The railway line Tisovec – Pohronská Polhora was established in 1896 for the purpose of connecting ironworks in Hronec and Tisovec. Hungarian Parliament*) already on March 1872. adopted legal article No. X on the construction of this connecting railway. Technical difficulty and subsequent economic crisis meant the concession for the construction and operation of the railway was not issued until 1895. It was obtained by a group of concessionaires represented by Gejza Kubínyi, Alexander Hoffman and Viliam Quittner based on legal article no. XXIX/1895 by MO regulation no. 44498/95 Vl. 21.
The track was built in two stages: first the Podbrezová – Pohronská Polhora section and then the Pohronská Polhora – Tisovec section. Its implementation enabled the transport connection of iron and steel industrial complexes in Podbrezova, Hronec and Tisovec, as well as the connection of iron works in Tisovec to the system of main railway lines located in the Pohronie valley.
Considering the need to overcome a large elevation of the terrain in cramped conditions, proposed railway line crossed the mountain ridge through the Zbojská saddle (725 m above sea level) in a length of 41.2 km. The track in the steepest sections between Pohronská Polhora and Bánovo stations (then named: Gömörvég) had a gradient of up to 50.2 per mile. Here, for the first time in Hungary*), a two-lamella rack of the Abt system was installed between the tracks with Heindl steel sleepers on two sections. This system allowed the transmission of driving and braking forces between the vehicle and the track to the locomotive’s gear wheel, which meshed with the toothed rack in the track. For this, a heavy top with rails of 34.5 kg/m was built, which together allowed an axle load of up to 14 t. The total length of the sections with rack and pinion was 5,836 km. Between Bánovo and Zbojská stations, the line covered a height difference of 166 m in a length of 4.7 km.
The mountain terrain could only be overcome thanks to extensive earthworks and the construction of bridges to span deep valleys: on the track with arc radii of only 200 m, there were two large bridge viaducts also in an arc trajectory and several other artificial structures, mainly shorter bridges and retaining walls. Of them, the deepest notch was 20 m deep, the highest embankment 13 m high.
4 rack-and-pinion locomotives of class T Vib (from 1911 series 41 MÁV, after 1924 they had the designation ČSD 403.501 – 4) were operated on the cog line. The locomotives were manufactured at the Florisdorf locomotive factory in Austria in 1896 (production no. 1014 to 1016) and in 1900 (production no. 1430) and carried both passenger and freight trains on this line.
Currently, the track is used for transporting people and for tourist purposes.
Steam traffic on a standard gauge cog railway is unique in Europe.
*) The territory of today’s Slovak Republic was part of the territory of Austria-Hungary during the preparation and construction of this line.
