Milot – Klos railway line

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Milot loos
Bridge over the Fan west of Rrëshen, today used as a road
Bridge over the Fan west of Rrëshen, today used as a road
Route length: 63 km
Gauge : 1435 mm ( standard gauge )
Legend
Route - straight ahead
 by Vora
Station, station
 54.70 Milot 19  m above sea level A.
   
 to Shkodra
   
 SH1
   
 6300 Skuraj 27  m above sea level A.
   
 63.20 Mat
   
 70.50 Rubik 50  m above sea level A.
   
 fan
   
 fan
   
 fan
   
 Big fan
   
 SH30
   
 Little fan
   
 7900 Rrëshen 90  m above sea level A.
   
 Beginning of the unfinished route
   
   
 Small Tarazh Bridge
   
 Great Tarazh Bridge 500 m
   
 Prosek tunnel 1000 m 200  m above sea level A.
   
 Route without major construction work, with planned bridges
   
 Ulza reservoir bridge 400 m, only partially built 130  m above sea level A.
   
 Route without major construction work
   
 Karica
   
 Route without major construction work
   
 Burrel 170  m above sea level A.
   
 Route without major construction work, with planned bridges
   
 Mat
   
 Route without major construction work, with planned bridges
   
 Mat
   
 Mat
   
 SH6
   
 Kukakin
   
 11800 Toilets 270  m above sea level A.

The Milot – Klos railway is a planned 63-kilometer branch line in Albania , which should lead from the Durrës – Shkodra railway into the hinterland to Klos at Milot . It should simplify the transport of goods from the mining areas of Mirdita and Mat .

Around 26 kilometers of the single-track, non-electrified line went into operation in 1989. The line was never completed and was completely shut down again in the second half of the 1990s. It was operated by the Hekurudha Shqiptare .

history

The railway line was built primarily to better connect the important chrome and copper mines in Rrëshen , Burrel and Bulqiza and the enrichment factories in Rubik and Klos.

Original plans provided for two different branch lines that should separate six kilometers east of Milot and follow the two rivers. The direct connection to Mat was given up in favor of a wide arc to the north through the Mirdita and a connection from there to the south. This made it possible to bypass the technically difficult passage in the narrow valley of the Mat in the Skanderbeg Mountains.

Work began in 1986. For years, the construction was largely carried out by young people and students who worked without machines with the simplest of tools in operations organized by the party . Only the planning, the construction of the nine concrete bridges and the tunnels as well as the blasting was carried out by skilled workers. Official media announced in July 1989 that 25,000 young people had been involved in the construction of the route. It was one of the largest building projects in the final years of the People's Socialist Republic . The section to Rrëshen was opened in 1989, but passenger traffic was not started until January 1995.

In some places it was falsely reported that the whole line had been put into operation.

“Rrëshen is the end of the branch line. In many maps, however, toilets are indicated as the end point, but this is not the case. The section between Rrëshen and Klos is largely completed, but was never put into operation. "

- Status report 1996
Railway bridge near Klos, never used for rail traffic

The construction of the continuation by a military construction regiment is said to have lasted until 1992. However, there was no longer any reason to continue building the route, as the mines near Klos were closed or hardly produced anything.

A short piece of the 1994 film Lamerica was filmed on the tracks east of Milot.

The condition of the expanded Milot – Rrëshen line was judged to be extremely poor, with speed restrictions of five kilometers per hour in place. In 1996 only one pair of trains ran daily, and on November 11, 1996, passenger traffic between Milot and Rrëshen was suspended. In June 1998, with the resumption of rail traffic after the lottery uprising, the Rubik – Rrëshen section, which had been partially destroyed, was completely abandoned, and from Milot to Rubik there was only freight traffic. Nevertheless, studies have been drawn up to extend the route from Rrëshen to Prizren in Kosovo .

From 2002 the rails of the Milot – Rrëshen railway line were used to re-establish the line from Shkodra to the Montenegrin border , where after the lottery uprising the rails had been illegally dismantled and sold as scrap metal.

course

Level crossing at the Zogu Bridge in 1994 with the gatekeeper's house to the left of the street

The route began practically at sea level in Milot in the northern Albanian coastal plain, which was connected to the Albanian rail network in 1963 . At the exit of the station ⊙ , the line branches off from the track leading to Lezha . First it led west along the southern bank of the Mat . After a little over six kilometers, she turned north and followed the east bank of the Fan to Rubik ⊙ with its copper factory. In the further course, again leading west to Rrëshen , the route was mostly on the north bank. In total, the fan was crossed three times and shortly before the entrance to the train station in Rrëshen ⊙ , bridges were built over the large and small fans.

The following stretch from Rrëshen to Klos was never put into operation. However, the route can still be easily traced in the terrain today thanks to the superstructure made up of railway embankments , partially completed bridges and tunnels , which was completed over long distances . Sources name a total of six kilometers of engineering structures and four tunnels with a total length of 2.2 kilometers for the northern section of the route to Burrel , the location of which, however, cannot be fully understood if they were included in the final planning. Another source speaks of 148 bridges with a total length of 7000 meters and four tunnels with a total length of 2300 meters for the entire route.

Tarazh Bridge east of Rrëshen

From Rrëshen the route followed the north slope of the Zmeja valley slowly increasing in height to the southeast. After about five kilometers, she turned south at the village of Tarazh to cross the valley in an almost 500 meter long bridge ⊙ and to dive into the hill country of the southern Mirdita. The 16-pillar bridge is known in some places as the longest railway bridge in Albania. The at around 300  m above sea level. A. running watershed was passed in an approximately one kilometer long apex tunnel near Prosek, the portals (north portal ⊙ ; south portal ⊙ ) at around 200  m above sea level. A. found. As a result, it went down to the mat pool. A little south on the north bank of the Ulza reservoir ( 129  m above sea level ), several branches of the water would have had to be crossed with bridges - but no traces of these structures can be seen on satellite images. The move to the south bank was planned at a 400 meter wide narrow part of the lake - construction of the bridge ⊙ has already started here. The route then followed the Mat to the south and passed Burrel to the east at the Matbrücke. Traces of the superstructure can hardly be seen at Burrel. A few kilometers further south, it can be seen more clearly again thanks to the completed railway embankments and various bridges that crossed the meandering river. Around three kilometers before Klos there is still a bridge over the SH 6 ⊙ road . The train station of Klos ⊙ and thus the end of the line was at the southern exit of the village.

Current condition

The track systems, if they ever existed at all, were completely removed with very few remains near Rrëshen.

Motorway near Rubik on the old railway line

Today there are hardly any traces left of the Milot – Rrëshen line. The A1 motorway from Milot to Kukës was built on the old route in this area from 2006. The first remains appear shortly before Rrëshen, where the motorway branches off to the northeast: Railway bridges, railway embankments and road underpasses still characterize the landscape at the confluence of the small and large Fan. Only a few buildings remain of the Rrëshen train station.

Ruins of the partially built train station and cargo handling facilities in Klos

Further south between Rrëshen and Klos, numerous remnants of the route can still be seen in the rural, less structurally altered area: it can be reconstructed almost without any problems. The route and rail insulation, as well as some of the completed bridges, are now used in many places as traffic routes for pedestrians and local motorized traffic.

In Klos there are still building remains of the planned train station.

In spring 2012, the Fiks Fare program addressed the misuse of the infrastructure of the former railway line: private companies used the former facilities to extract construction gravel and scrap iron.

literature

  • Johanna Schubert: With the railroad campaigners . In: German-Albanian Friendship Society (Hrsg.): Albanische Hefte . No. 1 , 1988, ISSN  0930-1437 , pp. 31 .
  • Jochen Blanken: During the construction of the Milot - Rrhëshen - Kurbenesh railway line . In: German-Albanian Friendship Society (Hrsg.): Albanische Hefte . No. 1/2017 , November 2017, ISSN  0930-1437 , p. 23 f .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Eberhard Rieber: Albania Railway Map / Railway Map of Albania . Quail Map Company, Exeter 1990, ISBN 0-900609-68-0 .
  2. ↑ T669.net - Hekurudha Shqiptare ( Memento from April 2, 2016 in the Internet Archive )
  3. ^ Karl Schappelwein: Mining and energy industry . In: Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Hrsg.): Albanien (=  Südosteuropa-Handbuch . Volume VII ). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-525-36207-2 , pp. 381 f .
  4. ↑ Gerhard Gürsch: By bus and train through the land of Skipetars . Bufe-Fachbuch-Verlag, Egglham 1986, p. 100 .
  5. ↑ Gerhard Gürsch: By bus and train through the land of Skipetars . Bufe-Fachbuch-Verlag, Egglham 1986, p. 92 .
  6. ↑ a b Jochen Blanken: During the construction of the Milot - Rrhëshen - Kurbenesh railway line . In: German-Albanian Friendship Society (Hrsg.): Albanische Hefte . No. 1/2017 , November 2017, ISSN  0930-1437 , p. 23 f .
  7. ↑ a b A. Ndoja: 30 vite më parë. Photo gjatë ndërtimit të hekurudhës Milot-Rrëshen, nga Jochen Blanken. In: Pirusti-News. November 21, 2017, archived from the original on December 1, 2017 ; Retrieved November 21, 2017 (Albanian).
  8. ↑ a b c d Reinhard Dietrich , Norbert Hertweck, Helmut Müller, Joachim Weisser: The Albanian Railway (HSH) . In: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Eisenbahngeschichte eV (Ed.): The Albanian Railways - A status report from autumn 1996 (=  Railways and museums. Monographs of the DGEG . Volume 44). Self-published, Karlsruhe 1998, ISBN 3-921700-76-0 , p. 9 .
  9. ^ Raymond Hutchings: International Trade, Transportation, Supply and Communications . In: Klaus-Detlev Grothusen (Hrsg.): Albanien (=  Südosteuropa-Handbuch . Volume VII ). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, ISBN 3-525-36207-2 , pp. 406 .
  10. ↑ a b Opening Dates of HSH Standard Gauge Lines. April 23, 2004, accessed May 21, 2017 .
  11. ↑ a b HSH Network. September 9, 2012, accessed May 21, 2017 .
  12. ^ John Pike: Albania: Infrastructure Regiment. In: GlobalSecurity.org. Accessed May 21, 2017 .
  13. ↑ Lamerica (from 0:49:32) on YouTube
  14. ^ HSH Network. April 2004, accessed on May 21, 2017 .
  15. ↑ Geoff Sarbutt, Frank Valoczy: HSH Albanian Railways - Hekurudha e Shqiperise. Accessed May 21, 2017 .
  16. ↑ a b c The unfinished route: Milot - Rrëshen - Burrel - Klos (two-part report). In: Drehscheibe-Foren.de. September 24, 2011, accessed May 21, 2017 .
  17. ↑ Gerhard Gürsch: By bus and train through the land of Skipetars . Bufe-Fachbuch-Verlag, Egglham 1986, p. 79 .
  18. ↑ Arqile Bërxholi, Perikli Qiriazi: Albania. Geographical overview . 8 Nëntori, Tirana 1987, Verkehrsgeographie, p. 158 .
  19. ↑ a b c d The unfinished route: Milot - Rrëshen - Burrel - Klos (part 2, 40 B.). In: turntable online. September 26, 2011, accessed May 21, 2017 .
  20. ↑ Official map 1: 50,000 of the military cartographic office of Albania, sheet K-34-76-D Rrësheni , 2nd edition, Tirana 1990
  21. ↑ AL route Milot-Rreshen- (Burrel-Klos) part 2 (28 B.). In: turntable online. May 24, 2009. Retrieved May 21, 2017 .
  22. ↑ Hekurudha Milot-Rreshën-Klos, traseja që shndërrua në rrugë makine. In: Te Sheshi. November 12, 2015, Retrieved May 21, 2017 (Albanian).
  23. ↑ Milot-Rrëshen, firm vjedh zhavorrin e hekurudhës. In: Shqiptarja.com. April 19, 2012, Retrieved May 21, 2017 (Albanian).