kilometres. The stops were Viaduktplatz, Bielatalstraße, Hütten and Kurbad Königsbrunn.
Vehicles and technology
The line ran on 500 volts of direct current from a hydroelectric plant on the Biela in Königstein; the contact wires hung 6 metres up on steel masts, and in the villages from rosettes fixed directly to the walls of the houses. The electrical equipment came from Siemens & Halske. Cars 1 and 2 had 18 seats and room for 6 standing passengers, and two 9-hp motors each; car 3 ran for the post office, and car 4 was a 36-hp lorry with all-wheel drive, which was fitted with benches for day-trippers in summer. The wheels were wooden-spoked with iron tyres. Because there was only one line, whenever two vehicles met, one of them had to take down its trolley poles; the sprung poles gave the vehicle up to 3 metres of leeway on either side.
Timetable and fare
From July 1901 there were twelve journeys a day down the valley and eleven up, timed to connect with the trains in the Elbe valley and the steamboats. Uphill the car took about 20 minutes, downhill 15 – at no more than 12 km/h, or 8 to 10 with a goods trailer. A journey cost 10 pfennigs, 5 pfennigs for children. In winter the cars spread sand, and the trailers ran on sledge runners.
Why it gave up after three years
The sums didn't add up: the forestry administration did not sign any contracts for hauling timber, and spa guests came only in summer – far fewer than expected. Then there was the road: the heavy vehicles with their iron tyres wrecked it, and on the wrecked road the vehicles were wrecked in turn. A contemporary put it like this: “If the road was good, the heavy omnibus gradually made it a bad one; if the road was broken, the omnibus gradually broke too.” Locals called it the “Hüttener Rumpelkiste”, the Hütten rattletrap. On 19 September 1904 the licence expired; the passengers were taken over by a private omnibus run by Emil Nacke, which even went all the way through to the Schweizermühle.
The extension to the Schweizermühle
On 1 March 1903 Max Schiemann received permission for the whole route up to the Kurhaus Schweizermühle – which would have connected the upper Bielatal to Königstein by electric transport. But because the line wasn't even making money down in the lower valley, that section was never built. There was never a railway on rails into the Bielatal.
Max Schiemann and his lines
Max Schiemann, born in Breslau in 1866 and died in Wurzen in 1933, was an electrical engineer at Siemens & Halske and with the Dresden tramways. After the Bielatal, his company for trackless railways built eleven more systems, among them in the Veischede valley in the Sauerland, in Ahrweiler, in Wurzen – partly with equipment from the Bielatal – and in Drammen in Norway, where his system ran until 1967. The Bielatal line was not quite the very first trolleybus line, though: in 1882 Siemens had run an experimental vehicle near Berlin, and in March 1901 a trolleybus with a different system ran briefly in Eberswalde.
What can still be seen today
If you walk up the Bielatalstraße in Königstein, you'll still find on some of the houses – among them numbers 2, 3, 37, 47 and 75 – the iron rosettes from which the contact wires once hung. A model of the line stands in the “Kleine Sächsische Schweiz” miniature park in Dorf Wehlen, and old photographs are kept by the Deutsche Fotothek. Today buses run along the same road into the Bielatal.
As of: 10/2026
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