Bílinská and Zaječická on the wheels of the century of steam. In the year when Jules Verne's "20 Leagues Under the Sea" was hot news, the track of a new technical innovation, the steam railway, crossed Bílina. Although it was intended primarily to supply Prague with coal from the brown coal basin, the penultimate stop before coal loading was Bílinská Kyselka. A loading building was therefore built and production capacity reached the values ​​​​usual to this day.

Before 1870

The establishment of the Prague-Duchcovská Railway (PDE), as its Czech name and original German abbreviation (Prag-Duxer Eisenbahn) are called, was the result of the efforts of aristocratic and business circles, striving for the direct transport of coal from the North Bohemian Basin to Prague and at the same time connecting sugar factories, springs and other industrial enterprises in the area between Prague and Most by their own railway. It was expected that railway companies that were already transporting coal to Prague by their own railways (Buštěhradská, Ústecko-Teplická ATE, Podmokelsko-Duchcovská) would also be interested in the concession for the construction of the new railway.

1870 granting of concession

When they showed no interest in this connection, the government finally granted the construction concession in June 1870 to a joint-stock company headed by the aristocratic businessmen Count Thun-Hohenstein, Prince Kinsky and Prince Lobkokowitz.

The track and the Rothschilds

The railway was built as a private one, without a state guarantee, but exempt from taxes for 20 years on the condition that in the Most-Obrnice-Duchcov section the new line must follow the route of the already operating Pilsen-Březen railway. The concessionaires also benefited from the Anglo-Austrian Bank (Rothschilds) and construction quickly got underway. Its builders were the proven railway entrepreneurs Muzika-Schnabel.

Coal line to Saxony

After the economic crisis in the early 70s, construction was halted, but it was finally completed with the greatest effort in 1874. In the meantime, in 1872, the company applied for a concession to extend it to Moldavia and the Saxon border, which was actually granted in September 1872.

1884 connection to the Podmokelská

This extension was intended to export coal to Saxony. However, the operation of the Prague-Duchcovská Railway was unprofitable in the following years, so its nationalization was considered. Finally, in 1884, it was connected with the Duchcovsko-Podmokelská Railway. (Dux-Bodenbach Railway).

The branch to Moldava was also left unfinished, and only in 1877, thanks to a state loan, could at least the section from Osek to Hrob be completed. As it turned out, the vision of transporting coal to neighboring Saxony remained unfulfilled, and the railway ended up under the very peaks of the Ore Mountains for a long time. It was not completed on the state border to Moldava until December 1884, when the state temporarily took over operation of the entire railway. The state then nationalized the entire Prague–Duchcov Railway on January 1, 1892. As for transport on this railway, it was used for a long time to transport coal and products from local sugar factories and springs in Bílina, and after the completion of the Kralupy-Zvoleně-ves-Podlešín section of the railway, it was also used for passenger transport.

After World War II, passenger transport was introduced for a short time in the Prague-Rudná u PrahyPodlešín-Louny-Most section with two pairs of express connections. It was not until 1897 that a local railway to Beroun-Závodí was connected to the Prague-Duchcov Railway in Dušníky (now Rudná u Prahy).

The track and the headquarters of the springs

Prince Lobkowicz saw great potential for the development of the spa springs distribution from the beginning. The collection of empty jugs and bottles for washing and filling also gained a new dimension with the railway. The construction of the railway created a business opportunity for industrial bottle washing for other bottling plants. An interesting contract was signed with a sales agency in England, which undertook to deliver 2 million bottles of Bílinská kyselka per year. For this purpose, a completely new building was designed parallel to the railway line, intended for two large rooms with washing machines and production facilities for Bílinská digestive pastilles. (New shipping house)

History of the railway in Bílina

The railway ran from nearby Most through the corridor still in use today, through Bílina to the final station in Duchov. It was laid out so as to approach mainly the brown coal mines, which produced the largest volume of freight. Two railway stations were established in Bílina for passenger transport. The most used was the Bílina-Kyselka railway station for spa clients. The next was the Bílina-Město railway station and the extensive marshalling yard for the mines of the Emeran association, the Lobkowicz and the Ledvice mines, which is still visible today, although unused.

Then it headed into the landscape of the brown coal basin through the villages, which have already been replaced by the gradual reclamation of surface overburden. Here we can recall an interesting fact: the domesticated name "oprám", often used today to designate a body of water for swimming, comes from the Germanic word "abraum", which simply means "overburden". That is why the region was also called "kajina obrámů".

The very issue of the history of brown coal mining is so interesting and completely unknown to the current inhabitants of the region, even mysterious, that we deal with it separately in our exhibition. At the Bílina marshalling yard, the Duchcovsko – Pražská railway reached a connection to the railway network leading through the Běla River valley, also called the Bielatahlbahn. There was also a connection to the Ústecko-Teplická railway (ATE – Aussiger-Teplitzer Eisenbahn), which was important primarily for the spa clientele and the export of spring products to the north.

Our locomotives

The Lobkowicz Industrial and Commercial Directorate purchased and operated two of its own locomotives, manufactured in the newly established locomotive factory in Vienna New Town for the ATE company. Both were relatively early ATE IIb type locomotives, easily recognizable by their “western” conical chimney. This is also called the “Kobelsk” and was designed specifically for burning local brown coal.

The locomotives had stylish names: "BILIN" and "SAIDSCHITZ". Their loving maintenance kept them in operation until the end of World War II! Of course, the locomotives were not only used to transport bottles with springs, they were also used to transport other products of the Lobkowicz estate. The trains therefore carried products of breweries, sugar factories, and of course coal from the Lobkowicz mines.

The railway loading building received a special tunnel, where a mechanical device was placed for manually moving the wagons along the building. This eliminated the need for moving them with a melted locomotive. Today, trucks enter the loading area through this tunnel. The loading building also received brick partitions that separated the wooden trusses into separate sectors and still protrude above the roof today. This was a necessity arising from fire protection regulations. The traction locomotive could have set the roof on fire with flying soot.

One of the remarkable documents preserved in the internal company archive is a transcript of the request of the Zřídel Directorate in Bílina to the freshly defeated Ministry of Railways of the German Reich. At that time, the Reich Railways had illegally confiscated the wagons. We were unable to find out whether and how the compensation was made.

In the post-war period, the possibility of mining the entire "North Bohemian brown coal basin" using an uncompromisingly gigantic overburden began to emerge. Hundreds of platforms were to become a vast area, which was to be flooded later. Of course, the railway corridor, which also passes around Bílinská Kyselka, was to play a key role in the transport of megatons of mined coal. The track was systematically strengthened, and massive earthen embankments were placed on the mined area to stabilize the shape of the railway superstructure.

In the mined area full of underground shafts, the soil is in constant motion and tracks laid on bare ground would very soon be twisted and unusable. This is something that every driver in this region who drives through the mining area notices. The railway corridor around the springs was thus transformed into a three-track, fully electrified line. Railway loading directly at the springs culminated in the seventies, with a parallel track running almost one kilometre along the three-track line, where the entire train could wait to be pulled up. Today, the remains of the tracks and turnouts at the underpass by the sports complex are a reminder of this railway junction. One of the locomotives found its resting place as a technical monument in front of the old railway station building in Linz, Austria.