Sava River Gorge, a 20-mile long, twisting cut through the mountain range some 25 miles east from Ljubljana is to me what the New River Gorge in West Virginia is to Scott Lothes, Kevin Scanlon, and other eastern railfans. Two-track mainline, the river, and the road are all squeezing between the 1,200 feet high, steep and rock slide-prone slopes, and everywhere where the side valleys join the gorge there is a small town with the station. Actually the coal found there in the medieval times was the reason for their existence, just as it was the reason why the famous 19th century railroad constructor Carl von Ghega decided in 1845 to build this line, connecting Vienna with Adriatic port of Trieste, through this gorge and not through the easier Tuhinj valley more to the north. Now all the mines are closed down and, what an irony, instead of being exported, the coal for the remaining thermal power plant is imported fro Czech Republic.
Weekends are not the best time for railfanning here as the number of trains, reaching over 200 daily on the workdays, is more than halved; still, what remains assures that you are rarely waiting more than 15-20 minutes for a train. However, as I was afraid this will be the only day I'll have the chance to catch this year's fall colors (which turned to be true), I wanted to seize as much as I can, so I woke up at 4 am and I was already on the spot at the first station in Gorge, Zagorje, at 5 am, then still deep in the dark. What I didn't know was the maintenance work on the catenary further east from the Gorge, which decreased the number of the trains even more, as well as caused up to 1 hour delays on the regular passenger trains and thus rendering the timetable completely useless. Still, until I left home around 2 pm I had some 30 trains on the cartridges.
The mixed-up train times contributed also to the few exciting moments - Still early in the morning I walked some 100 yards along the tracks to the place which I thought it will be a nice spot to catch the eastward Citadella express on a curve. Reaching the place I crossed the tracks an placed myself on a small concrete pillar, a remaining of a broken fence, barely 4 feet apart from the outer, westward track. The pillar was on the edge of a 20-25 feet high vertical retaining wall just above the narrow road, so the cars were practically passing by directly beneath my ass. As the eastward trains were not delayed by the maintenance works, the Citadella came right on advertised, glided past me with the horn-blowing greetings from the engineer, and disappeared behind the curve. I just wanted to rise and cross the tracks back when the westward Pohorje express, delayed some 20 minutes, appeared out of the very same curve. So I stayed tight, and while I was photographing the approaching train I wondered how forceful is the blow of the air pushed aside by the locomotive. Well, it was not strong enough to blow me off my seat and down to the road below, but somehow the photos of this train are not quite tack sharp... |
