Rjukanbanen

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Rjukanbanen
One of the remaining railway ferries, D/F Ammonia, at Mæl, the terminus of Rjukanbanen, where the wagons were ferried accross Tinnsjø
Info
Type	Railway
Status	Heritage
Start station	Rjukan
End station	Mæl
No. of stations	5
Operation
Opened	1909
Closed	1991
Owner	Norsk Hydro
Operator(s)	Norsk Hydro
Character	Freight trains
Technical
Line length	16 km
No. of tracks	1
Gauge	1435 mm (4 ft 8½ in)
Electrified	15 kV 16.7 Hz AC

Rjukanbanen or Rjukan Railway, at first called Vestfjorddalsbanen, was a 16 km Norwegian railway line in Vestfjorddal between Mæl and Rjukan in Telemark. The railways main purpose was to transport fertilizer from Norsk Hydro's plant at Rjukan to the harbor at Skien, in addition to passenger transport. Rjukanbanen terminated at Mæl where the wagons were shipped 30 km on Tinnsjø by a railway ferry to Tinnoset. Rjukanbanen and the ferries were operated by Norsk Hydro from 1909 until the line was closed in 1991. Sometimes the entire strech from Rjukan to Notodden, including the railway ferry and Tinnosbanen, is mistakenly refered to as Rjukanbanen, a strech that totals 80 km.

The transport chain from Rjukan to Skien consisted of four sections:

Rjukanbanen, railway line from Rjukan to Rollag (Mæl), 16 km
Tinnsjø railway ferry from Rollag to Tinnoset, 30 km
Tinnosbanen from Tinnoset to Notodden, 34 km
Telemark canal from Notodden to Skien, 54 km with barge
In 1919 the canal was replaced with the railway Bratsbergbanen from Notodden to Skien. ^[1]

1 History
2 Stations
3 References
4 External links

[edit] History

Norsk Hydro was founded in 1905 by Sam Eyde as a Norwegian fertilizer manufacturer, and the first factory was opened in Notodden. Fertilizer factories need a lot of energy, and then it was nessesary to locate the plants near hydroelectric power plants, and at Rjukan there was a large waterfall. In 1911 Rjukan Salpeterfabrikk was opened. ^[2]

Rjukanbanen was opened in 1909 as a standard gauge (1435 mm) railway along with Tinnosbanen and the railway ferry service, and was the second railway line in Norway, after Thamshavnbanen, to be electrified in 1911. The railway service utilised Telemark Canal until 1919 when Bratsbergbanen opened from Notodden to Skien. The railway was used both to transport raw materials to the factory and to transport the finished fertilizer to the harbor at Skien. There was also passenger trains that ran.

The railway ferry service was provided by four different ships, D/F Rjukanfoss, D/F Hydro, D/F Ammonia (1929) and M/F Storegut (1956). The three first were steam ships, and the latter two are still anchored at Mæl. The service was the only ever railway ferry service on a lake in Norway, and D/F Ammonia is the only remaining railway ferry steam ship in the world.^[3] In 1944, during World War II, D/F Hydro was the target of the Norwegian heavy water sabotage, when the ferry was sunk to 430 meters deep in Tinnsjø to provent Nazi Germany from developing nuclear weapons.^[4]

In 1929 Norsk Hydro also establish itself at Herøya in Porsgrunn, and in 1991 the factory in Rjukan, and therefore also the railway line, was closed. The passenger trains, operated by Norges Statsbaner, had been discontinued already in 1970. In 1997 the ownership of the track was transfered to Stiftelsen Rjukanbanen, a foundation that started heritage operation of the line in 1999.