Archive for the ‘Croatia’ Category
Part 2: Hungary, Slovenia, Croatia, Slovenia, Hungary, Austria
A much needed full week away! There will be a couple of parts to this as I managed to take quite a few photos, by my standards anyway, and as we did a whistlestop tour there is enough variety to (hopefully) keep it interesting.
So having crossed the Danube at Komarno – Komaron, we were in Hungary for until Monday afternoon, when the tension was mounting as a V43 whisked us east towards Hodos. The week basically hinged on this – we were looking for a possible last blast on the Citadella but with two ‘Tony’ 2016 silent junk out and about, would we be bowled? No, 664106! They even found a 363 to work forward, Thanks Very Much SZ! We then pottered around Croatia on 2044s for a couple of days before going for a three-legged 664 move on the Friday – both Citadella’s and the overnight. Once again we’d pleased the right people as all three dropped ‘biblical volume’ 664s – even got the pen out twice taking me to 11 of the 20. Don’t know if I’ll get another though with the wires well on the way now… After the (good for engines, not much sleep!) overnight we had a leisurely day around Lake Balaton then just a long way home on the Sunday, Gyor-Vienna-Brno-Stansted, just to add an extra pair of countries to the week!
Captions on individual photos.
For the previous few days photos from Slovakia please click ‘ere!
Five day bash to this superb part of Europe for loud diesels, great weather, beer and people!
After severe ice wrecked miles of OHL between Ljubljana and Divaca on the mainline from Ljubljana, SZ are having to drag all trains (including the many, many freights) between Borovnica and Prestranek. The week before we arrived however, a timetable change seemed to also bring in far larger numbers of silent OBB 2016 workings rather than SZ 664s. So as we rolled in to Borovnica it was a great sight to see narrow lights piercing the gloom and a 664 backing on – 664107 then provided great entertainment with load 11 and a dead 363 as the bank out of Borovnica was attacked at great volume! After 40 minutes of nearly solid full power it was to Rijeka and back as the timetable is rather limited with just very early and very late out and back moves, but the morning trip missed the afternoon one both times, so we did a few afternoon moves on 363s and 541s. A scorecard of 3×664 and 1×2016 from the 4 drags was certainly acceptable and was well worth the 0500 or so alarms!
After all that we headed over to Croatia for two days getting a selection of 2044s in the book with some electric fill-in moves.
A week on the sunny Adriatic Coast with some very loud GMs…
Straight from enjoying “grumpies” at Tisnov, we headed into Austria and then Slovenia to spend a week enjoying roots-blown Yugoslavian GMs. The Hodos line was our first stop, then a very enjoyable day in Pula doing the hauled train in and back out. The next day saw us head to Riejka with a 2063 for a “bendy” 1061 out as we headed for the Split overnight out of Zagreb. We then spent four days playing around Split with plenty of 2062s out (and a serious deathtrap DMUs shortage!) and with temperatures in the mid 30s and wall to wall sunshine most of that was spent in one of the beach/sea/bar with just morning and evening moves on the Perkovic axis. All too soon though it was time to head back to Zagreb on the eight hour trek that is the IC1522 day train and back home after a quick 2044 leap, naturally.
I was told we’d enjoy the Split line and a summer week there – did we half!! 🙂
Full captions on each individual photo…
Again, a big thanks to Dan, Parker and Doss for their company on a cracking trip