Rittnerbahn

The Ritten Railway is an electric light railway which originally connected Bolzano with the Ritten plateau and today continues to operate on the plateau, connecting the villages located there.
When opened in 1907 the line started as a tramway at Walther Square in the center of Bolzano, where it shared the track with the Bolzano town tramways as far as the Brenner Road. From there to Maria Himmelfahrt the line was a rack railway, climbing 990 metres until it reached the plateau. A special rack locomotive was placed behind the trams to push them uphill. In the middle of this ascent was a crossing loop so that two trains could cross. The train that went down to Bolzano produced some of the power that was needed to get the other train up. After arriving in Maria Himmelfahrt on the Ritten plateau, the locomotive was uncoupled and the trams were able to proceed unaided on normal tracks to the terminal station in the village of Klobenstein.

Wikipedia