Dr.-Ing. Jens-Achim Kessel

Retrofit of the steepest rack railway in Austria – A steam locomotive goes digital

Since 1893 it has been the steepest steam rack railway in Austria – the Schafbergbahn. With its characteristic rack and pinion, the Schafbergbahn can take on inclines that would be insurmountable for conventional railways. With gradients of up to 255 ‰, it tackles a height difference of 1190 meters. The line, which is used by steam and diesel locomotives, is not electrified. In this episode, we uncover the connection between the Schafbergbahn and the topics of IoT and retrofitting. Everything revolves around the digitalization of this ÖBB steam locomotive. How new conclusions are drawn about effective and efficient operations, where there is potential for savings, and how processes can be optimized and downtime reduced is what these podcast guests from the project tell us directly from the field. In Episode 97 of the IoT Use Case Podcast: Jens-Achim Kessel (co-founder and shareholder of optiMEAS GmbH) optiMEAS implements cloud-based solutions for monitoring any industrial asset – construction and agricultural machinery, rail and commercial vehicles, production plants and power generation. They deliver everything from sensor connectivity and rugged edge devices to cloud solutions and business model development. In the foreground: the human being. Bernhard Knapp (Managing Director at Zugkraft-kN.at) Zugkraft-kN was founded to support companies like railway workshops, production companies, up to companies in the ropeway business with a clean and functional software solution. Mario Mischelin Managing Director – SchafbergBahn / Salzburg AG Tourismus GmbH (Guest) Salzburg AG is the energy provider for the state of Salzburg and also supplies customers with gas, telecommunications, Internet and TV. “Salzburg Tourismus AG” was founded to integrate the tourism units of Salzburg AG into one company.