The old brine pipeline from Berchtesgaden - Ramsau to Reichenhall: The old brine pipeline was used to transport the "brine" - the salty water that was produced to mine the rock salt in the Berchtesgaden salt mine. In the Bad Reichenhall saltworks, the salt was extracted from this brine by evaporating the water content. The brine transport and processing is still in operation today in a modified route via Bischofswiesen.
Historic wooden pipes - so-called "Deicheln" The pipeline was built by the Royal Bavarian Saltworks Councilor Georg Friedrich von Reichenbach in 1817 after a construction period of only 20 months. The client in 1816 was King Max I and his minister, Count Montgelas. The particular difficulties in building a pipeline at that time were the lack of topographical maps, the complex surveying work in steep terrain, the large differences in altitude and the arduous transport of over 500 iron pressure pipes (approx. 1200 hundredweight) from the Upper Palatinate. The route over the demanding, steep and longer stretch via Ramsau was chosen for political reasons: the easier and shorter route via Bischofswiesen / Hallthurm could not be used at the time due to border difficulties with Austria. In the course of this construction project, a 25 km long brine pipeline was built from Berchtesgaden via Ramsau to Bad Reichenhall, with a gradient of 356 m to be overcome. To overcome these significant differences in height, the architect Reichenberg developed his famous water column lifting machine, the 14-ton "Reichenbach pump" (which can be viewed today in the salt mine). This ingenious construction made it possible to pump the brine from the well house in Ilsank (585m) to the well house on the Söldenköpfl (943m) over a distance of 358m. The Reichenbach pump was in operation for 110 years (1817 to 1927) until it was no longer needed due to a change in the route.
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