On September 18, 2018, Luxembourg Post issued a stamp in honor of Stamp Day.

Since 2018, Luxembourg Post has launched a new series, "Stamp Day", in which local philatelic societies can propose themes for stamps. The main condition is that the theme of the issue must be closely related to the region or municipality they represent.

This year, Stamp Day was held in Tétange (municipality of Keil), and the issue of a commemorative stamp was initiated by the local philatelic club "Cercle Philatélique Tétange". The stamp design reflects the history of the region, famous for its iron ore mining.

Keil and Tetangier are located in the south of Luxembourg, in the former Minette mining region, also known as the land of the red mountains, due to the extensive deposits of iron ore with a characteristic reddish tint. In the 19th century, iron was actively mined here, with mines, processing centers and steel mills operating.

The terrain features in Tetangier are such that mining was mainly carried out in the highlands, and the mining companies were faced with the task of establishing fast and efficient transportation of ore from the mine workings to the valley where the smelters were located.

For this purpose, several mines were equipped with brakesbergs - special lifting devices with a cable transmission, consisting of two inclined rail tracks with cars moving along them. An interesting functional feature of these devices was that they did not require any engine. The ore-laden cars descend along the rails simply under the force of gravity, and they also lift up the empty cars. The cars, secured to a common cable, move synchronously, but in different directions: the heavily loaded cars descend down into the valley, and the light empty ones rise up to the mine.

The weight of the ore-laden cars reached 3 tons, and their uncontrolled descent would inevitably lead to a crash. Therefore, in order to control the movement of the cars, special brake stations were installed at the top of each brake slope. A small house, installed on supports at the top of the mountain, allowed the caretaker to see the entire narrow-gauge road descending into the valley. The rails passed under the station supports and there was a brake circle. When the cars, both empty and full, reached the end point of their route, the worker switched the brake circle and blocked the movement. The empty wagons that had risen up were unhooked from the cable and taken to the mine by horse-drawn horses, where they were filled with iron ore again. After that, the work horses pulled the loaded wagons back to the brake station, where they were hooked up to the device and the movement along the rails was resumed.

It was precisely this brake station with wagons with ore and horses standing dejectedly at a distance that the artist Eugène Kalmus reproduced on a postage stamp. The stamp was based on an old photograph of the brake station at the Langenacker mine in Tetange.

It is worth noting that horses were actively used as draft animals in mines throughout the 19th and first half of the 20th century. In coal mines, there were horses that lived and worked at depth, rarely coming to the surface. Other animals were luckier - they carried the mine cars to the surface, delivering ore to the loading station or waste rock from the dumps.

Starting from the first quarter of the 20th century, iron ore mining began to decline in Luxembourg. If in 1938 66 mines were operating, then in 1978 - only 4. The rest were closed as unprofitable. In 1997, the last blast furnace was extinguished and iron ore mining ceased. The mines in Tetange were also closed, the slopes along which the brakes passed were overgrown with forest, the highland area became a nature reserve. To this day, on the mountain slopes you can see the remains of the miners' buildings, find a narrow-gauge railway.

In 2018, the old Langenacker brake station was completely restored along with the mechanism and part of the track, on which several mine cars were installed, thus recreating a piece of local history. The brakesberg composition is included in the new Minettswee walking and tourist route.

Sources: www.postphilately.lu , www.rail.lu , www.tageblatt.lu