The Belgrade–Bar railway ( sr, Пруга Београд–Бар, Pruga Beograd–Bar) is a

railway Rail transport (also known as train transport) is a means of transport that transfers passengers and goods on wheeled vehicles running on rails, which are incorporated in tracks. In contrast to road transport, where the vehicles run on a pre ...

connecting the Serbian capital of

Belgrade Belgrade ( , ;, ; Names of European cities in different languages: B, names in other languages) is the Capital city, capital and List of cities in Serbia, largest city in Serbia. It is located at the confluence of the Sava and Danube rivers a ...

with the town of

Bar Bar or BAR may refer to: Food and drink * Bar (establishment), selling alcoholic beverages * Candy bar * Chocolate bar Science and technology * Bar (river morphology), a deposit of sediment * Bar (tropical cyclone), a layer of cloud * Bar (u ...

, a major seaport in

Montenegro ) , image_map = Europe-Montenegro.svg , map_caption = , image_map2 = , capital = Podgorica , coordinates = , largest_city = capital , official_languages = M ...

Overview

Wiadukt kolejowy Mala Rijeka w Czarnogórze

The Belgrade–Bar railway is a

standard-gauge railway A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), International gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge and European gauge in Europe, and SGR in Ea ...

, long. Of this length, of the railway goes through Serbia, and through Montenegro. It is electrified with 25 kV, 50 Hz AC along the entire corridor. It passes through 254 tunnels of total length of and over 435 bridges (total length ). The longest tunnels are "Sozina", , and "Zlatibor", . The biggest and the best known bridge is Mala Rijeka Viaduct, long and above ground level. The highest point of the railway is at above mean sea level, at the town of

Kolašin Kolašin (Montenegrin Cyrillic: Колашин, ) is a town in northern Montenegro. It has a population of 2,989 (2003 census). Kolašin is the centre of Kolašin Municipality (population 9,949) and an unofficial centre of Morača region, named af ...

. The railway descends to 40m above mean sea level at Podgorica in a relatively short distance, thus the

gradient In vector calculus, the gradient of a scalar-valued differentiable function of several variables is the vector field (or vector-valued function) \nabla f whose value at a point p is the "direction and rate of fastest increase". If the gradi ...

of 25

‰ Per mille (from Latin , "in each thousand") is an expression that means parts per thousand. Other recognised spellings include per mil, per mill, permil, permill, or permille. The associated sign is written , which looks like a percent si ...

on this section. A small section of the railway actually passes through

Bosnia and Herzegovina Bosnia and Herzegovina ( sh, / , ), abbreviated BiH () or B&H, sometimes called Bosnia–Herzegovina and often known informally as Bosnia, is a country at the crossroads of south and southeast Europe, located in the Balkans. Bosnia and H ...

, near the town of Štrpci, and three trains per day stop there in each direction (though no border police is normally present) When the line was completed in the late 1970s, it took a train approximately seven hours to complete the trip from Belgrade to Bar. Today it takes 11 hours, due to speed restrictions, as the railway cannot safely sustain the projected speeds without being thoroughly rebuilt.

Stations

Bahnstrecke Belgrad-Bar (ohne Haltestellen)

History

Tito Otvaranje pruge Beograd Bar 2 (1 von 1)

The decision to build the railway connection between Belgrade and Bar was made in 1952, as a national project of the

Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as SFR Yugoslavia or simply as Yugoslavia, was a country in Central and Southeast Europe. It emerged in 1945, following World War II, and lasted until 1992, with the breakup of Yug ...

. However, the construction was passed to the constituent Republics,

SR Serbia , life_span = 1944–1992 , status = Constituent state of Yugoslavia , p1 = Territory of the Military Commander in Serbia , flag_p1 = Flag of German Reich (1935–1945).svg , p2 ...

and SR Montenegro, to build on their own. The sections of the railway were completed as follows: * Resnik –

Vreoci Vreoci ( sr-cyrl, Вреоци) is a suburban neighborhood in Belgrade, Serbia Serbia (, ; Serbian: , , ), officially the Republic of Serbia ( Serbian: , , ), is a landlocked country in Southeastern and Central Europe, situated at the c ...

in 1958 *

Podgorica Podgorica (Cyrillic script, Cyrillic: Подгорица, ; Literal translation, lit. 'under the hill') is the Capital city, capital and List of cities and towns in Montenegro, largest city of Montenegro. The city was formerly known as Titograd ...

– Bar in 1959 * Vreoci –

Valjevo Valjevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Ваљево, ) is a List of cities in Serbia, city and the administrative center of the Kolubara District in western Serbia. According to the 2011 census, the administrative area of Valjevo had 90,312 inhabitants, 59,07 ...

in 1968 * Valjevo –

Užice Užice ( sr-cyr, Ужице, ) is a city and the administrative centre of the Zlatibor District in western Serbia. It is located on the banks of the river Đetinja. According to the 2011 census, the city proper has a population of 59,747. The Cit ...

in 1972 * Užice – Podgorica in 1976 The construction works were concluded on 27 November 1975, by joining the railway tracks south of

. The railway was opened on 28 May 1976. Electrification was completed at the end of 1977. Maintenance of the Belgrade–Bar railway suffered from chronic underfunding during the

1990s File:1990s decade montage.png, From top left, clockwise: The Hubble Space Telescope orbits the Earth after it was launched in 1990; American F-16s and F-15s fly over burning oil fields in Operation Desert Storm, also known as the 1991 Gulf War ...

, which has resulted in the railway deteriorating and becoming unsafe. This culminated in the

Bioče derailment The Bioče derailment was a train crash on January 23, 2006 in Montenegro. At least 45 people, including five children, were killed and another 184 injured. It was the worst train disaster in Montenegrin history. Incident The derailment occurr ...

, when a passenger train derailed, causing the deaths of 47 passengers. As a result, efforts are being made to thoroughly reconstruct the railway. The Serbian part of the railway was targeted several times by

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two No ...

during its

bombing campaign A bomb is an explosive weapon that uses the exothermic reaction of an explosive material to provide an extremely sudden and violent release of energy. Detonations inflict damage principally through ground- and atmosphere-transmitted mechanic ...

in 1999, seriously damaging portions of the railway. Also, the small section that passes through

was blown up by

SFOR The Stabilisation Force in Bosnia and Herzegovina (SFOR) was a NATO-led multinational peacekeeping force deployed to Bosnia and Herzegovina after the Bosnian war. Although SFOR was led by NATO, several non-NATO countries contributed troops. It ...

ground forces. All of this damage was later repaired. In 2016, Serbia commenced a thorough reconstruction of the entire section on its territory. The aim is to make the line able to support the maximum speed of 120 km/h as originally designed. The first section, from Belgrade to Valjevo, which represents 27% of the Serbian part of the line, was due for completion during the summer of 2017., Serbian Railways official YouTube channel

Gallery

File:ZCG461 Virpazar.jpg, Former JŽ class 461 passing through

Virpazar Virpazar ( sr-cyrl, Вирпазар, ) is a village in the municipality of Bar, Montenegro. Overview It is located in the Crmnica region, straddling the Crmnica river, which flows into nearby Skadar Lake. There are various tourist facilities inc ...

References

External links