Braking track model @museum.de

By 1975, the Königshain quarries were finally closed. The deeper you went, the harder the granite became. This meant that processing took longer. It was no longer possible to produce as much. And there was something else: An incredible amount of dust is created on paved roads. At least when you drive over them at speed. This obstructs visibility and is therefore dangerous on a road. Around 1900, road builders experimented with tar and concrete to fill the cracks between the stones and thus reduce the dust. New construction methods were developed for these materials and at some point, paving stones were no longer needed. The lights gradually went out up here.

And peace finally returned.

Most of the equipment was dismantled. Not the powder bunkers, of course. You can't break them that quickly. They're also in the way. But the cable cranes and the braking track disappeared after a while.

That's why we built a model of the braking track for the museum. Like the cable crane, it was built on a scale of 1:3.

I've always liked the brake track because it works without any electricity or other electronics. Basically, it works quite simply: Look: from up here, it goes quite far down into the village of Königshain. So they built rails on which the tipper wagons we've just seen could travel. So, stones in, a push, and down the lorry went.

Yeah, and then what? I mean, at some point all the trolleys were down. How did you get them back up the mountain?

That's the great trick, because it's so simple. Look carefully: there are two tracks next to each other. The trolleys roll down on one and come back up on the other. And at the same time. The trick was to tie the trolleys together. The heavy steel cables that we saw on the crane system were also used here. The wagons with the stones drove down the mountain and pulled the empty wagons, which had already been unloaded at the bottom of the station, back up again. I think that's just brilliant. I would have loved to have thought of that!