The Belgrade–Bar railway () is a railway connecting the Serbian capital of Belgrade with the town of Bar, a major seaport in Montenegro.
Overview
The Belgrade–Bar railway is long, of which is in Serbia and is in Montenegro. It is standard gauge and electrified with 25 kV, 50 Hz AC for its entire length. 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 above mean sea level, at the town of Kolašin. The railway descends to above mean sea level at Podgorica in a relatively short distance, resulting in a gradient of 25‰ on this section.
A short section of the railway passes through Bosnia and Herzegovina, where there is a station at Štrpci.
When the line was completed in the late 1970s, the trip between Belgrade and Bar took approximately 7 hours. Today, the same trip takes around 11 hours due to speed restrictions necessitated by poor track conditions and border controls at Bijelo Polje.
Stations
History
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. However, the construction was passed to the constituent Republics, SR Serbia and SR Montenegro, to build on their own.
The sections of the railway were completed as follows: Resnik – Vreoci in 1958 Podgorica – Bar in 1959 Vreoci – Valjevo in 1968 Valjevo – Užice in 1972 Užice – Podgorica in 1976
The construction works were concluded on 27 November 1975, by joining the railway tracks south of Kolašin. 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, which has resulted in the railway deteriorating and becoming unsafe. This culminated in the Bioče derailment, 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 during its bombing campaign in 1999, seriously damaging portions of the railway. Also, the small section that passes through Bosnia and Herzegovina was blown up by SFOR ground forces. All of this damage was later repaired.
In 2016, Serbia started a thorough reconstruction of its portion of the line in order to restore its original maximum speed of . The first section, between Belgrade and Valjevo (27% of the Serbian part of the line) was completed in 2017, with speeds of up to 120 km/h, however Serbian Railways Infrastructure later stated trains reached speeds of 100 km/h, causing some confusion as to what the maximum speed actually is.
Gallery
See also
Serbian Railways
Rail transport in Montenegro
Tito's Blue Train
JŽ series 461 commonly operated over the Bar-Belgrade line. Based on a Swedish design. JŽ class 412/416 Latvian EMU CAF Civity EMU JŽ 661 Shunter/Montecargo JŽ 644 Shunter/Montecargo JŽ 744 (none of them is active) Shunter/Montecargo JŽ D66/761s (DB Class V 200 based engines) of Tito's Blue Train. JŽ 666s (EMD JT22CW-2s) of Tito's Blue Train