Antivari train
The Antivari Railway was a narrow-gauge railway from Bar ( ital. Antivari ) on the Adriatic Sea to Virpazar on Lake Skadar . The railway line with a gauge of 750 millimeters was the first railway in Montenegro .
history
Long-term discussions about a rail connection from the Danube in Serbia to the Adriatic caused interest in the Kingdom of Montenegro in a route through Montenegrin territory at the beginning of the twentieth century. While Serbia would have preferred a route through Kosovo and Albania (the then still Ottoman territories) at that time, Prince Nikola of Montenegro managed to arouse Italian interests in railway construction in Montenegro in 1905, who recognized it as a potential access to the Balkans.
On November 2, 1908, the railway line built by the Italian "Compagnia di Antivari" was opened to traffic. The line was designed as a narrow-gauge railway with a gauge of 750 millimeters. She had to overcome the obstacle of the up to 1600 m high Rumija Mountains between the Adriatic Sea and Lake Skadar. For this purpose, the track was laid with a maximum gradient of 40 per thousand. The numerous hairpin bends , including a roundabout , up to the Sutorman Pass, which was driven under in a crest tunnel at 640 meters above sea level , as well as the line down to Virpazar, had minimum radii of 30 meters. Due to these characteristics, the railway was not very efficient and shortly after it opened, doubts arose that it could ever become part of a main line. Freight trains could only carry an average load of 27 tons. The locomotives all came from German production and had special chassis designs due to the narrow radii, so mallet locomotives were used as well as designs with Klien-Lindner hollow axles . Steam railcars were also used for passenger transport.
The Compagnia di Antivari also operated a shipping line on the lake and endeavored to continue the line on its northern bank to Podgorica . A crossing of the foothills of the lake on a dam, as will be done by the later standard gauge line, was not planned. This project was not realized before the outbreak of the First World War . During the war, the narrow-gauge railway was used as a supply line for the Austrians between 1916 and 1918, and the construction of the railway from Donja Plavnica to Podgorica with a gauge of 600 mm also fell at this time. However, civil traffic was not started on this route until 1927.
In 1959, a new standard-gauge line between Bar and Podgorica was opened as part of the planned Belgrade – Bar line. The new railway now crossed the mountain range in a tunnel and the foothills of the lake on a dam. Since there was no longer any need in the extremely sparsely populated mountain region, the narrow-gauge railway was discontinued in 1960.
Relics
The railway line has been almost completely preserved and is partly used as a road or driveway. It is very easy to understand in aerial photographs. Two locomotives were preserved and were erected as monuments at the train stations in Bar and Podgorica, together with wagons.
literature
- Keith Chester: The Narrow Gauge Railways of Bosnia-Hercegovina , Trans-Balkan railway shemes and the Novibazar railway project, pp. 382-387, Frank Stenvalls Förlag, Malmö 2006, ISBN 91-7266-166-6
- Keith Chester: The Railways of Montenegro - the Quest for a Trans-Balkan Railway , Frank Stenvalls Förlag, Malmö 2016, ISBN 978-91-7266-194-3
- Röll's Encyclopedia of Railways, 1912 edition, article Montenegro Montenegro - Zeno.org