The Ritten Railway (German: Rittnerbahn or Rittner Bahn, Italian: Ferrovia del Renon) 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.
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.
Shortly before the cableway was opened a train derailed on the rack railway and many people were seriously injured and some of them even killed.
Most trips serve only the section between Klobenstein (Collalbo in Italian) and Oberbozen (Soprabolzano; Upper Bolzano in English), a distance of 5.5 km.
[4] Although South Tyrol has been part of Italy since 1919, local places (such as Klobenstein) are more commonly referred to by their German-language names than by their Italian ones, because the majority of the population speaks primarily German[4] (about 69%).