Direct Belgrade-Sarajevo rail link restored

15/12/2009

The train resumed operations Sunday, almost two decades after war stopped it in its tracks.

(Independent, EurActiv, Emportal, Reuters - 14/12/09; AP, Euronews, BBC, Radio Netherlands, The Times - 13/12/09; B92 - 12/12/09; Reuters - 09/12/09)

A railroad worker stands by the train headed for Belgrade, at Sarajevo's railway station, on Sunday (December 13th). [Getty Images]

The direct railway line linking Belgrade and Sarajevo began operating Sunday (December 13th), nearly 18 years after it ended, as the former Yugoslavia was plunged into wars in the early 1990s that eventually led to its disintegration.

The train between the Serbian and Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH) capitals will run once daily, for 31 euros round-trip. The journey in one direction, which lasted about six hours in the past, takes more than eight today, due to the new borders along the 500km rail route via Croatia and the poor condition of the track.

In pre-war Yugoslavia, the service was available three times a day and was popular with skiers and businesspeople. Each of the fancy Olympic Express trains, hailed as the pride of the multi-ethnic federal state in the 1980s, had at least a dozen fully-packed carriages.

As the service resumed Sunday morning, 17 people boarded Express 451 in Belgrade, with only nine of them booked for the full journey to Sarajevo. Another train pulled off from the railway station in the BiH capital with about ten passengers on board.

Each train had three carriages -- one passenger car belonging to the railway company of BiH's Serb-run entity, Republika Srpska, another to the country's Muslim-Croat entity, the Federation of BiH (FBiH), and a restaurant car belonging to Serbia. This is the only carriage where travellers are allowed to smoke, provided the train is not on Croatian territory.

But, with their smeared windows and shabby seats, they were a distant semblance of the carriages that covered the route in the past.

Nevertheless, officials voiced hope that the upcoming winter holidays and the low ticket price will help attract more people to the service.

"I don't think traffic will be fully restored to pre-war levels. At best it might reach 50%," Namik Hajric, chief conductor in the FBiH rail company, told Reuters last week, adding that more carriages could be added if needed.

But the scars left by the conflicts of the early 1990s have not fully healed and reconciliation between the peoples of the two former Yugoslav republics has been slow.

More than 100,000 died during the 1992-1995 conflict in BiH, with about a tenth of them killed during the 43-month siege of Sarajevo by forces under the command of former Bosnian Serb General Ratko Mladic.

One of the travellers who boarded the new Express 451 in Sarajevo on Sunday told Euronews he was both "sad and joyful", while another described it as "some kind of historic moment".

Belgrade lawyer Branko Rogosic, one of those onboard the train that took off from the Serbian capital, appeared to share that emotion.

"This is really a special event to make this connection again," the AP quoted him as saying Sunday.

It was a momentous day for the train's engineer, Dusan Bosnjakovic, as well.

"I'm proud to take the first train to Sarajevo after so many years," the British daily Independent quoted him as saying. "It's good that links between people are being rebuilt again."