Week 58: Wiesbaden and Mainz

In searching through Atlas Obscura, Jason and I came across the Nerogergbahn a water-powered funicular, located a couple of hours away in the city of Wiesbaden. (As a quick note, Wiesbaden is the location of the US Army's European base of command.) We did it as a day trip, driving our around lunch time, stopping briefly at a rest stop for some food and running across an entire row of fantastic cars in the parking lot. It wasn't clear if they were on their way somewhere or were on display at the rest area for some reason or another.

Fantastic cars...and an 18+ store...

We were very excited to see the funicular, our second in a month or so (the last being the Montmartre funicular when we were last in Paris), since, first off, funiculars are pretty cool from an engineering perspective, as they reduce the needed energy to raise any single car up a slope by having an opposing car attached to the other end of a cable. With the power of mgh (potential energy, not the T-stop), the first car assists in raising the second car up the slope.

Most funiculars use a powered cable system to provide the extra energy needed that is not provided by the difference in potential. The interesting thing about the Nerogergbahn is that it uses only the difference in potential to move the cars, by filling the uphill car with water, making the uphill car heavy enough to pull the downhill car up. The resulting speed of both cars is controlled by the brakeman on the downhill car. Once the formerly uphill car reaches the bottom, it dumps its water and the cycle begins again with the uphill car taking on water.

Passengers Disembarking (de-funicularing?) from the Nerogergbahn

The other neat thing about the Nerogergbahn was the tracks. For most of the run, there are only three tracks for the wheels--each car has one at the edge and they share the one in the middle. A problem, of course, would occur with this layout when the cars need to pass each other. This is resolved by having a section of track where there are two complete sets of tracks, so two for each car. Since the distance of the run is fixed, the cars always pass at the same point, so bone crushing injuries are avoided. The video below shows this point on the track.

We enjoyed some coffee and cake at the top of the hill, then took a walk in a nearby park once we returned to the bottom. We then drove to the city center and walked around for a bit, before going over the river to the city of Mainz. The evening we were there was Germany's first game in the European Championship soccer tournament against the Netherlands. We found a restaurant with an outdoor Biergarten and a big TV to sit tight, eat, have a couple beers and see what it was all about. Germany won, with, what we were later told, was a not a very exciting game, though in finding our way out of Mainz, we saw a large number of happy Germans.

Jason made a friend he never wants to leaf...