Slovenian Railroads (SZ) have finally scratched enough money to undertake the major reconstruction and maintenance works in the three tunnels between Pivka and Divaca on the Ljubljana – Trieste / Koper mainline. These tunnels are still original as built 152 years ago when this line, at that time named K.u.k Südbahn (Emperors and King's Southern Railway) and connecting the Austro-Hungarian Empire's capital Vienna with (then) Austrian most important port Trieste has been constructed. During the years several minor maintenance works were undertaken and, of course, the catenary wires were mounted during the electrification of the line, still in the prewar Mussolini's years, but all these interventions caused just ever greater leaking of the water, unknown in the early years of the tunnels' existence. The result was advancing deterioration of the tunnel walls and massive forming of the icicles during the winter time which, when broken by the pantograph of the passing locomotives, were flying all around as the thick chucks of ice and bouncing off the tunnel walls were causing the damage to the locomotives, car windows, and foremost to the automobiles on the auto racks
The reconstruction works will remedy this situation by cutting the vertical drainage grooves into the tunnel walls and plastering the walls first with the hydro-insulation and then with the thick layer of concrete applied with the shotcrete or gunite process in which the ready mix of concrete is sprayed with the high pressure onto the walls. Then, with the coming of the spring, the tracks and the roadbed will be removed, the ground will be lowered and covered with the concrete plates on which the rails will be fastened directly, gaining this way the higher clearance demanded by the ever increasing loads, especially the intermodal, and by bigger and bigger railroad cars.
Of course these works could not go by without me photographing them, and so these Tuesday I went into the two tunnels where the works were in progress. In one, called Kriziski Tunnel, near the Kosana station, they were cutting the drainage grooves, while in another one, close to the Gornje Lezece station the workers were spraying the first layer of the concrete.
The shooting conditions were far from what one could call rosy, you can imagine this. First the awful light, or better, the absence of it except for that provided by the couple of spot lights. Fortunately I am shooting digital, so I just cranked the ISO to the highest acceptable setting; with film I would have to resort to flash which would destroy the ambiance completely. Then there were the passing trains which I had to carefully avoid in the extremely narrow clearances. Finally, and the worst of all, there was enormous dirt, dust, and dripping liquid concrete. Just don't ask me how my cameras looked like when I brought them back to the daylight... I rather don't think how much of that ultra-fine concrete dust has managed to squeeze past the seals into the lens innards while I was zooming.
After I've cleaned the cameras as much as I could I took few shots of the second work train being prepared and loaded with the concrete and water for the next turn at Gornje Lezece station, made the series of portraits of the sympathetic rookie station mistress there (these shots will follow in few days), and then I sat down into my car and drove home, hoping that dirty and dusted as I was I won't need to get out of it before my home.
