Bulgaria &c. Mountain Train Back to Sofia

Monday, March 13, 2017

I caught the 10:10 train from Dobrinishte to Septemvri. This is a narrow guage (1) mountain railway starting at 834 meters elevation at Dobrinishte. From here to Balitsa (about 25 kilometers), the train is used mostly by locals (mainly older people and students).

                    The Train at Dobrinishte

The coaches are heated with steam, with the excess released through pipes out from the bottom side of the cars. At Balitsa, a train came from the other direction, and a steamy mist enshrouded the narrow platform and the trains.

                     Trains meet at Balitsa

After Balitsa (elevation 773 meters) the serious climbing starts. There are a number of times the train does a complete circle, crossing over itself to gain elevation. As we climbed the mountains, it began snowing (a wet Spring snow that clung to the trees). We reached the highest station on the line (and the highest in the Balkans) at Avramovo, at an elevation of 1,267 meters.

         The highest rail station in the Balkans

The descent then began, with the tracks at one point spiralling through 540 degrees to lose elevation, passing through numerous tunnels on the way. I had opened the window to get a better view. The conductor was sitting a few rows in front of me; she turned around and started talking to me in Bulgarian. I wondered: Was she scolding me for the open window? Asking me to sit down (I was kneeling on the seat to get a better view because the window opened from the top)? Neither. She pointed to the lights and was asking whether I wanted her to turn on the lights as we passed through the many tunnels. I said "no thanks" in Bulgarian.

       Entering one of the 35 tunnels on the line

A friend told me about a novel by the Japanese writer Kawabata called "Snow Country" that begins with:

“The train came out of the long tunnel into the snow country.”

From Tsvetino onward, we picked up some more local passengers. After Velingrad, we passed through a beautiful narrow gorge before arriving at Septemvri, and a connection to the standard guage line back to Sofia.

(1) The standard rail guage (i.e., width between the rails) used in most of North America, Europe and China is 4 feet 8 1/2 inches. The rails on this Bulgarian line line are 760 mm, or about 2 feet, 5 15/16 inches apart (sometimes called the Bosnian guage). Narrow- guage lines are most common on mountainous terrain where construction costs (especially related to the width and height of the tunnels) would otherwise be too expensive.