Wiesbaden's Nerobergbahn has climbed the same hillside since September 25, 1888, and it has never used a motor to do it. Instead, it uses water. The technical specifications published by ESWE Verkehr, the transit company that has operated the railway under the city's public transit authority since it opened, confirm this. Every year, about 300,000 passengers ride two carriages that pull each other up and down a 272-foot rise using nothing but gravity and Wiesbaden's public water supply. The idea might seem too simple to work for a real train. But the Nerobergbahn remains Germany's oldest water-ballast rack railroad, and it still runs pretty much as it did in the days of Kaiser Wilhelm II.
How the water does the work
