Danube-Adriatic Railway

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Danube-Adria-Bahn is a historical term for a route network of some realized and some then planned railway lines , which ran or should run in the area of ​​Serbia and Albania as well as later Yugoslavia . The Danube-Adriatic Railway was a transport policy project that arose from the geopolitical rivalries on the Balkan Peninsula before the outbreak of the First World War. After the First World War, the original plan was no longer implemented in the greatly changed route on the Belgrade – Bar line.

historical overview

In 1912 a route variant of the Danube-Adriatic Railway, presented by Jovan Cvijic, was published, which provided for the Adriatic connection of Serbia from Meradare via Kosovo Polje to the Drin Gulf on the Albanian coast through the results of the First Balkan War.

At the beginning of 1908 Austria had received permission from the Ottoman Empire to undertake preliminary studies for the construction of the Sandschak Railway in the Sandschak . This coup was considered sensational and promptly led to countermeasures in the European capitals competing with Austria-Hungary, where diplomatic channels were also used to inquire about railway concessions on Ottoman territory from the Sublime Porte. As compensation for the concession to Austria, Serbia demanded a formal commitment from the Ottoman Empire to allow parallel studies for the passage of a Danube-Adriatic railway on Ottoman territory. With the exception of Great Britain, all other major European powers joined forces behind the Serbian cause. On the other hand, the Austrian coup led to an explosive mood in Pan-Slavic journalism, which forced the Russian Foreign Minister Alexander Iswolski, despite his doubts about the profitability of the Danube-Adriatic Railway, to back Serbia with all his might. Isvolsky expected unequivocal approval of the Serbian plan from the Sublime Porte; he sent circular notes to the foreign offices of Great Britain, Austria and Germany in order to put pressure on the Ottoman Empire. The British Cabinet approved the idea of ​​the Danube-Adriatic Railway and wanted to see it implemented simultaneously with the Sandschak Railway, but avoided official support for Serbian wishes. Russia asked the German Empire in Constantinople to agree to the plan; After a brief hesitation on Wilhelmstrasse, Kaiser Wilhelm II promised through direct intervention with the Austrian and Ottoman governments that they would approve the plan. The Russian Foreign Ministry praised this German support as a friendly demarche to its allies. Austria had withdrawn all objections, but Austrian Foreign Minister Lexa Aehrenthal called the Danube-Adriatic Railway plan a crude trap . Conrad von Hötzendorf , Chief of Staff of the Army, was a vehement opponent of Serbia's railway plans and believed that they would ultimately benefit Italy, which had its own aspirations on the east coast of the Adriatic. Although Austria's political approval of the Danube-Adriatic Railway was valid, Aehrenthal avoided making it public. Rather, he wanted to offer Serbia access via the Bosnian narrow-gauge railway, which, however, did not offer Serbia any long-term prospects, as its use ultimately depended on Austria's will.

Most active behind Serbia's plans was Italy, which offered to finance the port facilities, while France would finance the route. In June 1908 the treaties for this were signed in Paris; British, Russian and Serbian capital should also participate in the construction. As a result, the Russian-Serbian Adriatic Railway project had received the backing of Italy and France, which England also resisted. Since this Danube-Adriatic Railway crossed the Austro-Hungarian project of the Sandschak Railway at a 90 ° angle, further and often unforeseen implications followed with every further political change on the restless peninsula.

In 1908 a company was founded for the Danube-Adriatic Railway in Paris and a port on the Albanian coast was chosen. During this phase, Serbia transferred its application for the Danube-Adriatic concession to the French-controlled syndicate that operated the railway line between Thessaloniki and Constantinople. When Aehrenthal announced the annexation of Bosnia and Herzegovina in the autumn of 1908, Serbia demanded a small strip of land to access the Adriatic Sea as compensation from the Ottoman Empire and the right to build a railway there. Italy stood behind this request, but in the end Serbia had to accept the new facts in Bosnia without having advanced the Danube-Adriatic Railway a millimeter. In 1909 Turkey allowed preliminary investigations for the construction of the Danube-Adriatic Railway, but these never moved. Although the Serbian aspirations did not subside afterwards, just as the French and Italian support remained constant, the German attitude cooled noticeably.

A new phase and a changed context came with the Balkan Wars of 1912–1913. Serbia entered the war against the Ottoman Empire primarily to solve its isolation with the Adriatic question. In addition to the sovereign control over "Old Serbia", the territories that were on the way of the Danube-Adriatic Railway were conquered one after the other. Nikola Pašić requested a coastline of 35 miles on the Adriatic coast with the Albanian hinterland. For this, however, he received no support from Russia, which feared a major conflict with the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. Pašić assured that there would be no maritime base in the port; the suspicion that Russia was behind these plans was not dispelled in Austria, Italy or Great Britain. But Austria was not interested in Serbia's access to the Adriatic for another more important reason: it feared that Serbia would gain economic strength and thus not comply with the dictates of the Danube Monarchy and pursue the political goal of a Greater Serbia at the expense of Austria-Hungary.

After the Serbian army was able to prevail in the First Balkan War against the Ottoman army at Kumanovo , Prilep and Bitola (Monastir), two armies were commissioned to advance to the Adriatic Sea via Albania. The First Army advanced via Prizren and Djakovica into the Drim area and the Miridita on the Via di Zenta, the stronger Second Army on the Via Egnatia from Ohrid via Elbassan to Durres. The appearance of the Serbian armies, more than any other outcome of the Balkan Wars, stirred up rivals for control of the eastern Adriatic coast. On November 12, 1912, the cavalry stood on the coast near Alessio, which brought Serbia into direct conflict with the interests of the European powers in the Adriatic-Mediterranean region. From this developed the further antagonism between the continental Central European powers around the control of the Eastern Adriatic compared to those of the maritime Western European powers together with Russia, which tried to prevent their advance on the Eastern Adriatic.

With the appearance of Serbian armies on the Mediterranean, the possibilities of the railway line on the route Prahovo-Zaječar-Niš-Pristina-Bar (via Durres) were updated in the following political negotiations. Via the natural breakthroughs of Timok , Nišava , Toplica and Drim , the aim was to bypass the most difficult mountain stretches at topographically favorable waymarks and to lead the railway over the Albanian coast to the sea. The Belgrade-Bar route, as it was later built over the Lim in western Serbia and the Morača in Montenegro, was not considered feasible at the time, as it had to cross numerous difficult cross valleys and passes. Therefore , after the results of the First Balkan War were initially in favor of Serbia , Jovan Cvijić recommended a different route than the current one:

“For a Serbian-Adriatic rail connection, only the Drim and Matja contour line can be considered. Even if you want to take the train from Serbia only to the Montenegrin port of Antivari [Bar], you have to guide it through the contours of the Drim and Mtja. Another line of rails further north would have to cross the Dinaric mountain ranges of over 2000 m. Hardly feasible, it would in any case not represent an economic, but only a tourist train. "

- Jovan Cvijić (1912): Serbia's access to the Adriatic . In Petermann's Mitteilungen from Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt, 58, Berlin. Here p. 362)

As a result, Austria-Hungary captured Albania to prevent Serbia from accessing the Adriatic. An ultimatum was given to Serbia that any territorial claims on the Albanian coast were grounds for war. Conrad von Hötzendorf took exactly this position in the dangerously escalating controversy; Austria would at most grant Serbia a corridor via Albania if it did not accept the Bosnian route favored by Conrad von Hötzendorf. The case became a question of the prestige of the Danube monarchy; a territorial concession to Serbia was out of the question for the monarchy. Russia supported the Serbian wishes for a while, but in danger of risking a conflict with Austria-Hungary and Germany, Sergei Dmitrijewitsch Sasonov swung in on Austria-Hungary's suggestion that Serbia use an internationally guaranteed port on the Albanian coast for itself economically and this was entitled to a railway corridor via Albania. The Russian Pan-Slavic press then left no good hair on Sasonov. France had given the Serbian wishes more strongly, and even Germany considered the question of the Albanian coast to be too irrelevant to wage war. Wilhelm II declared that Germany “under no circumstances would the Albanian cause or Durres' will wage war with France or Russia”. In the situation in which the question of the Albanian ports also affected Italy, which leaned more towards Austria's opinion, albeit for different reasons, Great Britain tried to assume the role of an honest broker. In the situation, Edward Gray called an ambassadors conference in London. This saw the claims of Serbia for an Adriatic rail connection as legitimate; the port was intended to serve the country's economic needs, but not military purposes. At the first meeting of the conference on December 17, 1912, the general plan of the Danube-Adriatic Railway, presented by the Russian representative Alexander Konstantinowitsch Benckendorff, was adopted:

“L'acces commercial sera réserve à la Serbie par un port albanais libre et neutre dsservi par un chemin de fer internationale sous le control eruopéen et mis sous la garde d'une force spécial internatinale avec liberté de transit pour toutes les marchandises y compris les munitions de guerre "

- Edward Gray, Twenty-five years, 1892-1916; New York 1925, 256-257

Austria insisted in particular that a future Serbian port in Albania could only be used militarily in peacetime, which was the only point of contention. All the other ambassadors at the conference agreed to a Russian objection; the port was intended for the importation of war material without restriction. A formal protocol was ratified in London on July 1, 1913.

Nevertheless, Serbia's further interest in the economic use of an Albanian free port with an internationally monitored rail connection slackened. Greater importance was attached to the port facilities of Thessaloniki, and Austria also tried to make the connection via Bosnia more palatable to Serbia. When further attempts were made to revoke the concessions which Serbia had received in London, a route was presented to the world in the "Times" of March 24, 1914.

The first segments of the Danube-Adriatic Railway within the borders of Serbia were completed in 1914, a further section opened in January 1915, but none of them was ever built in Albania. Ultimately, the First World War turned the Adriatic question into an all-or-nothing case. After Serbia had decided in the Declaration of Niš to solve the South Slavic question by founding Yugoslavia, the Adriatic question became the central point in the Yugoslav project, for which there would no longer be any partial solutions, as the projected state claimed the entire Adriatic coastal region as far as Istria . After the First World War, Serbia got almost the entire east Adriatic coast as part of the new Yugoslavia, on which some excellent ports were located. The railways planned before 1914 were given different courses, in which economic calculations dominated political dreams.

In the idea of ​​the Trans-Balkan Railway, in the words of Arthur J. May, “in the minds of the decision-makers in Belgrade, strategic and political goals with the desire to score points in the Great Game prevailed in any case until 1914, the goal of which was to unite the South Slavs at the expense of the Ottoman and Habsburg empires was “ .

As of 1912

Danube-Adriatic Railway

Heinrich von Wittek (1844–1930) was a railway expert and u. a. from November 20, 1897 to May 1, 1905 during several governments of Austrian railway ministers. The 10-volume Encyclopedia of Railways (1912-1923) (3rd volume 1912 ) published by Freiherr von Röll (1852-1922) contains an article entitled “Donau-Adria-Bahn”.

“Danube-Adria-Bahn (see map, Plate VII). Under this name, various railway lines, most of which are still in the planning and preliminary stages, are grouped together with the aim of providing the inland areas of the Balkan Peninsula south of the Danube, in particular Serbia and Bulgaria, but also the provinces of the Ottoman Empire bordering them as direct as possible To open rail route to the east coast of the Adriatic Sea. One of these railway lines - the Austro-Serbian through Bosnia and Hercegovina - has already been expanded and put into operation in its main part, which falls within the new borders of the Austro-Hungarian monarchy. With the exception of a short trunk section in Montenegro, the remaining lines have not progressed beyond the project stage. What they all have in common is the low prospect of an imminent realization, which is opposed to a number of the most serious difficulties: high mountains that graze along the coast and therefore hinder adherence to the direction of travel, impassable mountains inhabited by restless and warlike tribes, lack of security, lack of resources, cultural and economic backwardness of the traversed area, costly construction and operation, rivalry and conflicting interests of the states involved.

In the direction of traffic from the interior of the Balkan Peninsula to the Adriatic, there is - as already mentioned - as far as the inland areas of Bosnia and up to now also the southwestern border area of ​​Serbia are considered, a fully operational railway connection created by the Austro-Hungarian monarchy: the with the narrow gauge of 76 cm on mostly standard-gauge substructure from the Serbian border near Vardište via Višegrad and Ustipraća-Gorazda to Sarajevo (140 km), which is in the same-lane Bosnian-Hercegovinian national railway Sarajevo-Mostar-Gabela-Metković (188 km) and Gabela-Hum-Uskoplje (96 km) as well as in the adjoining narrow-gauge Uskoplje-Gravosa (24 km) of the Dalmatian State Railways has a continuation to the Adriatic Sea after the two mentioned Dalmatian ports. The length of the railway from the Serbian border at Vardište to Metković is 328 km, to Gravosa 444 km. All that is required is to fill in the gap in the Serbian railway network between Vardište and Užice, which is assumed to be about 40 km long, and the provisional endpoint of the 45 km long continuation under construction to Čačak, which is already in operation and with a gauge of 76 cm Railway line Stalatz-Kruševatz-Kraljevo-Čačak (107 km) to connect to the standard-gauge main line Belgrade-Nisch near Stalatz. This would already create a direct rail connection between the center of Serbia, the forest and cattle-rich Šumadja, with the Adriatic ports of Dalmatia. A further improvement would be achieved through the implementation of the planned continuation of the wing runway branching off the main Belgrade-Nish line at Lapovo to Kragujevatz (29 km) to Kraljevo (50 km). After filling the gap between Vardište and Užice or Čačak, the length of the railway from Kraljevo would be around 450 km to Metković and around 565 km to Gravosa. The railway line in question can be described as the Austro-Serbian D. (1 on the map).

Of the other railway lines proposed in the course of the last few years and made the subject of preliminary technical work, two must be mentioned for the time being, partly because of their technically deficient design, partly because of the conflicting political-military interests of Turkey, without whose cooperation they could not be carried out. actually should have left the circle of the plans to be considered. First of all, [392] the Montenegrin railway project (2), the connection of the above-mentioned Montenegrin railway from the 75 cm wide Antivari-Virpazar (18 km) with unusual curves and gradients, which was built and put into operation by an Italian company Seaport via Rijeka on the north bank of the Skadar Lake through the Podgorica plain, then ascending in the Moraca or Taratale and after translating several watersheds through the Sanjak Novipazar west-east in the uppermost Lim and Ibartale strives to connect to the oriental railways in Mitrovica, from where the Continuation to Serbia in Ibartale should take place via Raška-Kraljevo. The length of this railway line, for which no detailed project has yet to be carried out, can be estimated from Virpazar to Mitrovica at around 250 km, from there to Raška (Serbian border) at around 50 km and further to Kraljevo at around 60 km, see above that the total distance Antivari-Kraljevo can be assumed to be about 380 km. In one of the »Österr. Rundschau «of March 15, 1911, published by an outstanding professional essay on the Danube-Adriatic Railway, the complete hopelessness of the Montenegrin railway project with reference to the almost uninhabited karst area of ​​the steep ramp rising to the Sandschak border and the extremely unfortunate repeated change of gauge demonstrated - Serbia has adopted the Bosnian gauge of 76 cm for its new railway lines, including Kraljevo-Stalatz, Antivari-Virpazar has a gauge of 75 cm and extremely unfavorable operating conditions. In addition, there would have been Turkey's insurmountable reluctance to allow the Sanjak to be crossed by a railway line that connects Montenegro with Serbia.

The second of the railway projects to be discussed here is the Serbian Danube-Adriatic Railway project (3). Its route starts from the Montenegrin port of Antivari, at best from the coastal town of S. Giovanni di Medua not far from Alessio and, after including Skutari, repeatedly uses the valleys of the Black and White Drin to reach Pristina via Djakova and Prizren, where the Mitrovica itself -Salonian line of oriental railways is crossed. The continuation from the Amselfelde is to lead up in the Labtale over the saddle of Prepolatz (873 m above sea level) on the Turkish-Serbian border near Mrdare and then in the Toplicatale down over Kuršumlje and Prokuplje to Nisch, i.e. follow the route that was already in the 1960s of the last century the consul v. Hahn, not without a threat from the Albanians who settled there, visited and described on his wagon journey from Belgrade to Salonich, which opened up the inner Balkans, as an alternative to the railway line that has since been implemented via Leskovatz, Vranja, Kumanovo. The length of the railway from Antivari to Nisch, the connection point of the Serbian standard gauge Timoktalbahn via Knjazewatz and Zajcar to Kladova on the Danube (opposite Turn-Severin), is 380 km, of which 278 km are on Turkish territory.

It is obvious that such a line, which for Turkey, because of the long passage in its territory, is associated with considerable financial sacrifices, and which opens a second line of operations to Serbia after the Amsel field, could not have been granted by the Porte without important political and abandon military interests. Nevertheless, regardless of the initially negative attitude of the Porte towards this plan, against which the Society of Oriental Railways protested its concession rights, the plan in question, with an albeit extensive change of the line in the southern part from Prizren, is in the series of those planned Railway lines have been included, the routing and subsequent expansion of which was assigned to the French construction company Regie generale des chemins de fer in Paris by the Turkish government through a contract signed at Constantinople on July 30, 1911.

The line, now known as Northern Albania, was to follow the original route of the Serbian Danube-Adriatic Railway at Mrdare to the Serbian Toplica Valley Railway to be built via Pristina to Prizren, from here, however, instead of westward via Djakova through the Malissoren area into the valley of the Black Drin and to strive through its gorges to the Adriatic coast towards Alessio and Skutari, turn south and reach Dibra in the valley of the White Drin up to its confluence with the black Drin and along the upper course of the latter river, from where the continuation to the coast in the Mirditenlande according to the route described later for line 5 through the Bulčič Mountains and in the Matja valley to Alessio, S. Giovanni di Medua and Skutari [393]. The length of the railway from Nisch to the next point on the coast has been increased from 380 to at least 430 km due to the changed route. The central part of the new line replaced the route proposed by the Turkish War Ministry from Uesküb via Kalkandelen and then in the uppermost Vardartal up via Gostivar to Dibra. Monastir was intended as the center of the Albanian railway network, which city - the main Turkish arsenal in Albania - was to be connected to Dibra via Ochrida. The southern Albanian line was supposed to start from Ochrida, which would reach the Adriatic coast at Reschadie via Gorica and Janina, but was hardly considered for the Danube-Adriatic traffic direction.

Of the projects of the Danube-Adriatic Railway, there are those that, in contrast to projects 2 and 3, which arose from the unilateral efforts of Montenegro and Serbia and which do not deny the latter even in their later transformation, in the first row apparently in to establish the background of the interests of the Ottoman Empire.

The same occurred in the older of these projects, which also found warm sympathy in Italy at the time, in a connection that at the same time promoted the local intentions of an economic opening up of Albania and Macedonia from the west. The planned railway line was to be the closest to Italy, only 50 nautical miles away from Brindisi, at the same time the best port on the Albanian coast, Valona, ​​approximately parallel to the ancient Roman Via Egnatia, touching the Skumbital near Adalit, then around Lake Ochrida and Prespa lead around to Monastir and come into contact with Prilip in Uesküb, from where the connection with Serbia via Mitrovica by means of the planned Sandschak Railway to Uvac-Vardište and those with Bulgaria by the expansion of the long-planned connecting line Kumanovo-Egri Palanka to the Bulgarian railway line Sofia- Pernik-Radomir-Küstendil had to take place. The length of this railway line, which can be referred to as the Turkish-Bulgarian D. (4), should be around 350-360 km from Valona to Uesküb, and that of the line from Kumanovo to the Turkish-Bulgarian border at Egri Palanka with around 80 km so that Turkey had around 440 km to build, all on its own territory. The construction difficulties in the 150 km stretch from Adalit to Monastir are said to be hard to overcome. This fact alone, perhaps also the consideration that the entry of the overseas western neighbor into Albania and Macedonia should not be made too easy, have pushed the Turkish-Bulgarian rail project into the background. The more recent, purely Turkish D. (5), which the Porte eagerly pursued, appeared to be the current railway project under the given circumstances, albeit less in line with the wishes of Serbia and Montenegro. It started from the Turkish coastal place of San Giovanni di Medua, where port construction was planned, and was supposed to reach Dibra via Alessio, then in the Matjatale up to 350 m above sea level, after tunneling the small Bulcic Mountains through a side valley of the Black Drin. The further route was originally planned so that the line from Dibra to the northeast in the valley of the Goulema, a tributary of the Black Drin, going upwards, after breaking through the watershed by means of a tunnel only 2 km long, enters the uppermost Vardar valley and this at 900 m above sea level via Gostivar and through the Tetovo-Polje to Kalkandelen, from where, after an easy translation of the foothills of the Suha gora in Uesküb, it would find the connection to the Salonich main line. The track length would then have been around 240 to 250 km. The important arsenal of Monastir would initially have remained out of contact, but could have achieved one in the future without any particular difficulty, incidentally already owned it with Salonich.

As a connection to the above-described railway line against Bulgaria, instead of the approximately 75 km long, easy connection described in Project 4 via Kumanovo and Egri Palanka to the Bulgarian railway Küstendil – Radomir – Pernik – Sofia, a line was proposed that, from the Salonich main line at Velese (south of Uesküb) branching off, leads up in the Bregatnicatale via Istip and Kotschana to Čarevo. The overall length of this connection line on Turkish territory can be estimated at around 130 to 150 km. It runs through sparsely populated mountainous terrain in the upper reaches of the Bregatnica, has to overcome the watershed to the Strumatale and is burdening Bulgaria with the construction of the more difficult connecting line Radomir-Dupnica-Čarevo, which is about 20 km longer, and because of the change in the line layout [394] in Turkish Albania with a very considerable extension of the route to the Adriatic. Regardless of these disadvantages, the project of the Bregatnicalinie was maintained for military reasons in the last agreements between the Turkish government and the Régie générale and included in the series of railway lines to be laid and executed by this company. On the other hand, the agreement in question brought far-reaching changes - as mentioned earlier - for the routing of line 5 from Dibra, which now does not go via Gostivar and Kalkandelen to Uesküb, but northwest along the Black and White Drin via Prizren to Pristina to connect to the Serbian Toplicatalbahn Mrdare and was to be connected to Monastir by a line branching off at Dibra via Ochrida. Traffic from Bulgaria to the Adriatic would therefore be referred from Radomir to the detour route via Čarevo-Istip-Prilip-Monastir-Ochrida-Dibra (510 km) which is at least 150 km longer than the rail route via Kumanowo-Uesküb-Kalkandelen-Dibra (360 km) .

There is no doubt that the railway project described above as the newer Turkish railway project 5 would have offered the most favorable prospects from the project lines discussed here in technical and construction-economical terms. Its execution would, as it would have been natural, have best served the interests of the main state involved - Turkey - and would also have brought certain advantages to the other interested parties, not excluding Montenegro in the case of the expansion of a connection line to Scutari, which would accrue to them without significant financial sacrifices . Serbia, which seems to have resisted the implementation of the Uesküb-Kalkandelen-Dibra-Medua line, would, if it were implemented, a consistently standard-gauge rail connection via Nisch, Leskovatz, Vranja, Uesküb, Kalkandelen, Dibra, Alessio to the seaport of S. Giovanni di Medua, whose total length from Stalatz, however, should be around 500 km. Instead of this line, according to the last agreements of the gate, Serbia was to receive the line Mrdare-Pristina-Prizren-Dibra-Bulčičgebirge-Matjatal-Alessio-Medua, which was about 470 km long from Stalatz is to be estimated, which however has far less favorable technical and traffic conditions. After all, Serbia would have done best if the Turkish-Albanian railway projects had changed the route, whereas the Austro-Hungarian monarchy would have come off worst due to the failure of the Sanjak Railway and Bulgaria through the detour to the sea. In any case, Turkey would have had to bear the lion's share of the construction and operational burden of difficult and unproductive lines. As early as the summer of 1912, the turmoil in Albania meant that the agreements with the Regie generale, insofar as they concern the planned railway construction in European Turkey, were mutually canceled. The outcome of the Balkan War will also determine the fate of the Danube-Adriatic Railway. "

Literature: Newspaper of the Association of German Railway Administrations, No. 65 and 67 from 1908. - Österr. Rundschau from March 15, 1911. Vedette - supplement to the foreign paper - from the same day. - Handelsmuseum, No. 16, from April 20, 1911. - Neues Wiener Tagblatt from July 31, 1911.

See also

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: Trans-Balkan Railway Schemes . The Journal of Modern History, No. 24/4 (Dec. 1952), pp. 352-367. Here p. 357
  2. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 357
  3. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 357
  4. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 357
  5. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 358
  6. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 358
  7. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 357
  8. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 359
  9. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 359
  10. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 360
  11. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 361
  12. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 361
  13. ^ Jovan Cvijić 1912: Serbia's access to the Adriatic . In: Petermann's Mitteilungen from Justus Perthes' Geographischer Anstalt, December 58, 1912, p. 361, Berlin.
  14. ^ Jovan Cvijić 1912: Serbia's access to the Adriatic . P. 361
  15. ↑ Dimitije Djodjević 1980: p. 10
  16. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 361
  17. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 362
  18. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 363
  19. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 363
  20. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 363
  21. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 364
  22. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 365
  23. ↑ Dimitije Djodjević 1980: p. 13
  24. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 365
  25. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 366
  26. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 366
  27. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: pp. 366-367
  28. ↑ Dimitije Djodjević 1980: p. 13
  29. ↑ Arthur J. May 1952: p. 367
  30. ^ Danube-Adriatic Railway. In: Viktor von Röll (ed.): Encyclopedia of the Railway System . 2nd Edition. Volume 3: Braunschweigische Eisenbahnen – Eilgut . Urban & Schwarzenberg, Berlin / Vienna 1912, p.  391 ff. (With map).
  31. ^ The Turkish Railway Projects . In:  Neues Wiener Tagblatt , No. 208/1911 (XLV. Volume), July 31, 1911, p. 1. (Online at ANNO ). Template: ANNO / Maintenance / nwg.