Železnice Srbije

Serbian railways
legal form	Corporation
founding	2006
Seat	Belgrade , Serbia
management	Dragoljub Simonović
Number of employees	18,651 (2011)
Branch	transport
Website	www.zeleznicesrbije.com

Route network of the Serbian Railways

Železnice Srbije ( Serbian - Cyrillic Железнице Србије , German Railways of Serbia ), short name: ŽS , is the national railway company of Serbia . They went from the area of ​​responsibility of the ŽTP Beograd ( Serbian Железничко Транспортно Предузеће Železničko Transportno Preduzeće ) within the former JŽ ( Jugoslovenske Železnice , German: Yugoslavian railways continued to emerge until 2003) In spring 2011 the previously public company was converted into a stock corporation.

history

The building of the Ministry of Transport from 1931 is the headquarters of the Serbian Railways

Postage stamp on the occasion of the inauguration of the Vukov spomenik train station and the opening of the Belgrade railway junction for rail traffic in 1996

The planning phase for the establishment of the railway in Serbia in the second half of the 19th century took almost 50 years from the idea to the groundbreaking. The connection of Serbia was originally subject to strategic and economic considerations of the great powers for a desired east-west transit route. In addition to the unfavorable railway construction situation with numerous mountains and the strongly chambered relief, there was also the economic underdevelopment of Serbia and the whole of Southeast Europe in the 19th century, which made it difficult to realize national and international railway projects. Competing alignment projects for the desired west-east connection (in the 19th century, the southeast European peninsula as part of the Ottoman Empire was still called the Orient, while the peninsula in Asia Minor was referred to as the Levant ) due to the different strategic concepts of the relevant state actors, increased in the railway construction Expression. While the states surrounding Serbia in the initial phase had a particular eye on closing the railway gaps between the Ottoman Empire and Europe and supported the route that was most advantageous for themselves, Serbia also saw a railway line connecting the inland between the Danube lowlands and the Adriatic coast as a national task. While the former pan-European west-east route was completed at the end of the 19th century after the failure of the so-called Orientbahn, the national Adriatic connection only came about in the second half of the 20th century, over a hundred years after it was first discussed.

historical overview

The history of the railways in Serbia can be divided into several periods. The introductory phase falls during the period of Serbian independence from the Ottoman Empire in 1878 until the First World War in 1914. The interwar phase from 1918 to 1941 was with the state union of Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia (so called from 1929) through a network of the railways of the State marked. From 1945 to 1991, during the time of socialist Yugoslavia, a structural adjustment of the network and, in particular, a comprehensive overall concept of the Jugoslovenske Železnice was worked out. After the partial republics gradually withdrew from the Yugoslav confederation in 1991, the railway network of Železnice Srbije was initially geared more towards regional service and adapted to the new conditions. An initiative was started as early as 1991 with a focus on the modernization campaign of the high-speed lines of the Serbian Railways ( Brze Pruge Srbije ), but only a decade after the end of the armed conflict in Yugoslavia, the indirect negative consequences of the country's economic embargo for the rail infrastructure, and especially in the structural damage caused by the extensive destruction of important railway lines by NATO bombs, a long-term reversal in the further deterioration of the rail infrastructure and the urgently-to-renew fleet has been achieved with financial help from Russian railways, money from European infrastructure funds and Chinese railway infrastructure projects build the economic prospects of Železnice Srbije. In 2014, the removal of the rail infrastructure on the site of the old Belgrade train station area in favor of the Belgrade Waterfront urban development project led by the United Arab Emirates , which is linked to the final realization of the new Belgrade railway junction, began.

The route of the Orientbahn in 1888

The Balkans and the Scandinavian Peninsula formed the last region in Europe to be opened up by the construction of railways . In the 19th century, both peninsulas were on the economic border areas of Europe. The Hungarian railways reached the outer borders of the Austro- Hungarian Empire in Galicia and Transylvania and Croatia after the middle of the 19th century . In addition, there were Serbia, Romania and the Ottoman Empire.

Until 1860, not a kilometer of rail had been built south of the Sava and Danube. It was not until this year that the construction of railways in the Ottoman region began with a branch line in Dobruja and six years later in Bulgaria .

In 1855 the Sultan proposed the construction of a railway line from Constantinople via Sofia to Belgrade. It took 14 years for this proposal to be taken up by Baron Hirsch , a Bavarian financier. He planned a connection between Constantinople and the Austrian railway network. The route was planned bypassing Serbia. From Sofia the route should run west via Niš to Pristina and from there via Novi Pazar and Banja Luka . Sarajevo and the Save should also be connected. The control of the railroad would have been exercised entirely by the major powers neighboring Serbia, who promoted this route from an economic and military point of view. As a company to operate the railway, Baron Hirsch founded the Compagnie des Chemins de fer Orientaux , also known as the Orientbahn in German-speaking countries. The sections between Constantinople and Belove , about 80 km east of Sofia, as well as the so-called Sandschakbahn between Banja Luka and Dobrljin, were completed by 1874. The difficult terrain and, above all, the uprising in Herzegovina in 1875, and subsequently the Montenegrin-Ottoman and Serbian-Ottoman wars delayed and interrupted further construction. As a result of the war and the Berlin Congress , Serbia was enlarged by areas that were actually on the planned route of Baron Hirsch's Orientbahn and Austria-Hungary occupied Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Orientbahn only left the already completed sections outside of Serbia and Bosnia.

This time Austria took over the patronage of the railway line and the route over the Morava between Niš and Belgrade was chosen , which integrated Serbia into the international railway system. The Serbian section was built by a French private company, which was replaced by the newly founded Serbian State Railways (ŽS) in 1889 after various financial problems. The first Orient Express between Vienna and Constantinople began its journey in 1888 .

However, Baron Hirsch's route through the Sanjak Novi Pazar was not forgotten. One of the earliest Ottoman projects was a route from Thessaloniki to Skopje following the Vardar valley. Completed in the early 1870s, it was carried on to Kosovska Mitrovica in Kosovo . At the same time, the northern route between the Hungarian border to Banja Luka and Sarajevo was completed. Despite major topographical obstacles, this could be carried out as a narrow-gauge railway up to the northern border to the Sandschak. Only 160 km separated the end point of the Bosnian Eastern Railway at Uvac and the terminus of the Thessaloniki route at Kosovska Mitrovica. To the north of this still outstanding connection road was Serbia, south of Montenegro. These pursued a competing project in which an Adriatic railway had strategic priority for Železnice Srbije, which aimed to connect Serbia to the Adriatic Sea and Montenegro via the southeastern Dinarides . In the first decade of the 20th century, these competing railway routing projects formed one of the essential diplomatic entanglements between Austria-Hungary and the Ottoman Empire on the one hand and Serbia and Montenegro on the other. The planned connection of the Ottoman and Bosnian railways was never completed due to the Balkan Wars and the Sanjak fell to Serbia and Montenegro in 1912.

All in all, economic considerations were never superficial for the construction of the railway lines on the Balkan Peninsula, but strategic considerations for setting them up were always openly presented. Austria-Hungary tried until 1914 to prevent Serbia from establishing an Adriatic connection . At the same time, the own routes between the Danube plain and the Mediterranean were expanded. The Austrian Railways also reached Dubrovnik and the Bay of Kotor . A connection between Belgrade and Kotor remained the dream of the Serbian Railways in the 1890s.

Overall, the railway construction on the Balkan Peninsula in the late 19th century is seen as an example of the economic imperialism of the German Empire and its ally Austria-Hungary. German capital largely financed the Orientbahn, and there was an agreement between Germany and the Ottoman Empire from 1903, which provided for a continuation to Asia Minor, as the so-called Baghdad Railway , as part of a political project. With its construction, the first thought was a neutralization of Serbia as an ally of Russia and a close integration of Turkey into Germany. Even if the railway construction opened up subcontinental connections, the economic effects that resulted from it remained at an extremely modest level. The external economic effect did not materialize and Germany's balance sheet with south-eastern Europe was 1% between 1891 and 1913. The railways carried little more than mail and people on the Balkan Peninsula; goods were transported by ship.

Planning 1835–1878

Kosovska Mitrovica Terminus of the Orientbahn 1894

The first idea of ​​a railway in Serbia was raised in 1835 by the mining expert Baron Herder, who got to know Serbia during his research trip in 1835. After handing over the project documents in 1838, Prince Miloš Obrenović was the first to support the railway development project in Serbia, along with other modernization measures. The program to connect inland Serbia with the Adriatic coast attracted the greatest attention . The planned route should connect Belgrade via Raška , Novi Pazar with Shkodra and via the Bojana with the Adriatic ports of Bar and Durrës .

In the 1850s, the expansion of the railways in the Balkans became the topic of the day. The focus for the decision to expand the railway in the Principality of Serbia, which was supposed to bring about a connection between Belgrade and the railways to be built in the Ottoman Empire, was the consent of the Ottoman Empire, since this was Serbia, albeit an autonomous principality, as a tributary vassal of the Ottoman Empire Reiches headed such strategic decisions. As early as 1851, a request from the Serbian government regarding the construction of the railway was sent to the High Porte , which, like another in 1855 and a final one in 1869, was all rejected. The Ottoman Empire, for its part, planned to expand its railway infrastructure with a connection to the European railway lines, bypassing Serbia. A first route was supposed to reach Sofia with Vidin and with the connection to Orșova the Austrian railways via Hungary.

Moritz von Hirsch, pioneer of railway construction on the Balkan Peninsula

The railway lines planned by the Ottoman Empire were also coordinated with Austria-Hungary in its plans for an Orientbahn , which rose to become a primary strategic project of the Danube Monarchy after the defeat of Austria-Hungary in the Austro-Prussian War in 1866. From the Ottoman side, the plan for Constantinople via Edirne , Plovdiv , Niš , Kosovska Mitrovica , Sarajevo , Banja Luka to Bosanski Novi and a connection with the network of the southern railway company was decided in 1865 , in 1869 the concession to the Viennese financiers under the leadership of Baron Moritz von Hirsch handed over and in 1872 the first section of the Sandschak Railway west of Banja Luka was opened. In 1874 Kosovska Mitrovica was reached via Constantinople, but the most difficult section to lead through the high mountains of the Dinarides in Sanjak and Bosnia was not realized, the Orientbahn remained in its planned form a torso.

Against these rail lines around Serbia, which were being pushed by the great powers, the country tried to establish a position anchoring Serbia in the west-east rail transit traffic. Due to the great public attention about the planned railway lines to the Ottoman Empire and the interest of foreign railway construction companies and companies in the construction, English railway engineers were already in Serbia in August 1851, who were supposed to examine a route through the country. After Aleksandar Karađorđević had prevented this step, which was unauthorized by the Serbian side, experts from the French government came as early as 1853, who, like the previous English experts , advocated the route Constantinople - Edirne - Belgrade with a junction from Niš - Thessaloniki . After the Crimean War and the plans to build the Suez Canal , the project of an Adriatic railway was brought into play again by the economically dominant merchant circles in Belgrade, since in their opinion the dependence on the interests of the great powers was less pronounced would. Representatives of the Suez Society appeared for the first time in 1856 to examine a railway line between the Adriatic Sea and Belgrade.

At the end of the 1850s, after the Hungarian Count Zichy came to Belgrade in 1856 as a representative of the Austrian society Der Ostweg of Emperor Franz Joseph , there was no longer a dispute about the need to connect Vienna via Zemun- Belgrade- Aleksinac with the Ottoman railroad efforts via Serbia . After Mihailo Obrenović also emphasized the construction of the railway in Serbia in his speech to the throne in 1864, a request to the French government was completed in a first formal study, which planned a railway line through Serbia to the Turkish border. After the Turkish government of Serbia for the first time guaranteed a rail connection at Niš for the first time in 1874, the National Assembly adopted the draft law on railway construction in 1875. The previous French route variant was adopted with slight changes and the project was handed over to a French engineer for elaboration. With Serbia's commitments at the Berlin Congress in 1878, the first Serbian railway line could also be built on this basis. The country was obliged to establish a connection to the European rail network. From the perspective of the great powers, the political solution to the Orient question was also connected with the connection to the European railway network. The new Serbian state played the key role with regard to the transit situation between Istanbul and the Aegean region and the country was obliged to lay the routes from Belgrade to Niš , on to the then Bulgarian border at Pirot , and branching off via Vranje to Ristovac on the then Turkish border .

Opening period 1881–1895

The Sičevo Gorge between Niš and Pirot formed the technological key point of the main railway line of the Orient Railway between Belgrade and Istanbul due to the relief specifications.

The former central station of Belgrade

Topčider served the regents of the houses Obrenović, Karađorđević and Josip Broz Tito as a representative station, which was connected to the nearby castles in Topčider and those on Dedinje. Here Prince Milan I opened the construction work on the route to Niš on June 24, 1881. Only the waiting hall of the Serbian rulers remains of the former train station.

In the opening period between 1881 and 1895, the relevant main routes in today's Serbia with the territories that fell to Serbia after 1912/13 and 1918 to the neighboring countries (in particular Vojvodina ) were completed. During this period the main lines of the Morava-Vardar Railway (1886) and the Sava Corridor Railway (1891) were completed.

With the symbolic groundbreaking ceremony for the railway line from Belgrade to Niš by Prince Milan Obrenović on June 24, 1881 at the zero point of the Serbian Railways at Topčider station and the laying of the foundation stone for Belgrade Central Station , the actual expansion of the rail network in Serbia began. The 245 km long route was completed in 1884, followed by the Niš – Ristovac (1886) and Niš – Pirot – Caribrod (Dimitrovgrad) (1887) lines.

For the implementation of the transit route, Serbia signed a contract with the French construction and operating company Union générale in 1881 , which provided for the establishment of a joint stock company called Compagnie de Construction et Exploitation des Chemins de fer de l'Etat Serbe . But at the beginning of 1882 they had to file for bankruptcy. As a result, the Austrian Länderbank and the Comptoir d'Escompte founded a new company in Paris, the name of which was identical to the former company.

Due to the rapid upswing of the railways, Serbia also strived for a fundamental networking of its national territory through the establishment of local railways via these main routes. Already in 1886, one year before the opening of the Niš – Caribrod line, the Smederevo - Velika Plana material railway , which was built in connection with the Great Railway Construction, was converted into a regular railway and the Lapovo – Kragujevac line was opened in the same year ; in Velika Plana and Lapovo they were connected to Beograd – Niš. The south-eastern connections beyond the Serbian terminal stations, i.e. from Caribrod to Sofia and from Ristovac to Skopje, were not completed until 1888.

The later main main route in the Sava Corridor in the former Yugoslavia, which today provides the only double-track connection between Šid and Belgrade, was opened in 1883 between Inđija and Sremska Mitrovica and in 1885 between Sremska Mitrovica and Šid. However, the entire Sava corridor could not be closed until 1891, as the plans for the so-called military border line (the military border was dissolved in 1873) led to major delays in expansion due to the strong dualism between the Hungarian government and the wishes for the development of the Croatian railway line. At Inđija this met the Hungarian route Budapest– Zemun, also completed in 1883 . Belgrade was connected to the Hungarian railroad in 1884, but it was not until 1891 that the train service to Zagreb was started.

In 1889 the Serbian State Railways Srpske državne železnice (SDŽ) were founded with their seat in Belgrade.

The routes on the Skopje – Kosovska Mitrovica line on the territory of Kosovo are based on the Ottoman-Austrian efforts of the Orientbahn. This reached Kosovska Mitrovica in 1874. The oldest railway line of today's Serbian railway network was built by the Austrians and is located in the Banat , which at that time was the crown land directly subordinate to the Vienna Ministry . The inauguration took place on November 15, 1857. This line connected the cities of Timisoara , Hatzfeld , Kikinda and Szeged over a length of 112 km. This reduced the travel time from Timisoara to Vienna to 36 hours. A year earlier, in 1856, the Banat Montanbahn was opened, which transported coal from Steierdorf-Anina to Basiasch. However, this railway line was partially dismantled after the Second World War . In Batschka , which was then Hungarian and now part of Serbia , the railway age began in 1869 with the opening of the Subotica - Sombor section as part of the Hungarian network.

Balkan Wars and World War I

The Sarganska osmica museum railway on the Višegrad-Užice route is a remnant of the former Bosnian Eastern Railway

Field Marshal August von Mackensen with Bulgarian officers at the reception of the German Emperor Wilhelm II and the Bulgarian King Ferdinand I in Niš in 1916

Balkan train at Niš station in the last year of the war, 1918

Even before the Balkan Wars, the narrow gauge (760 mm) was used for the first time on the route Stalać - Kraljevo - Užice and Prahovo - Knjaževac in the valley of the Western Morava in central Serbia . Before 1914, several other narrow-gauge railways were built (e.g. Mladenovac - Lajkovac and Paraćin - Vrazogrnac ).

In the course of the Balkan Wars of 1912/1913, Serbia gained new territories in the south (Kosovo and Macedonia). With that, the existing railway lines of the former Ottoman Empire passed into his possession. These were the routes Skopje - Kosovska Mitrovica, Skopje - Gevgelija , Skopje - Ristovac and Bitola - Kinali . The economic benefit of these railways was limited, however, since the Skopje – Kosovska Mitrovica line was a branch line and the Bitola – Kinali line was not connected to the rest of the network.

With the beginning of the First World War , a strategic land rail connection between Central Europe and the Middle East was prepared for the Central Powers under the leadership of the German Empire through the German-Turkish Alliance Treaty of August 2, 1914 and the secret treaties with Bulgaria of September 6, 1915, which included went to war on the part of Germany and Austria-Hungary. After three Austro-Hungarian invasions between the summer and autumn of 1914 caused a catastrophic military failure for Austria-Hungary due to the final defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Balkan Army in the Battle of the Kolubara , and the Serbian railways failed to capture the strategic main line, which connected the route networks Blocked the way of Hungary and Austria on the one hand and Bulgaria and Turkey on the other, the army command of the German Empire decided to launch the Balkan route in a major offensive led by Field Marshal August von Mackensen with the 11th German Army and allied Austro-Hungarian and Hungarian Bulgarian armies to open in autumn 1915. In his work »Bulgaria and Central Europe« (1916), Friedrich Naumann , as a supplement to his ideological guideline, which was then regarded as important, of a »Central Europe« ruled by imperial ambitions through Germany, expressed all the essential strategic aspects in the German advance into Serbia and the Balkans:

“Both Central European empires have a common great interest in the traffic and trade route via Constantinople to the Orient. This is a first-order overland route. Germany in particular must attach great importance to the security of this path, because its connections with Turkey are tied to the existence of this line. We saw during the war the damage that could have been caused by the fact that the Serbs owned part of this path. For the sake of this, the Mackensen Army crossed the Danube "

- Friedrich Naumann, 1916: Bulgaria and Central Europe , Georg Heimer, Berlin. P. 50

The railway projects of the Baghdad Railway and the Anatolian Railway were initiated as part of Germany's imperial great power policy with a land connection between Hamburg and Suez . As a result, Germany's engagement on the Balkan front became imperative due to the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian army there. The establishment of the Balkan train between Berlin and Constantinople, replacing the former Orient Express, formed a subsequent stage, which, from the integration of the railway lines of the Balkan Peninsula, also served as a justification for the costly war effort to smash Serbia in terms of material and human life, and an important propaganda success of the Central Powers put:

The ceremonial inauguration of the Balkan suit took place on January 18, 1916 at the Niš train station with a state banquet for the German Emperor Wilhelm II, the Bulgarian Tsar Ferdinand I and representatives of the Danube Monarchy.

“When we German members of the Reichstag were first greeted by the Bulgarian state representatives at the Niš train station, the place itself was symbolic of what unified us: we and the Bulgarians had to break enemy control of the Belgrade – Niš – Pirot line. From the Bulgarian king onwards, the whole Bulgarian people learned what it means to be able to travel to friends only through opponents. A well-ordered Balkan railway is more than a state treaty. "

- Friedrich Naumann: Bulgaria and Central Europe . Georg Heimer, Berlin 1916, p. 51

Although the German Empire transferred control of the conquered Serbian territory to the two allies Austria-Hungary and Bulgaria, the logistical control of the military and goods transport on the Balkan route on the Morava Corridor between Belgrade and Niš remained with the German Empire. All Serbian railway stations and depots were taken over by German soldiers and railway troops. This was responsible for the executive, administration and administration of all activities of the Serbian railways. Due to the construction of the Saloniki Front from April 1916, a narrow-gauge railroad was built on the Saloniki Front to meet the needs of the Trench Warfare in what was then the southern Serbian areas of today's Macedonia, which consequently remained a war zone throughout the war.

After the occupation of Serbia, Austrian railway troops of the occupying power worked by means of massive prisoner-of-war deployment on the extension of the Bosnian Eastern Railway , which had been brought to the Serbian border near Vardište since 1906, in order to complete the so-called Austrian-Serbian-Danube-Adriatic Railway . This long-distance connection recommended by the then Austrian Minister of Railways Heinrich von Wittek was generally based on military needs in order to achieve Austria's goals on the Balkan Peninsula. Its aim was to connect the Adriatic Sea on the Belgrade – Vardiste – Sarajevo – Dubrovnik – Gruz route and would have been part of the far-reaching Vienna-Salonika concept. The establishment of the Lajkovac – Čačak line was intended to establish the merger with the Bosnian Eastern Railway west of Užice and further to the Dalmatian coast . The greatest challenge was the Šargan Pass near the border with Bosnia. Starting from Vardište in Bosnia, the substructure up to around Mokra Gora on Serbian territory was completed by 1916 , but the project had to be canceled in 1916 after the top tunnel broke in. The so-called Šarganska osmica (Šargan eight) due to its route could only be completed in 1925.

After a continental blockade enforced by the British fleet blocked the import of war goods by sea to the Central Powers, the occupied territories of Serbia were exploited restrictively. In particular, stocks of wood and copper ore (Bor, Trepča) and, especially in the last year of the war, almost all of Serbia's agricultural products were exported due to the Austrian capital Vienna and other cities of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy, which was on the verge of famine. In the summer and autumn of 1918, the occupiers confiscated 11,478 truckloads of bread grain, 470 truckloads of solid food, 42 truckloads of beans, 1,140 truckloads of potatoes, 6,000–7,000 truckloads of corn and around a million quintals of beef, sheep and pork from Serbia. At the same time, the rations that the Serbian civilian population was entitled to were reduced to 50%. The occupying powers built a second track between Inđija and Zemun as well as a parallel railway bridge over the Sava with a bifurcation in the direction of the Topčider station to meet the needs of troops .

Networking of the railway lines in the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes

After the First World War, Serbia entered into a state union with Croatia and Slovenia; in 1919 the Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes was founded, which was renamed the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in 1929 . Before 1918, however, it was not possible to speak of a railway network in the sense of coherent routes laid out according to an overall concept on the territory of the newly formed state. This is due to the fact that the sub-areas of the time belonged to several different political and economic units, the higher-level centers of which were mostly outside the country. These were above all Vienna, Ofen (Buda) and Pest (Budapest since 1872), and to a lesser extent Constantinople (Istanbul). The railways were essentially geared towards these centers, including the seaports of Trieste , Thessaloniki and Rijeka , regional interests were hardly given a chance, and Serbia, which has been independent since 1878, could not lay its main railways according to its own ideas. After the First World War, due to the enlargement of the actual Serbian territory, the own Serbian railway network, made up of various derivatives of the Hungarian, Ottoman and since 1881 self-built railway lines, was characterized by its poor integration. The railway networks of the countries that had joined the state union with Serbia also came from a total of three different networks: 1. The network of the Austrian countries Carniola , Styria , Carinthia and the coastal region, which is oriented towards Vienna and Trieste ; 2. the network of Croatia, Slavonia, Syrmia, the Batschka and the Banat, which was geared towards Ofen and Pest (later Budapest) and Fiume (Rijeka); 3. the isolated narrow-gauge network of Bosnia and Herzegovina, which is best still accessible from Budapest, with foothills to southern Dalmatia, all of which formed loosely or not at all interconnected networks with the Serbian network, whose main routes were to Budapest, Constantinople and Salonika and it was only in the interwar period, especially after the Second World War, that they were linked to a system tailored to the needs of the entire state.

For transit traffic, the narrow-gauge lines (760 mm) Lajkovac - Gornji Milanovac - Čačak (until 1922) and Užice - Vardište (until 1925) were completed. The project of connecting Belgrade to the Adriatic Sea, which was carried out from Bosnia before the First World War, was created in 1928 as a continuous connection, which now for the first time brought Serbia directly to the Adriatic coast on the Belgrade – Lajkovac – Čačak – Sarajevo – Dubrovnik route. This represents the ancestor of today's Beograd-Bar-Bahn (opened in 1976) and was therefore also discontinued after its opening in 1978.

With the completion of the standard gauge line Doljevac - Pločnik - Kuršumlija 1930, part of the connection Niš - Pristina was established. By 1931 the standard-gauge line Kragujevac - Kraljevo - Kosovska Mitrovica was completed, creating the continuous connection Belgrade - Lapovo - Kraljevo - Kosovska Mitrovica - Thessaloniki.

Second World War

The station building in Belgrade that was bombed out by the April bombing in 1941

B-17 Flying fortress shot down by anti-aircraft fire above the Nis marshalling yard, dated April 25, 1944, but probably April 15, 1944

The railways of Serbia under German occupation

With the German attack on Yugoslavia on April 6, 1941, the railway infrastructure in the railway node Belgrade a strategic bombing of was air raid of the Air Force. The entire station area on the Save, as well as the railway buildings on the railway bridge over the Danube, were hit hard. Shortly before the Wehrmacht invaded Belgrade, both railway bridges over the Sava and Danube were blown up by the Yugoslav military. After the German Wehrmacht marched in on April 12, the railway line from Belgrade to the Aegean Sea was repaired on April 20 as part of the Greek operation and supplies to the Africa Corps and used to transport goods and troops.

The smaller Serbia was placed under direct German military administration as the only part of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. With this, the Third Reich secured control of the central transport hub of the Balkan Peninsula. The railroad was the most important means of transport for the Wehrmacht supplies. To maintain the troop supply, the material and raw material transport as well as for the operational support of the Wehrmacht in the occupation of Greece and the German Africa Corps , the railway infrastructure of the Balkans was heavily used. In particular, in the first half of 1942, the supply route across the Balkans took on the bulk of the material and troop transports for the needs of military operations in North Africa. The railway nodes Belgrade and Niš played a central role; they were expanded. A central directorate was set up in Niš to manage the Serbian railway. The expansion of the rail infrastructure for the increased military transport volume took place with the construction of the Sava Bridge (1942), an additional bridge over the Sava , and the construction of shunting terminals in Pančevo, Zemun and Topčider. A double-track expansion was implemented within the Belgrade railway junction between Topčider and Belgrade Danube Port.

As a major measure, the double-track expansion of the entire Morava corridor between Belgrade and Niš was started in 1944 and partially completed. After the invasion of the Red Army on September 21 ( Belgrade operation ), the Wehrmacht was expelled from Serbia by October 20; because of the surprising Soviet advance over Romania and Bulgaria, they could not wreak havoc (" scorched earth ") on the railway infrastructure on the main corridor. However, the units of Army Group E under Alexander Löhr , who were withdrawing from Greece, managed to keep the Ibar route free. Here, in the rear area of ​​the retreating army, the entire infrastructure was practically destroyed and remained practically inoperable even after the war (relation Kosovska Mitrovica - Kraljevo ).

Partisan war and strategic bombing of the rail infrastructure by the Allies

Aerial reconnaissance of the bomb hits of a massive Allied strategic attack on the railway infrastructure of Belgrade on April 17, 1944. This attack was aimed at the central railway supply terminal of Army Groups E and F in Belgrade, which, in addition to Niš, provided loading nodes for military goods and equipment for operations on the Balkan Peninsula .

After the attack of the Third Reich on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, the decision was made to revolt against the occupation in Serbia and the partisan and Četnik movement soon seized the railways in western and eastern Serbia, and especially the German supply lines on the Belgrade-Niš line. Military trains and transports that were important for the war economy ran into mines and explosives or were shot at from ambush. Damage to locomotives and bridges from sabotage increased - and was used as an opportunity for gruesome mass murders of civilians. After fighting with partisans near Kraljevo, the Wehrmacht took several thousand hostages from October 4th in the production hall for locomotives of the Kraljevo wagon factory. On October 15, they were shot in mass executions with other civilians, including 707 workers from the Serbian Railways.

In the years that followed, the railway lines in Serbia and Vojvodina remained the main targets of the insurgent partisans, but especially in the course of the strategic bombing of the Romanian oil fields near Ploiesti, they were also targets of American bomber units. These targeted multiple attacks on the rail infrastructure on all main corridors. Among other things, on October 20, 1943, April 5, 1944, and especially on Easter Sunday, April 15, 1944, massive deployments of B-17 Flying Fortress of the 15th US Air Fleet took place on the Niš railway junction, as on September 3 and 6, 1944 on the railway infrastructure in Belgrade, where the main train station, Danube station and both the railway bridges over the Sava and Danube were destroyed, and at the same time attacks on the railway bridge over the Danube in Novi Sad. On November 7, 1944, these operations over Niš resulted in an unusual Allied aerial combat in which Soviet and US aircraft were involved in aerial battles and 4 Yaks of the Red Army and 2 P-38s of the Americans were shot down.

The ŽTP Beograd as part of the Jugoslovenske Železnice

In addition to media coverage by the state media of Yugoslavia, numerous pioneers also welcomed Tito and his wife Jovanka on the inaugural journey of the railway line in Plavi voz

The opening of the Belgrade-Bar route after 25 years of construction on May 28, 1976 by Josip Broz Tito was the longed-for main event of the post-war efforts to expand the Adriatic connection in the Serbian railways network

Section of the Belgrade railway line in the Lim valley

The damage to the railway infrastructure after the Second World War amounted to 64% of all railway lines in the entire territory of Yugoslavia, of 12,694 km of the route network, 8,115 km were damaged. In Serbia, 304 km of railway lines were completely destroyed. In particular, the railway stations in Belgrade and Niš were completely destroyed by the Allied bombing. The two railway bridges in Belgrade over the Sava and Danube were completely unusable, as was the railway bridge over the Danube near Novi Sad and the entire Ibar route. But things were better with the important route in the Morava Corridor, since operations between Niš and Belgrade could be resumed on November 26, 1944.

After the Second World War, the railway sector experienced a major boom, particularly as a result of the rapid industrialization of Yugoslavia planned in the first five-year plan in 1947. Ambitious requirements for the massive upswing in freight and passenger traffic of the JŽ had to be met. The ŽTP Beograd was established for the operation of the railway in the territory of Serbia. She was responsible for the supervision and expansion of the railway infrastructure as well as the transport of people and goods within the Republic of Serbia. During this period not only new local railways were built, but narrow-gauge lines were also converted to standard gauge and a large-scale dieselization and electrification program began. The largest new line was the completion of the Belgrade – Bar line , which opened in 1976.

The transport of people and goods increased rapidly in the period from 1946 to 1965, but after that there was a greater decline due to competition from road transport in the field of passenger transport. While the ŽTP Beograd transported 87,574,000 people in 1967, it was only 49,598,000 in 1973. In the same period, however, the handling of goods increased marginally from 31,376,000 t to 33,604,000 t. Road traffic has been transporting three times more people since 1970, and from 1973 more goods were transported by road than by rail. Belgrade also developed into the most important hub in rail transport within the Yugoslav rail network. In 1960, 15 million rail passengers passed the Belgrade railway junction, while the next largest rail centers in Zagreb and Ljubljana had to transport significantly fewer passengers in the same year with 4.5 and 2.7 million rail passengers, respectively. In the 1980s, Belgrade recorded just over 5.5 million travelers (5.59 million in 1984, 5.6 million in 1986), while those in Zagreb were 4.28 (1984) and 4.8 million (1986) and Ljubljana increased to 3.117 (1984) to 3.8 million (1986). On the Serbian routes, Niš recorded 2.429 (1984) and 3.6 million (1986) passenger journeys , significantly more rail travelers than Skopje 1.224 (1984) and Maribor 2.063 million (1984).

The central link of the Serbian Railways is the Belgrade railway junction

The new Sava Railway Bridge is part of the renewal of the Belgrade rail network.

In 1971, the implementation of the fundamental reconstruction of the railway traffic in Belgrade began, which was the biggest bottleneck in the whole of Yugoslav railway transport due to the terminus station and the high frequency of traffic on the Sava Corridor and Morava Corridor and had long since reached its capacity limit . The new construction and complete route reconstruction of the Belgrade railway junction included the complete replacement of the old terminal station by the Beograd Centar station through station , as well as the expansion of the rail infrastructure in and around Belgrade to create high-speed lines with a separation of freight and passenger traffic.

At the end of the 1980s, improvements in passenger transport became apparent. After Končar received licenses from ASEA to build locomotive classes 441 and 444, which were designed for speeds of 140 to 160 km / h and high-speed wagons from the Goša factory in Smederevska Palanka , the ŽTP Beograd and ŽTO Novi Sad were used on the routes an express service set up for the first time. The trains on the Belgrade – Budapest – Vienna line reached the national border at Subotica (150 km away) in less than two hours , which at that time corresponded to European standards. The most important planned new line in the 1990s was the 76 km long Valjevo - Loznica line , which was supposed to enable a connection to the Bosnian Railways, especially since the Tuzla-Zvornik line was completed only a few months before the entire Yugoslav state broke up. The second railway corridor between Ljubljana and Stalać, which supplemented the main route of the JŽ in the Sava Corridor, was in tangible completion, but the armed conflicts in Croatia and Bosnia no longer permitted this.

From the ŽTP-Beograd to the Železnice Srbije

Vestibule of the Vukov Spomenik train station

Belgrade center train station

With the armed disintegration of the entire state from 1991 onwards, the fragmentation of the Yugoslav railway system began; In the newly created states, their own railway companies were formed, and the independent railway companies took over the infrastructure in their area. The elimination of regional network connections increased the marginalization of rail in the Serbian transport system. With the legacy of overcapacities in the workforce, as well as the wagon, locomotive and station infrastructure maintained for a significantly more extensive and more efficient railway network, a continuously negative balance developed as a result of the sustainably shrinking passenger and goods transport services of the JŽ, which is coupled with the sharply shrinking shares in the overall traffic due to the negative labor productivity of disproportionately large numbers of employees in the problem. With insufficient infrastructure utilization, the JŽ turned into the most heavily subsidized company in the country.

During the military clashes in Croatia, numerous railway lines for through traffic were damaged and made unusable. The main route between Croatia and Serbia in the Sava corridor was also interrupted at several points; after 1991, rail traffic on the central axis of the JŽ could only be operated over 120 km between Belgrade and Šid. The blockage of the Sava corridor also resulted in a large-scale relocation of the European transit routes and the suspension of the Orient Express. Rail traffic with Western Europe has now been diverted via Budapest and Vienna. Due to the economic isolation of Serbia through a UN embargo, there was also a lack of funds and material to maintain the existing railway infrastructure. In 1992 the political leadership of the time named plans to build high-speed traffic with Vmax = 250 km / h on the JŽ routes as a priority development task, but the program with the slogan "Brze pruge Srbije" was unrealistic and at no point in time Resilient building and operating concepts cannot be implemented.

Nevertheless, investments in the railway infrastructure were a main concern of the ruling SPS coalition and in 1995 the JŽ were able to hand over a substantial part of the Belgrade railway junction to passenger traffic in a costly state act with the opening of the underground railway station Vukov Spomenik . This means that the Beovoz light rail service in Belgrade started operations after the JŽ had previously procured RVR EMV 412/416 class multiple units from the Soviet Union. After investments of 600 million euros in the railway junction, 90% of the planned infrastructure was completed in 1996, but in particular the completion of the new Belgrade main train station, Beograd Centar and the establishment of a container terminal as well as depots in Zemun and Kijevo for the maintenance of the wagons and wagons were missing Locomotive infrastructure, as this was necessary for the planned complete shutdown of the 80 ha rail area at Belgrade Central Station.

With the end of the fighting in the Yugoslav Wars of Disintegration, the route in the Sava Corridor was reopened on December 1, 1997 after a long break, and the Zagreb-Belgrade route has been resumed since May 1998.

Temporary bridge over the Danube. The single-track multimodal bridge has replaced the Žežel Bridge on the Belgrade-Budapest route in Novi Sad, which was destroyed by bombing in 1999, since 2000.

A massive setback for the Serbian railways meant the bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by the NATO air force in the course of the Kosovo conflict. At the beginning of the conflict, the Yugoslav Railways were still used to mobilize the Vojska Jugoslavije. In the late evening of March 28, 1999, one of the strongest units of the 1st Army, the 252nd Motorized Brigade, was ordered from Kraljevo on the railroad to Kosovo in complete secrecy . The column of the large convoy, 60 km long, consisted of heavy artillery, tanks and troop carriers. The brigade was able to be moved to Kosovska Mitrovica and Lipljan within four days, unnoticed by NATO reconnaissance, via the Ibar race (the railway bridges were only bombed at the beginning of April) . The convoy, which was hidden in the numerous tunnels of the railway line during the day, and bad weather prevented its discovery. In order to prevent such troop relocations in the further course of the war, NATO bombers then destroyed practically all transit and magistral railway lines and bridges. In particular, the Ibar connection south of Kraljevo, several sections of the Belgrade – Bar route, the Toplica route on the Niš-Pristina relation and the most important mainline connection in the railway corridor X between Novi Sad and the Macedonian border were interrupted. This resulted in the destruction of the Žeželjev most railway bridge over the Danube near Novi Sad, which was bombed five times in April 1999, and the attack on the express train D-393 Niš – Ristovac , which at the time of the attack on April 12, 1999 the Morava Bridge happened in the Grdelica Gorge, to civilian victims.

Grdelica Bridge with the memorial for the civilian victims of the NATO attack on April 13, 1999

The attack on the Grdelica Bridge , due to the high number of civilian casualties and the repetition of the attack, as only the passenger train was hit during the first use of weapons, but only the locomotive was hit in the second attack, was one of the main areas of investigation of the ICTY NATO war crimes in Yugoslavia. However, NATO did not hand over any documents to the International Court of Justice that would have enabled an insight into the chain of command. An investigation into whether higher commanding commanders were involved and whether the incident had to be clarified in the ICTY could not be examined. A suspicion of a major guilt of the pilot and weapons control officer who did not act in accordance with the permitted principles in the use of warfare, as well as a moment of recklessness in relation to the implementation of the second weapon use, was recorded by the committee of the ICTY ( the committee has divided views concerning the attack with the second bomb in relation to whether there was an element of recklessness in the conduct of the pilot or the WSO (weapons system officer) ). The investigation also found inconsistencies in the course of the attack in the briefing from SACEUR Wesley Clark in the Commission's report. In particular, it was noted in the technical report that the attack could not necessarily be stopped and that it was not the pilot, as Clark described it, who controlled the attack, but the weapons control system officer in the two-seat cockpit of the F-15E. The commissioner of the report Ekkehard Wenz was even convinced that the train was being attacked on purpose. Ultimately, however, the Commission was of the opinion that the attack was aimed at a legitimate target and that this was not to be negotiated by the ICTY.

As a result of the bombing, rail traffic was completely discontinued on all routes in the entire Yugoslavian railway system. The numerous interruptions in the railway connections for both transit and regional traffic on the JŽ routes were interrupted for several months. After the NATO bombing, the international connection between Budapest and Thessaloniki, which had been suspended by the war, was never resumed. When the KFOR occupied Kosovo in mid-June 1999, its railway infrastructure was also taken over by military units.

With the separation of the state union of Serbia and Montenegro formed in 2003 from the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia , the time of the Jugoslovenske Železnice also ended. The company ZTP Beograd was renamed on 1 December 2004. Serbian Railways.

Companies

Key figures

Serbia's railways employ 19,694 people (2010) and are one of the largest remaining state-owned companies in the country, as well as the largest railway company on the Balkan Peninsula . The total network of the Serbian rail network is 4,092 km, 1,767,488 km (43%) of which are electrified. Among the remaining state-owned companies, the Serbian Railways, with an annual loss (2009) of 6.2 billion dinars (one euro = approx. 100 dinars), still occupies the top position among the largest state net debtors. The ŽS put a particularly heavy strain on the state budget through operating and investment grants. For the operating subsidies of the Serbian Railways alone, around one percent of GDP was required and two percent of government spending in 2003, which is why no funds were available for investments.

Transport performance

International freight traffic, as here on the non-electrified route between Dimitrovgrad and Pirot near the Bulgarian border, is the most important source of income for the operating result of ŽS.

Characteristic of the ŽS is the fragmentation of the former overall network of the former Yugoslavian railways JŽ through three medium-sized (Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia) and five small railroad systems (railways of the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina, railways of the Republika Srpska, Montenegro, Kosovo) resulting from the break-up of Yugoslavia and Macedonia), which severely impaired competitiveness, as regional traffic in particular fell sharply. The rail mode of transport also suffered the greatest losses in passenger and freight traffic, which in the JŽ's rail infrastructure, which was formerly designed for a much larger transport capacity, resulted in considerable overcapacity, both in terms of the number of employees and in the vehicle fleet. An adjustment of the employees to the dramatically decreasing transport performance was tackled only very hesitantly. Due to the deterioration in the service provided by the ŽS, many travelers switched to buses, which led to a loss of shares in the transport market in an increasingly fierce competition with road traffic. In order to escape the cost pressure, ŽS was the first railway company in the Western Balkans to submit an analysis of secondary lines that were judged to be unprofitable.

Between 2000 and 2007, cargo and passenger volumes moved in different directions, while in 2008/09 both decreased as a result of the international financial crisis. From 648 million passenger kilometers in 2008, the passenger volume decreased to 582 million in 2009 and the freight volume by a full 32% to 2.723 million ton kilometers. Taking the traffic volume in 2000 as a basis, the freight volume increased by 42% in the period 2000/2009. In stark contrast, passenger transport decreased by 58% in the same period. The following transport services were registered:

Transport performance	1992	2001	2002	2003	2004	2005	2006	2007	2008	2009
Freight transport in millions of ton kilometers	3,453	1,989	2.263	2,591	3.164	3,482	4,232	4,552	4,000	2,723
Passenger traffic in millions of passenger kilometers	2,544	1,200	1,023	905	959	852	846	762	648	582

Investments in the rail infrastructure

Nova Pazova train station

Platform in the Vukov spomenik station

The expansion and modernization of the pan-European railway corridor X , which runs through the country, is one of the priorities of the Serbian government in the expansion of the national transport infrastructure. The plans for the pan-European rail corridor Salzburg-Thessaloniki (Corridor X), which was launched in 2001 as a joint venture between ten Central and Southeastern European railways, aims to create a cross-border, market-compliant and cost-conscious infrastructure for freight and passenger traffic through Southeastern Europe is intended to compete with the routes from Germany via Prague, Bratislava, Budapest, Bucharest and Sofia. Serbia wants to invest in the expansion of this traffic corridor in order not to lose the transit traffic and the income from it to the neighboring countries. 784 km of railway corridor X with two entry routes from Hungary (via Subotica ) and Croatia (via Šid ) to Belgrade, which then lead on to Niš and then in two branches to Bulgaria or to Macedonia and Greece, are in Serbia. With loan support from the European Investment Bank (EIB), larger sections of the route can be expanded and brought up to date.

One of the main problems is that the lines are single-track and slow. The investments in the rail infrastructure are aimed at significantly increasing the average speed of trains on this route to 120 km / h to 160 km / h. For this purpose, the railway line is to be expanded to two tracks and fully electrified within seven years.

The government estimates that investments of 1.7 billion euros will be required for the necessary investments in electrification, the construction of a second track in selected sections and the installation of modern signaling equipment. According to the Serbian government, the financing is to be provided partly from the state budget, but also from loans from international financial organizations and from EU funds. For the entire planned expansion of the 767 km long section of the Pan-European Corridor X, total investments worth EUR 4.6 billion are required.

For this planned modernization, the Minister of Economics Mladen Dinkic first held negotiations on October 15, 2008 with the German government and Deutsche Bahn in Brussels. In the agreement on the modernization of the Serbian Railways by DB, it was agreed that the Serbian Railways, in cooperation with Deutsche Bahn, would develop an investment and modernization plan for the railway corridor X running through Serbia. A subsequent working meeting between the government of Serbia and representatives of Deutsche Bahn took place on October 24, 2008 in Belgrade. The drafting of a memorandum to help with the reconstruction of the Serbian railways and a master plan by DB was agreed upon. This memorandum was then signed on December 16, 2008 by Ministers Dinkic, Milution Marković and Michael Glos as well as the board member of DB Otto Wiesheu in Berlin.

High-speed routes

The core network of the Serbian railways consists of the pan-European traffic corridor X and the Belgrade-Bar route

The expansion and new construction in the core network of Železnice Srbije was decided in the 2009 master plan of the Ministry of Infrastructure. This was financed by the EU and projected by Italferr under the direction of the European Commission. In 2011 this proposal was adopted in the Serbian Parliament. After that, the entire Corridor X will be expanded to 160 km / h, the Stara Pazova-Novi Sad route up to 200 km / h, which could make the 360 ​​km Belgrade-Budapest route the only real high-speed line currently under discussion for the ŽS. Both the ruling presidents of Hungary and Serbia and the ŽS and Máv signed a protocol on a possible joint project in 2009 and the International Railway Union also signaled its support for this in October 2011, but concrete agreements are currently still pending. Overall, the greatest growth rates in freight and transit traffic fall precisely on the connection via Hungary, the dynamism of which has brought ŽS the greatest profit in recent years. With the initialization of high-speed lines for Vmax 160 km / h, the construction of a 322 m long railway bridge over the Morava near Ćuprija, which is part of the new Gilje-Čuprija-Paračin line, began in February 2011 .

• Individual routes in railway corridor X which are being expanded for speeds of up to 160 km / h (200 km / h):

route			Vmax	length	Installation	Train type	Power system	Train protection
In planning	Railway line Budapest - Belgrade	Stara Pazova - Subotica (Hungarian border)	160 km / h– 200 km / h	185 km			25 kV 50 Hz
In planning	Railway line Zagreb - Belgrade	Stara Pazova - Šid (Croatian border)	160 km / h	87 km			25 kV 50 Hz
In planning	Belgrade - Niš railway line	Resnik - Klenje - Mali Požarevac - Velika Plana	160 km / h	91 km			25 kV 50 Hz
Under construction		Velika Plana - Stalać	160 km / h	88 km			25 kV 50 Hz
In planning		Stalać - Đunis -	160 km / h	17 km			25 kV 50 Hz
In planning		Đunis - troupals	160 km / h	40 km			25 kV 50 Hz
In planning	Railway line Sofia - Niš	Niš - Dimitrovgrad (Bulgarian border)	160 km / h	108 km			25 kV 50 Hz
In planning	Skopje - Niš railway line	Niš - Preševo (Macedonian border)	160 km / h	156 km			25 kV 50 Hz

• International connections that are expanded for speeds of up to 120 km / h:

Belgrade - Vrbnica (Bar) - 287 km (Montenegrin border)

Belgrade - Vršac - 104 km (Romanian border)

Valjevo - Loznica - 110 km (Bosnian border)

• Routes that are of regional importance and are expanded to 160 km / h:

Belgrade - Airport - Batajnica 21 km (Nikonla Tesla Airport)

Budapest – Belgrade high-speed line

In 1979 Nikola Hajdin designed one of the world's first cable-stayed railway bridges over the Sava to the new Belgrade Central Station in order to eliminate the bottleneck in the railway traffic in the old main train station in Belgrade . High-speed trains are expected to run on it for the first time before 2020.

An international high-speed route on the Belgrade-Budapest route has been discussed several times over the past two decades. After this connection was recognized as promising by the EU in 1992, political imponderables in the region shattered these plans. In February 2013, Chinese railway planners took up the project again. Their estimates put the costs at around 2 billion euros. Maximum speeds of 300 km / h or more would be possible here. The beginning of a political implementation process between the Serbian and Hungarian railways was planned for the end of February 2013.

This currently the only high-speed route in Serbia that is currently being planned, as part of the so-called Brze Pruge Srbije of Železnice Srbije, will probably connect Budapest with Belgrade as an international transit route by 2018. It is carried out through loans provided by China for funds in the so-called CEE fund (Central-East European countries). A predominant use of Chinese technology is expected for construction and operation. The total run is 350 km, of which 184 in Serbia and 166 in Hungary. The connection to Niš south of Belgrade will be expanded in sections to 160 km / h . This relation is important for the transit traffic to Greece, Bulgaria and Turkey.

After China had responded positively to the plans of the governments of Hungary and Serbia to build the high-speed line in early 2013, the project was approved by the Prime Ministers of China, Hungary and Serbia at the China-Central-East-Europe summit in Bucharest in November 2013 . At the meeting, the Chinese side suggested that an upgrade to 300 km / h should also be considered. For this expansion variant, the Prime Minister of Serbia stated that the Chinese side could also attract larger investors and also better intermodal networking of the container port of Piraeus in Greece, which the Chinese state-owned China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO for short) at 50 % has leased for a period of 35 years. The Chinese side sees such an investment in Europe as an important strategic component, in which high-speed lines and high-speed trains are essential advertising media for the high-tech capabilities of Chinese industry.

A concretization of this project, as well as a possible increase of the cruising speed to 300 km / h was made during the visit of the Serbian Prime Minister to China on Sep 10. 2014 still promised. It was as developers CRCC called responsible. The contracts are expected to be signed at the China-East Europe summit in Belgrade in December 2014 between the governments of Serbia, Hungary and China.

With the average of the second tunnel tube in the Čortanovci tunnel on June 5, 2020, the scheduled start of the Beograd Prokp-Novi Sad railway station, which has now been expanded to a maximum of 200 km / h, was announced for autumn 2021. The line between Batajnica and Stara Pazova will also be expanded to four tracks to separate freight and passenger traffic.

Second Sava Corridor

Under Tito, a second railway corridor was planned in Yugoslavia to complement the Sava corridor . This new west-east corridor, which was to run from Stalac to Ljubljana, was basically implemented except for a small section between Zvornik and Užice. The missing part is the 68 km long new Valjevo – Loznica line, which began in 1990. It has now been completed on its most difficult sections (including the tunnel sections). The line is generally referred to as the "war route", as a concession was granted to a French investor before the First World War and the actual construction coincided with the Yugoslav Wars . After the bombing by NATO in 1999, work was stopped in 2000. Part of the Russian loan agreed in 2009 was earmarked for the completion of the route, for which the complete project documents were handed over to the Russian partners at the end of 2011. When completed, the route could both increase the capacity of freight traffic on the Belgrade – Bar route and serve the planned multimodal container terminal in Zeleznik near Belgrade, as the route will serve the Bosnian heavy industry locations (especially Tuzla and Zenica) with the Serbian and will connect Montenegrin sea and river ports. After the Russian loan was issued in 2012 for other railway infrastructure projects, no specific plans for completion are currently planned. In a contribution by ARD on March 13, 2017, the complicated planning history and partial implementation of the route was discussed in the hope that the fallow and half-finished bridges and tunnels could be implemented as part of the Berlin process.

Belgrade railway junction

→ Main article : Belgrade railway junction

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New central station in Belgrade under construction

Beovoz and Bg: voz serve the light rail traffic within the new Belgrade railway junction

Belgrade plays a central role in Serbia's rail system. The Central Station of Belgrade is the central long-distance railway station of Serbian Railways and is the main train station in the Belgrade railway junction. The historic railway terminus on Save -Ufer ( ⊙ ) was completed by the architect Dragutin Milutinović 1885th

In addition to the route to Montenegro on the Belgrade – Bar line, which is served several times a day, other international train connections to Zagreb , Istanbul , Kiev , Moscow , Budapest , Sofia , Vienna , Prague , Bucharest , Villach and Zurich also operate from here . The Istanbul Express and Akropolis Express trains, which were created as a successor to the Orient Express , also ran through the station, but were discontinued during the war in Yugoslavia.

Since 1971 the Jugoslovenske Železnice has carried out a massive reconstruction in the Belgrade railway junction. As a result, among other things, all land-consuming railway infrastructures are to be relocated from the narrower urban area to new locations on the city periphery. The maneuvering areas around the old Belgrade terminus and the station itself will be completed by a new through station Beograd Centar station ( ⊙ ), often also called Prokop , consisting of six island platforms , the expansion of the passenger stations and depots TPS Zemun TPS Kijevo and Novi Beograd , as well as the modernization of the goods handling railway works Beograd Ranžirna-Makiš and Zemun teretna completely dissolved and replaced.

The construction work began in 1977, the New Belgrade Savebrücke was completed in 1979. The tunneling under the city center followed from 1980 with the construction work on the first diameter line in the Dedinje tunnel, which was opened to traffic in 1988. The route network of the Belgrade Regional Railway ( Beovoz ), which has been running on three lines since 1996, was gradually expanded. From September 30, 1984, regional trains ran for the first time on the route between Batajnica and the then terminus Beograd-Centar ( Prokop ). From 1992, traffic was started in the second diameter line between Beograd centar and Pančevacki most through the Vračar tunnel . In 1995 the Vukov spomenik train station was inaugurated there. With this, the rail traffic also had a modern train station in the city center. In 1996 further work on Belgrade's future main train station, Beograd centar, was resumed. Due to the general scarce resources of the state and the historically turbulent development as well as the necessary restructuring of the ailing Železnice Srbije, the station remained as a shell after 2000. After the old Beograd station was finally closed in 2018 and the entire rail infrastructure there was dismantled, it became the new Belgrade Central Station. After 8 railroad tracks were upgraded in 2016, work was resumed in 2020. By 2021, the final expansion of the station's throughput capacity should be achieved with at least 10 tracks and 5 platforms. A railway hall for the 450 × 100 m very large concrete structure of the Beograd Centar station will follow at a later, currently (as of June 2020) not yet known construction phase. A modern dispatch center, parallel to the expansion of the Beograd Centar-Subotica high-speed line, is being set up by the Russian RŽD in Zemun station. It will be supplied with data through a fiber optic network in the entire rail network of the ŽS.

Regional traffic

Logo of the urban rail transport system Bg: voz

In addition to investments in long-distance transport, the expansion of the Beovoz light rail system in Belgrade plays the most important role in regional transport. For 2009, 13 million euros (300 million dinars) were planned from the city and 37.5 million euros as a donation from the Spanish government for the revitalization of the Beovoz. Of the Spanish funds, 22 million euros were earmarked for the purchase of six new multiple units and 15.5 million euros for the renewal of the nine existing multiple units. With the nine reconstructed multiple units, the S-Bahn system Bg: voz , operated jointly with the city of Belgrade, started operating on the Novi Beograd– Pančevački most route on September 1, 2010 . The trains run every quarter hour at peak times, otherwise every half hour. A railway connection to Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport is planned in Belgrade's Development White Paper by 2021. The new line would branch off from Corridor X at Batajnica and return to it after 21 km in Belgrade. The alignment should allow speeds of 160 km / h.

timeline

The last class 812 diesel multiple units have been largely retired by the 711 class since 2012

Class 711 diesel multiple unit

Beograd Centar train station

Scheme of Beograd centar

• The electrification of the Niš – Dimitrovgrad line should begin in 2009. In May 2013, however, no work could be seen on the route. The EIB loan of EUR 80 million is to be used for this purpose. These funds are also to be used for the rehabilitation of 93 km of tracks on the Čele kula – Staničenja (section from Niš – Dimitrovgrad), Batajnica – Golubinci (Belgrade – Šid) and Gilje – Čuprija – Paračin (Belgrade – Niš).
• For the Batajnica – Golubinci section, the Serbian railway company awarded contracts worth a total of EUR 23 million in November 2008, financed by the EIB loan. It is the second recent EIB loan to Serbian Railways.
• With the third loan of 100 million euros approved by the EBRD to ŽS on May 8, 2009, 30 modern electric multiple units are to be procured for regional traffic.
• On October 17, 2009, Serbian Prime Minister Mirko Cvetković and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev agreed to grant a loan of 800 million dollars to expand the railway infrastructure of Železnice Srbije.
• In September 2010, the joint venture between the former Yugoslav railways SŽ, HŽ and ŽS, Kargo 10 , took shape. The aim is to reduce the transport time of goods on the Munich – Istanbul route from the current 60 to 40 hours. The Kargo-10 agreement aims to strategically market the transit routes to the Middle East intended for Central Europe.
• On September 15, 2010, the EBRD approved a loan of 100 million euros to reconstruct the infrastructure in rail corridor 10 and to purchase new locomotives.
• On September 1, 2011, work began on rebuilding the Danube Railway Bridge on the Belgrade – Budapest route in Novi Sad. The Žeželjev most had been bombed in 1999 by NATO, its reconstruction is estimated at 45.3 million euros, come from the partial EU funding.
• September 14, 2011: the ŽS received their first new vehicles after 30 years. These are Russian metro wagon machine diesel multiple units, 12 of which were ordered for regional transport.
• At the beginning of October 2011, Železnice Srbije handed over the project documents for the use of the agreed loan tranches to Russian Railways . This involves the double-track expansion and electrification of the 15 km long Belgrade – Pančevo line, the 68 km long new Valjevo – Loznica line and the final expansion of the Beograd Centar station. The Russian side will also examine whether 100 million dollars of the planned loan can be used to purchase 30 new diesel multiple units.
• On October 18, 2011, Železnice Srbije placed orders worth one billion dinars (October 2011 rate, one euro = 100 dinars) to eight companies to overhaul their vehicle fleet. 680 freight cars, 38 passenger carriages, three electric multiple units and two locomotives are to be overhauled.
• According to the director of the Beogradskog železničkog čvora , Milutin Milošević, a Kuwaiti loan of EUR 26 million is to be taken out on May 21, 2012 for the completion of the Beograd Centar / Prokop station .
• On July 2, 2012, the Železnice Srbije and Italiana Construzioni agreed on the construction of a 10.5 km long double-track new line for speeds of up to 160 km / h between Gilje – Ćuprija – Paraćin on the Belgrade – Niš route, for which a 322 m long railway bridge over the Velika Morava is being built. This new line will be the first of the Železnice Srbije since the dissolution of the former Yugoslavia.
• The start of the expansion work on the Ruma – Batanjnica route for speeds of 160 km / h was set for March 1, 2013, and the work for the double-track expansion of the Belgrade – Pančevo route was set for February 1, 2013 with funds from the Russian loan.
• The Ministry of Infrastructure, the Ministry of Urbanism and Construction, the Directorate of Železnice Srbije, as well as the city administration of Belgrade have the further concrete steps for completion in a joint meeting of the responsible ministers, the Lord Mayor and the Director of ŽS on August 28, 2012 of the Beograd centar (Prokop) station to complete the Belgrade railway junction in a coordinated process between the parties involved. It is expected that solutions for the connection to the urban road network of the city, the final expansion of the station building and the plans for the station area that will become vacant at the current main station in Belgrade will be worked out. The Beograd centar train station complex is planned as the city's central transport hub and is intended to bundle several modes of transport. In addition to its function for the railways, it is to become an intermodal terminal in the local public transport system with an underground station. The station will also meet all the core networks of the Serbian railways with the so-called corridor 10 from Subotica, Niš and Šid, as well as from Belgrade – Bar and Belgrade – Vršac.
• Within the framework of the Chinese economic development in a specialized development fund for Central and Eastern Europe, most of the 15 Eastern Central European countries involved are currently being carried out in Serbia. The central project is the high-speed line Budapest - Belgrade. This project was announced by the Prime Ministers of China, Hungary and Serbia on November 26, 2013 at the second China-CEE summit in Bucharest. China provides the funds required for this in the CEE fund (Central-East European countries); in addition to the infrastructure loan, Chinese know-how is used in construction and operation. For the third China-CEE meeting in Belgrade in December 2014, the signing of the contract for the high-speed line is being prepared in the presence of Li Keqiang . The transitory railways of Southeast Europe are generally a strategic focus of China. As a result, the intermodal network in the container port of Piraeus , which the Chinese state-owned company China Ocean Shipping (Group) Company (COSCO for short) has leased 50% for a period of 35 years as a cargo handling center in Southeast Europe for Chinese goods destined for the EU, will be one Improvement of the transitory goods transport on the China-Balkan countries-EU relation accomplished.
• Russia, which invested $ 3 billion in Serbia up to 2014, has also emerged as the main investor in Serbia's energy ($ 2 billion) and railway infrastructure ($ 800 million) in recent years. During the state visit of Vladimir Putin on October 16, 2014, the Russian State Railways ratified the open anekse about the modernization of Železnice Srbije in the presence of the Russian President . RŽD -International is thus renewing essential components of the Serbian main lines. Another agreement provides for the purchase of 27 diesel-electric multiple units for regional traffic, which will be supplied by Metrowagonmasch . The ŽS had already received 12 diesel-electric multiple units from Metrowagonmasch between 2010 and 2012. The first trains in the new tranche will run on the ŽS routes no later than 15 months after the contract has been signed.
• The Russian State Railways will also be entrusted with the modernization of the rail management and control system ( dispatcher ) of Železnice Srbije, for which the Minister of Construction, Transport and Infrastructure Zorana Mihajlović on October 23, 2013 with the Director of the RŽD Vladimir Jakunin , and the Russian Transport Minister Maxim Yuryevich Sokolov met in Moscow at the International Conference on Rail Tariffs.

vehicles

→ Main article : List of locomotive and multiple unit series of the ŽS

passenger traffic

Long-distance and intercity transport

The Gosa Z1 car is used on international ŽS routes.

The ŽS serve international routes to Germany, Austria, Italy, the Czech Republic, Russia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria as well as to Switzerland, Ukraine and Turkey. In addition, there is at least one daily connection to all former Yugoslav republics as well as seasonal trains to the Adriatic coast. The Jadran Express runs once a week in summer on the Belgrade – Split route, while the Panonija motorail train runs daily between Subotica – Novi Beograd – Bar. After a break of almost 20 years, the ŽS has again been serving a connection to Sarajevo across Croatian territory since December 13, 2009. A rail connection via Skopje to Thessaloniki together with the Greek railway company OSE was discontinued from February 1, 2011 for economic reasons. The ICS (Raška) 580/581 Belgrade – Kraljevo and ICS (Morava) 590/591 Belgrade – Niš were temporarily discontinued in 2011 for intercity connections.

The following types of train are used in long-distance and intercity traffic:

• EuroCity , or EC for short
• InterCity Srbija , ICS for short
• Brzi voz , Brzi for short- corresponds to the former German express train and is used by the ŽS on the main routes abroad (Hungary, Austria, Bulgaria, Turkey, Croatia, North Macedonia, Romania). Most of them run as night trains .

Tariff offers

The ŽS offer reduced tariffs through global prices with 20 to 60 percent discounts for long-distance transport. In addition to Railplus and InterRail, there are international tariff agreements for the transport of people in the form of the Balkan Flexipass, City Star / Sparpreis (among others Munich Special, Vienna Special, Budapest Special, Doboj Special, Sarajevo Special), and SparSchiene (Salzburg, Vienna). There are additional bilateral collective agreements with railway companies in Croatia , Slovenia and Hungary , as well as for trips to Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Slovakia, the Czech Republic, Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Moldova, Lithuania and Russia.

Museum railways

The cabinet room of former Yugoslav communist President Tito in Plavi voz

A JDŽ 83 on the Šarganska osmica

The ŽS operate several museum railways with historical train compositions. Narrow gauge trains run on the Šarganska osmica between Šargan Vitasi and Višegrad in Bosnia. Between 1926 and 1974 it was once part of the Adriatic route Belgrade – Dubrovnik – Zelenika, which connected the Danube plain and the Adriatic coast. As a mountain railway with a 760 mm gauge, it is occasionally used by steam locomotives such as the JDŽ 83 . The trains pass through mountainous regions of western Serbia with a varied landscape between the Drina valley and the Zlatibor and Tara mountains.

The composition Romantika has been traveling between Belgrade and alternating destinations in Vojvodina and central Serbia since 1996 . It is used seasonally for popular traditional folk festivals and events, such as the wine days (including "Karlovačka berba grožđa") in Vršac , Sremski Karlovci , Palić and Smederevo , or for trips to the thermal baths of the Vrnjačka Banja such as the cultural manifestation in Despotovac ( Manasija Monastery ) . The composition consists of first, second and third class cars from the 1930s, as well as a dining car that is pulled by a steam locomotive.

The former Yugoslav President Josip Broz Tito's Plavi voz, which used to run for state events, is a historic luxury train with its salons, which is marketed for tourists at irregular intervals. The composition of the mahogany, cherry and walnut saloon carriages for Plavi voz includes a representative salon for state ceremonies, three saloon cars with apartments, a kitchen, a dining car and a locked car transporter. Overall, the Plavi voz has a capacity of 92 places with 90 beds. The last used diesel locomotives of the JŽ series 666 (EMD JT22CW-2) come from General Motors and were introduced in 1978.

Railway Museum

Railway Museum of the ŽS

The Railway Museum in the former Ministry of Transport and current headquarters of the ŽS in Belgrade is dedicated to the development of the Serbian railways . Founded in 1950, the museum opened in 1953 with a permanent exhibition. While the main building sets its tone with exhibits for the opening of the first Serbian railway line, the branch in Požega on the Belgrade – Bar railway line is committed to Serbia's narrow-gauge railway development.

philately

Special stationary from the Yugoslav Post on the occasion of the start of construction work on the Vračar tunnel in 1976

Special stationary from the Yugoslav Post on the occasion of the opening of the Belgrade – Bar line in 1976

The Yugoslav and Serbian Post issued various postage and special stamps on certain events, such as the annual Railway Day.

literature

• Bogdanović, Boško (ed.) 1929: Jubilarna knjiga državnih železnica Kraljevine Jugoslavije: 1919 - 1929 = Anniversary Book of the State Railways of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. Belgrade, 506, CLXVIII S., 5th plate, 3 f. Kart.
• Milan Grujić: Železnice Srbije. Želnid, Belgrade 2004, ISBN 86-7307-165-8 .
• Svetolik Kostadinović: Jugoslovenske železnice 1945 - 1995. Monografija Zajednice jugoslovenskih železnica. Želnid, Belgrade 1997.
• RG Plaschka, AM Drabek, B. Zaar: Railway construction and capital interests in the relations of the Austrian with the South Slavic countries. Austrian Academy of Sciences, Vienna 1993. (Publications of the Commission for the History of Austria, Vol. 19).
• Southeastern Europe Studies: Middle East transport problem - flows of goods seek their way; the traffic difficulties of trade with southeast Europe and the Middle East; Ship, road, rail; Results of an international expert seminar. Self-loss of the Südosteuropa-Ges., Südosteuropa Gesellschaft, Munich 1976.

Web links

Commons : Železnice Srbije  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Official website of the Serbian Railways

Individual evidence

1. ^ Zeleznice Srbije, September 18, 2011: Opšte informacije ( Memento of October 4, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
2. ↑ Železnice - akcionarsko društvo. b92.net, June 30, 2011
3. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, 1985. A historical geography of Europe 1800-1914 . Historical Geography of Europe, 3, 457-460, Cambridge University Press.
4. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, 1985. A historical geography of Europe 1800-1914 . P. 457
5. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 458
6. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 458
7. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 458
8. ^ Herbert Feis, 1930. Europe the World's Banker 1870–1914 . Council of Foreign Relations, pp. 293, New Haven Connecticut.
9. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 458
10. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 458
11. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 458
12. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 458
13. ^ Jovan Cvijić , 1912. Serbia's access to the Adriatic . Petermanns Geographische Mitteilungen, 58 (2), 361–364.
14. ^ Orme Wilson, 1971. The Belgrade-Bar Railroad: An Essay in Exonomic and Political Geography . Eastern Europe: Essays in Geographical Problems, GW Hoffmann (ed.), London.
15. ^ Arthur J. May, 1952. Trans-Balkan Railway Schemes . Journal of Modern History, 24, 352-367.
16. ^ NI Newbigin, 1952. Geographical Aspects of the Balkan Problem . Journal of Modern History, 24, 36-65.
17. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 459
18. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 459
19. ↑ Jovan Cvijić, ibid.
20. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 459
21. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 459
22. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, ibid. 460
23. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, 1985. A historical geography of Europe 1800-1914 . P. 460
24. ↑ Norman JG Pounds, 1985. A historical geography of Europe 1800-1914 . P. 460
25. ↑ МОМИР САМАРЏИЋ, "železnica" Посета Барона Хердера србиjи и први план за изградњу железнице  ( page no longer available , searching web archives )  Info: The link is automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (Engl .: The Visit of Baron Herder to Serbia and the first Plan for the Railway Construction)  
26. ^ Danica Milić: The plans to expand the railway in Serbia in the middle of the 19th century. In: Plaschka, Drabek u. Zaar (Edt.): Railway construction and capital interests in the relations of the Austrian with the South Slavic countries. Austrian Academy of Sciences. Publications of the Commission for the History of Austria, Vol. 19, pp. 31–43, Vienna 1993.
27. ↑ Peter Jordan, 1993: The development of the railway network in the area of ​​today's Yugoslavia (until 1918). In: Plaschka, Drabek u. Zaar (Edt.): Railway construction and capital interests in the relations of the Austrian with the South Slavic countries . Austrian Academy of Sciences. Publications of the Commission for the History of Austria, Vol. 19, pp. 13-30, Vienna.
28. ↑ Novosti, January 20, 2011 Topčider: Železnička stanica svedok istorije
29. ^ Banat's historical chronology for the last millennium. century. www.genealogy.ro, accessed April 27, 2011
30. ↑ 125 godina od dolaska prvog voza u Novi Sad. ( 125 years since the first train arrived in Novi Sad. ) Www.vojvodina.com, March 2008, accessed May 5, 2011
31. ↑ Mira Radojević, Ljubodrag Dimić 2014: Srbija u velikom ratu 1914-1918 . Srpska Književna Zadruga- Beogradski Forum za svet ravnopravnih, Posebna izdanja, Belgrade. ISBN 978-86-379-1257-6 Here pp. 165 ff., 177
32. ^ Friedrich Naumann, 1916: Bulgaria and Central Europe , Georg Heimer, Berlin. P. 51
33. ↑ Retours - This edition of retours is a prerelease of the informative iPad app Orient Express History that will be available in early October Propaganda vehicle during the first World War - Balkanzug
34. ↑ Historiek, Arjan de Boer, 23 September 2015 De Balkanzug: propagandavoertuig tijdens de Eerste Wereldoorlog
35. ^ FAZ, February 3, 1916 With the first Balkan procession from Berlin to Constantinople
36. ^ Deutschlandradio Kultur, contribution by Cornelia Rühle Maiden voyage 100 years ago: With the Balkan train from Berlin to Constantinople
37. ^ Image from the Hui Doorn archive with the festively decorated Nišam train station on January 18, 1916
38. ↑ Jezdimir C. Nikolić 1980: Istorija Železnica Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne Gore i Kosova . Zavod za novinsko-izdavačku i propagandnu delatnost JŽ, Beograd. P. 240
39. ↑ Jezdimir C. Nikolić 1980: Istorija Železnica Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne Gore i Kosova . P. 50
40. ↑ Jezdimir C. Nikolić 1980: Istorija Železnica Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne Gore i Kosova . P. 51
41. ↑ Jezdimir C. Nikolić 1980: Istorija Železnica Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne Gore i Kosova . P. 51
42. ↑ Mira Radojević, Ljubodrag Dimić 2014: Srbija u velikom ratu 1914-1918 . P. 265
43. ↑ Mira Radojević, Ljubodrag Dimić 2014: Srbija u velikom ratu 1914-1918 . P. 266
44. ↑ Draško Petrović, Železnički saobraćaj i modernizacija Kraljevine Srba, Hrvata i Slovenaca / Jugoslavije nakon ujedinjenja [1]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 129 kB)  
45. ↑ Hamburg Institute for Social Research, brochure accompanying the exhibition: Crimes of the Wehrmacht - Dimensions of the War of Extermination 1941-1944 Crimes of the Wehrmacht (PDF; 1.6 MB)
46. ^ Jezdimir C. Nikolić, 1980: Istorija Železnica - Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne Gore i Kosova. P. 351, Želnid, Belgrade.
47. ↑ References to Ploesti, Rumania from a USAAF WWII Chronology
48. ↑ Воздушный бой 866 ИАП с американцами (Р-38) 11 ноября 1944 г. ( Memento from August 7, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
49. ↑ November 7, 1944 ( Memento from September 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
50. ^ Jezdimir C. Nikolić, 1980: Istorija Železnica - Srbije, Vojvodine, Crne Gore i Kosova. P. 369, Želnid, Belgrade
51. ↑ ibid. JC Nikolić, p. 387.
52. ↑ Veliki Geografski Atlas Jugoslavije, p. 215. Zagreb, 1987.
53. ↑ Enciklopedija Jugoslavije, Vol. 6, Jap-Kat, p. 465, Zagreb, 1990.
54. ↑ Gerhard Burbah, Vreme 585, March 28 2002 Gerhard Burbah, ekspert za železnice Brzi promašaji Srbije
55. ↑ Roland Baier, Todays railways, 1998 Yugoslav railways split by war ( Memento from July 6, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
56. ↑ ibid, Roland Baier
57. ^ The Independent, April 2, 1999 War In The Balkans: Nato top brass put on the defensive
58. ↑ Zezeljev most over the Danube ( Memento from June 2, 2007 in the Internet Archive )
59. ↑ Glas Srpske, April 13, 2007 Sjećanja mašinovođe na bombardovanje u Grdeličkoj klisuri
60. ↑ Eight years from the bombing of an international train at the railway bridge in Grdelica Gorge ( Memento from September 9, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
61. ↑ Paolo Benvenuti, The ICTY Prosecutor and the Review of the NATO Bombing Campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (PDF; 164 kB)
62. ↑ Final report to the Prosecutor by the Committee established to review the NATO bombing campaign against the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (PDF; 228 kB)
63. ↑ WJ Frenick, Targeting and Propornality during the NATO Bombing campaign abainst Yugoslavia (PDF; 92 kB)
64. ^ Politika, November 5, 2012 Osam sati odiseja
65. ↑ ^{a b} Archive link ( Memento from December 30, 2011 in the Internet Archive )
66. ↑ Danas, September 8, 2004 Sto dvadeset godina železnice u Srbiji ( Memento of September 8, 2004 in the Internet Archive )
67. ↑ Građevinska delatnost . zeleznicesrbije.com. Archived from the original on October 4, 2011. Retrieved on 2011-09-2011.
68. ↑ Report of the World Bank, 2005 Railway reform in the Western Balkans  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 503 kB)  
69. ↑ Report of the World Bank, 2005 [2]  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 503 kB) RAILWAY REFORM IN THE WESTERN BALKANS  
70. ↑ ibid. World Bank report, 2005
71. ^ World Bank: 2008–2009 Railway Reform in South East Europe and Turkey: On the Right Track? SERBIAN RAILWAYS. (PDF; 354 ​​kB)
72. ↑ Master plan of the Serbian Ministry of Infrastructure: Railway Transport Generalni Master plan saobraćaja u Srbiji - Aneks II: Ţelezniĉki saobraćaj  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 6.2 MB)  
73. ↑ Svetlana Mitrović Mesto i uloga srpskih ţeleznica u EU i pravci njenog unapređenja  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 720 kB)  
74. ↑ Република Србија Министарство за инфраструктуру, Саобраћајни инстутут ЦИП железуникчки коридорх бридорх
75. ↑ Federal Agency for Foreign Trade, December 17, 2008 Serbia wants to modernize railway corridor X from 2010  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
76. ↑ RTV, October 15, 2008 Динкић: Постигнут договор с Немачком о модернизацији железнице
77. ↑ Government of Serbia, October 24, 2008 Помоћ "Дојче бана" у изради мастер планова за реконструкцију железнице на Коридору 10
78. ↑ RTS, December 16, 2008 Меморандум за унапређење српске железнице
79. ↑ http://mi.gov.rs/mostovi_files/Aneks%20II%20-%20Zeleznicki%20saobracaj.pdf  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
80. ↑ Vecernje Novosti, August 23, 2011 Reconstruction of the pruga za brzine do 200 kilometara na sat
81. ^ Danas, March 4, 2011 Brza pruga do Budimpeste novi prioritet drzave
82. ↑ B92, October 20, 2011 Podržati brze pruge
83. ↑ Alpina gradi železnički most (video)
84. ↑ Nova pruga do 2013. godine  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
85. ↑ CIP Glavni projekat reconstruction i modernizacije pruge Gilje - Ćuprija - Paraćin
86. ↑ Кинези повезују Србију и Мађарску  ( Page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Ministarstvo saobracaja Republike Srbije, February 19, 2013  
87. ↑ Kineske kompanije žele da grade brzu prugu Beograd-Budimpešta China Radio International, February 20, 2013
88. ↑ ^{a b} Strait Times, Nov. 26, 2013 China to work with Hungary and Serbia to modernize railway
89. ↑ ^{a b} Li Keqiang , Nov. 26, 2013 Greetings across rivers and mountains ( Memento from December 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
90. ↑ ^{a b} Xinhua, Nov. 27, 2013 Economic interests, traditional friendship, cohesive forces in China-CEE relations ( Memento from December 8, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
91. ↑ ^{a b} China Daily, Nov. 26, 2013 China to play a key role in Serbia-Hungary high-speed railway
92. ↑ ^{a b} Danas, Nov. 25, 2013 U Bukureštu o brzim prugama Srbije
93. ↑ Kineske kompanije Žele since grade brzu prugu Beograd-Budimpešta
94. ↑ ^{a b} Website of the Prime Minister of the Government of Hungary, Nov. 26, 2013 Hungary, Serbia and China agree on developing Budapest-Belgrade railway ( Memento of December 2, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
95. ^ ^{A b} Government of Serbia, Nov. 25, 2013 Joint project for modernization of Budapest-Belgrade railway agreed on
96. ↑ ^{a b} Dačić: Kina želi da investira milijarde, Srbija je u prednosti
97. ↑ ^{a b} Global Times, Nov. 27, 2013 High-speed train technology supports diplomatic efforts
98. ↑ ^{a b} China Daily, Nov. 27, 2013 Railway pact would put relations on fast track
99. ^ Government of the Republic of Serbia Chinese companies want to develop business in Serbia
100. ^ Government of the Republic of Serbia Serbia, China to co-host summit of leaders of Central, Eastern Europe
101. ↑ RTV, June 5, 2020 Probijena leva cev tunela Čortanovci na budućoj brzoj pruzi - korak bliže ka bržem putovanju
102. ↑ CIP Pruga Valjevo-Loznica
103. ↑ Za prugu potrebno 250 miliona evra. Neizvesna gradnja trase Valjevo-Loznica ( Memento from February 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )
104. ↑ http://www.novosti.rs/vesti/naslovna/aktuelno.239.html:347774-Pocinje-realizacija-projekata-iz-ruskog-kredita
105. ↑ http://www.blic.rs/Vesti/Ekonomija/281012/Mrkonjic-Ugovori-za-tri-projekta-iz-ruskog-kredita
106. ↑ ARD, March 13, 2017 Serbia: Accursed Railway Line
107. ↑ Danas, November 10, 2008 Železnica poremetila stari poredak
108. ↑ Saobracajni institut - CIP Beogradski železnički čvor
109. ↑ Večernje Novosti, December 8, 2008 Budžet piše investicije
110. ↑ Blic, December 16, 2008 Španci "leče" gradsku železnicu ( Memento from December 17, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
111. ↑ Јутрос кренуо први воз нове градске железнице од Новог Београда до Панчевачког моста. Belgrade City website, September 1, 2010, accessed October 13, 2010
112. ↑ Ministarstvo Infrastrukture, 2009: Generalni Master plan saobraćaja u Srbiji Završni izveštaj - Aneks II Generalni Master plan saobraćaja u Srbiji Završni izveštaj - Aneks II  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 6.2 MB)  
113. ↑ RTS, December 10, 2008 Modernizacija železničkog Koridora 10
114. ↑ Železnice Srbije, November 7, 2008 Železnice Srbije "potpisale ugovore vredne 23.4 miliona evra, za modernizaciju pruge Batajnica-Golubinci ( Memento from December 8, 2008 in the Internet Archive )
115. ↑ Železnice Srbije “Serbian Railways” and European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) have concluded 100 million euro agreement ( Memento from December 20, 2015 in the Internet Archive )
116. ↑ SEEbiz, Oct. 29, 2009 Ruski credit: Srbija traži 13, Rusi nude 10 godina otplate
117. ↑ http://www.rts.rs/page/stories/sr/story/13/Ekonomija/765348/Makedonci+uz+SHS.html
118. ↑ http://www.mondo.rs/s184745/ex-YU/Mrkonjic_ispratio_prvi_voz_Kargo_10.html
119. ↑ http://www.mondo.rs/s221037/Info/Kargo_10_samo_sto_nije_vec_godinu_dana.html
120. ^ The Economist, September 16, 2010 Balkan railways - From Berlin to Beijing?
121. ↑ New EBRD funds to improve rail infrastructure in Serbia € 100 million ( Memento from September 22, 2010 in the Internet Archive )
122. ↑ Počinje gradnja novog Žeželjovog mosta
123. ↑ StudioB, September 14, 2011 Železnice Srbije kupile novi putnički voz ( Memento of March 3, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
124. ↑ PRUGA, October 15, 2011, Realizacija ruskog kredita od 800 miliona dolara sve izvesnija - Završeni prvi projekti. Vol. 967, p. 3.
125. ↑ Tanjug, October 18, 2011 Potpisani ugovori o remontu vozova ( Memento from September 17, 2012 in the web archive archive.today )
126. ↑ Blic, May 21, 2012 Za zavrsetak Prokopa 26 mio. evra (PDF; 1.5 MB)
127. ↑ Železnice Srbije, July 2, 2012 "Železnice Srbije" i italijanski konzorcijum potpisali Ugovor o izgradnji nove pruge Gilje-Paraćin ( Memento from August 7, 2012 in the Internet Archive )
128. ↑ B92, August 26, 2012 Nema vise prepreka za ruski kredit
129. ↑ Government of Serbia, August 28, 2012 Железнички чвор "Прокоп" развојна шанса за читаву земљу
130. ↑ Ministry of Infrastructure, August 28, 2012 Prokop razvojna sansa Beograda i Srbije  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
131. ↑ Politika, August 29, 2012 Prokop pomirio tri strane
132. ↑ Li Manciang, Ambassador of the People's Republic of China in Serbia in an interview with Politika, October 19, 2014 Запад не треба да се плаши успешне Кине (Eng. The West does not have to fear China)
133. ↑ RZD, Russian Railways - International cooperation: Serbia Russian Railways develops rail infrastructure in Serbia
134. ↑ ^{a b} Potpisana dva ugovora iz ruskog kredita
135. ↑ President of Russia, October 16, 2014 Talks with Serbian Prime Minister Aleksandar Vucic
136. ↑ RZD Press release, October 16, 2014 ООО "РЖД Интернешнл" и АО "Железные дороги Сербии" подписали дополнительные соглашения на реконструкцию участков трансъевропейского Коридора Х и поставку дизель -поездов. - RZD International and AO Serbian State Railways have reached an agreement on the reconstruction of the Trans-European Corridor 10 and the delivery of diesel multiple units.
137. ↑ Metrowagonmash, Press release October 21, 2014: Метровагонмаш поставит Сербским железным дорогам 27дизель-поездов Метровагонмаш поставит Сербским железным дорогам 27 дизель-поездов - Metrowagonmash returns the Serbian Railways 27 diesel multiple units ( Memento of 25 October 2014 in the Internet Archive )
138. ↑ Ministarstvo Gradevinarstva, Saobracaja i Infrastrukture, October 23, 2014 Сарадња са РЖД на модернизацији диспечерског центра "Железница" Србији
139. ↑ Od 13th decembra voz Beograd-Sarajevo . autobrief.com. Archived from the original on October 26, 2009. Retrieved May 20, 2011.
140. ↑ Inter Siti Serbia  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
141. ↑ Barbara Gruber, Deutsche Welle, June 2007 "Yugo-Nostalgie" - Tito's Blue Train
142. ↑ Plavi voz - Voz mira ( Memento from September 19, 2009 in the Internet Archive )