4182][FR] Paris Est - Coulommiers - La Ferté-Gaucher - Neuvy - Esternay - Sézanne - Fère-Champenoise - Oiry: (Ball 25B2-26B2) Contrasts abound along this former secondary through route. At the inner end, Paris Est - Coulommiers has a regular electric passenger service, in December 2004 push-pull worked by Class 17000 locomotives. Coulommiers - La Ferté-Gaucher lost its sparse passenger service at the December 2003 timetable-change. La Ferté-Gaucher - Esternay - Sézanne closed to passengers 6 March 1972, and Sézanne - Oiry 18 December 1939. From La Ferté-Gaucher east to Esternay the line is either out of use (neutralisée) or legally abandoned (déclassée), but the track is mainly still in place, heavily rusted, except where it has been removed at the sites of former level-crossings. Esternay - Sézanne - Fère-Champenoise (and the Sézanne - Anglure branch) remain open for freight traffic, worked by Connex-subsidiary CFTA (BLN 833.0413). Fère-Champenoise - Oiry freight is worked by Fret SNCF.

The short Neuvy - Esternay section no longer sees trains but hosts hired rail-cycles (= pedal-driven draisines = vélo-rails). The hirers, Cyclo-draisines du Grand Morin, one of 17 such operators in France, are associated with the Chemin de Fer Touristique de la Traconne (CFTT), also Esternay-based (http://www.traconne.org/). Esternay’s former station is in non-railway use and the track west of it is lifted as far as a former level-crossing over Rue du Docteur Carrère, where a shed houses the rail-cycles, deployed by an obliging couple from the CFTT. On Sunday afternoons in high summer (Jul-Sep) you can just turn up, but at other times during the season (Apr-Oct) you telephone in advance to book one of the four-person rail-cycles (at EUR10 for an hour). Each draisine is painted a cheerful green and is light enough for two persons to pedal, even uphill - provided you do not leave the brake on! Riders are enjoined to ring the cycle’s bell and/or stop at each of the six level-crossings, most of them on very minor roads. When two rail-cycles cross, the rule is that the downhill one is lifted off the track to give way to the uphill one. The rail-cycle route is sharply curved and fairly steeply downhill for 4.4km west along the valley of the river Grand Morin to Neuvy, the ‘provisional terminus’, at another former level-crossing. The line, whose original formation appears to have been double-track, crosses the river three times on modest bridges. Closer to Neuvy than Esternay was the former junction with the Longueville (Seine-et-Marne) - Provins - Villiers-St.Georges (- Esternay) branch (R.2671). The Villiers-St.Georges - Esternay section closed completely 3 November 1969 and its formation now disappears unobtrusively into woodland.

On the 16km Esternay - Sézanne freight section, CFT de la Traconne first ran some trial trips in 1995 but their tourist trains officially started 24 June 1996. On summer Sundays when CFTT’s Picasso railcar is operating, it should be possible to travel both on an Esternay - Neuvy rail-cycle and an Esternay - Sézanne train in the one day.

4183][BE] Roux - Monceau yard - Y Martinet: (Ball 8B1) On 15, 16, 23 and 30 January 2005 weekend engineering work was to block all four tracks at Roux and all trains were to be diverted via Monceau Formation yard.

4184][BE] Antwerpen Berchem - Antwerpen-Noorderdokken - Antwerpen Haven: (Ball 8B3) The Mon-Fri passenger service to Antwerpen Haven has continued beyond the planned June-December 2004 road-works, and beyond the December 2004 timetable-change, and now appears in Table 12 of the printed NMBS=SNCB timetable. Advertised departure times from Berchem are: 05:28, 05:47, 06:59, 07:27, 13:28, 13:50, 21:28 and 21:50, returning from Haven at 05:46, 06:14, 13:46, 14:25, 15:59, 16:13, 21:46 and 22:27. The trains, former staff-only workings now advertised, may vary their route round the docks, for their end-to-end journey-times vary from 17min to 28min, but all are booked to call at least at Noorderdokken station on the Antwerpen - Rotterdam main line. Unsurprisingly, all trains seem to pass the depot, and most of the passengers appeared to be railway staff. Presumably the timings too are set to be convenient for shift-changeovers. On Tuesday 28 December 2004 the 13:50 Berchem - Haven, which formed the 14:25 return, crossed the 13:46 Haven - Berchem within the docks complex.

4185][DE] Niebüll - Dagebüll Mole: (R.2038; Ball 9B3) This 14km branch serves the ferry-quay for the North Frisian islands of Föhr and Amrum. Following the bankruptcy of NVAG, it is now worked by Norddeutsche Eisenbahngesellschaft Niebüll GmbH, who have made some timetable changes, though the trains remain slow, slower than ordinary buses on the route. In 2004 passengers arriving from Hamburg at Niebüll at 11:45 had to wait until 12:20 before their connection left for Dagebüll. Now the branch train does not depart until 12:42. The DB timetable shows that this inconvenience is reduced by operation of a Niebüll - Dagebüll express bus departing at 11:58 on Saturdays and Sundays - but available only to passengers holding first-class tickets. Is this the sole instance of a railway bus service introducing such a class distinction? The preference on the bus certainly gives the first-class a better choice on the weekend ferries: they are able to catch ferries at 12:30 to Wyk auf Föhr and to Wittdün (Amrum), departing even before the next train has left Niebüll. The next ferry to Wyk runs at 13:45, but during the summer period the next to Wittdün is not until 15:00.

4186][DE] Osnabrück: (Ball 25A2) A Nord West Bahn train runs from Münster (Westfalen) through to Wilhelmshaven on Saturday morning and returns on Sunday evening. It is routed via the Schinkel and Stahlwerk curves at Osnabrück, so passes through Osnabrück station twice, calling at the low-level platforms but running non-stop through the high-level.

4187][CS] Serbia & Montenegro: The United Nations International Standards Organisation now lists [CS] as the ISO3166 two-letter code for Serbia & Montenegro (R.2800), a federal country comprising the two states in its title, and nominally including the unstable Serbian/Albanian province of Kosovo (R.3839). Montenegro is better known to its citizens as Crna Gora (=black mountain), so the C in the code is more appropriate than it might appear. All this territory was formerly the rump of federal Yugoslavia, with the code [YU], now superseded. [CS] was previously the code for Czechoslovakia but went out of use after the split into the Czech Republic [CZ] and Slovakia [SK] from 1 January 1993. Useful background on ISO3166 and other codes is on the webpage http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/10faq/frequently-asked-questions.html.

4188][CS] (Beograd -) Novi Sad (- Subotica JS - Kelebia MÁV - Budapest): (Ball 48A1) The electrified main line between Serbia and Hungary crosses the river Dunav (= Danube) outside Novi Sad on a new road-and-rail bridge, built to replace the bridge destroyed by NATO bombing in 1999 (BLN 849.0249). The single-track railway is set into the roadway, requiring the closure of the bridge to road traffic each time a train crosses it. The abutments and the road and rail approaches to the old bridge can clearly be seen a few metres downstream of the new bridge.

4189][CS] Beograd - Vreoci - Valjevo - Pozega - Podgorica - Bar: (Ball 52A3-52A2) The Vreoci - Valjevo section of this electrified main line was closed for track renewal between 25 September and 6 December 2004. Buses replaced daytime trains on this section, but overnight trains were diverted Beograd - Lapovo - Kraljevo - Pozega. South of Uzice, the trackbed of the former 760mm-gauge Uzice - Sarajevo line (part of this forms the Sargan tourist railway; R.2593) is clearly visible as it runs parallel to the Beograd - Bar line for some distance. At the Montenegrin capital of Podgorica, formerly Titograd, on 23 October 2004, the rails were shiny on the line towards Albania (Podgorica - Tuzi - Hani i Hotit HSH - Bajzé - Shkodër; completed 1985, reopened 2003; R.2846), and a freight train was seen arriving off the Podgorica - Nikšic branch.

4190][ES] (Valencia -) Vara de Quart - Manises - Ribaroja del Turia: Shown as freight-only in the Ball atlas (30B1-30A1) this 1668mm-gauge RENFE branch, which formerly extended to Liria, has latterly had commuter trains out to Ribaroja del Turia (sometimes spelled Ribarroja). The RENFE branch service is expected to close by March 2005 to allow transfer of the infrastructure to Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat Valenciana and conversion to metre-gauge to become part of the extension west of MetroValencia’s line 5 (R.2932), first to Valencia airport at Manises and later out to Ribaroja.

4191][ES] Mallorca: Palma - Son Fuster - Inca - Enllaç - Sa Pobla / Manacor: (Ball 38A1-38A2) On 14 December 2004 Serveis Ferroviaris de Mallorca awarded to two different consortia the first contracts for Palma’s large bus/rail interchange beneath the Parc de Es Estacions (to include no fewer than ten metre-gauge rail tracks and five underground terminal platforms) and for the line in tunnel linking the new terminus to the present surface railway out to Inca and beyond (R.3666, 4013). Construction work starting 12 January 2005 should see the line from central Palma put underground by June 2006. Public pressure however seems to have forced abandonment of the plan for closure and two-year bus-substitution of the section from Palma’s present SFM city-centre surface terminus in Plaza España out to Son Fuster halt (km1.8) on the edge of the city. The public-works minister announced on 15 December 2004 that trains would continue to run from central Palma, more specifically from next the coach station in Calle Eusebi Estada, alongside the Plaza España. (Majorca Daily Bulletin, #1563, 11 Jan 2005)

4192][TR] Eskisehir light rail: Metre gauge is an unusual choice for an entirely new tramway, but Eskisehir, a city of c.500,000 midway between Istanbul and Ankara, has opened a metre-gauge low-floor system, dubbed Estram. The two lines are: (line #1, 10.6km, southeast-to-northwest) Otogar (= bus-station) - Carsi - Anadolu University - SSK (= state hospital) and (line #2; 6.8km; southwest-to-northeast) Osmangazi University - Carsi - Opera. Both lines run together over an 800m central pedestrianised section through Köprübasi. A map is at http://www.eskisehir-bld.gov.tr/estram/ulasim/images/guzergah1.jpg.

Railway Gazette reported the opening-date as ‘July 2004’ while a Dutch source said ‘1 September 2004’. A Turkish source close to the Estram project said that the official hand-over period by the contractors Bombardier was during August 2004. The municipality then had a period of trial running, but stopped the system for approximately two months. Opening-date for revenue service was Christmas Eve, 24 December 2004 - when of course nobody from the Bombardier team or other non-Turkish people would be available to participate in the municipality’s opening ceremony!

4193][JP] Nishi-Kuwana - Kita-Ohyasiro - Olzumi - Ageki: (Quail 4B4-4B3) Unusual among the world’s electrified commuter railways for its very narrow gauge of 762mm is the 20.4km Hokusei line, once threatened with closure by its private-sector owners Kintetsu because of declining traffic (R.0923). Presumably this decision was rescinded, for on Saturday 19 June 2004 the line was operating normally, and showed clear signs of significant recent investment in the infrastructure. However it still provided an interesting contrast to operations elsewhere in Japan. Shin-Yokohama - Nagoya on the standard-gauge shinkansen ‘bullet-train’ was followed by Nagoya - Nishi-Kuwana on the 1067mm-gauge (formerly nationalised) JR Central local line. (Nishi-Kuwana is also served by a line of a third gauge, Kintetsu’s 1435mm-gauge line from Nagoya.) Allow several minutes to reach the Hokusei line in the southern corner of the extensive layout of station and sidings. Leave the ‘main line’ station via the exit footbridge towards the town, and take a short walk along the periphery of the bus-station bays to the small Hokusei-line station. The layout here, and at Ageki, was just a simple dead-end track alongside a single platform face, with no runround loop. Access to the platform was by automatic ticket-barriers which necessitated purchase of tickets at the small Hokusei booking-office before travel - though no other station on the line seemed to be equipped with such technology. At unstaffed minor stations the conductor dashed off the train to collect tickets from alighting passengers! Service to Ageki was basically hourly, bracketing a short working to Kita-Ohyasiro, location of the line’s rolling-stock depot and works. The train was a diminutive four-car electric multiple-unit in a smart bright-yellow livery. The loading-gauge was such that anyone of European height (and the tall Japanese conductor!) had to stoop to enter through the small-profile doors and also when passing through the gangway from coach to coach. Ventilation was by opening windows and ceiling fans, a contrast with main-line stock and its near-universal air-conditioning.

The 14:27 train left about half full but was almost empty by the end of the line. The depot adjacent to Kita-Ohyasiro station housed the only non-passenger rolling-stock seen, ballast wagons and other maintenance vehicles. In contrast to the trains in service the units stored at the depot were painted in a darker brown and maroon livery. Infrastructure investment along the route included two long sections of track which had recently been completely relaid and still had speed restrictions as a result. Very short rails are used on most of the line, and one of the relaid sections may have used recycled rail. Most of the overhead wire on the line remains supported on wooden poles but in many places these had been replaced by new heavy-duty galvanised-steel girder structures spanning the track. The most significant piece of new investment was at the first station beyond Kita-Ohyasiro. The original Olzumi station was closed, with platforms blocked off by a chain-barrier strung between red-painted posts. However a short way north a new station, adjacent to a local road and with parking facilities, now served Olzumi. The terminus, Ageki, was unstaffed but only three people alighted so this did not tax the conductor. In the former yard at the front of the station, now mostly occupied as a car-park and bus-turning-area, c.50m of track had been recently laid. This ran from the side of the station building to what looked like a wooden garden-shed, locked up. A poster seemed to say that a narrow-gauge steam saddle-tank locomotive had recently been obtained and was going to run on the Sunday, 20 June 2004. The local town-map indicated that from Ageki it was only a short walk to Ise-Hatta, an intermediate station on the parallel Sangi Railway, no doubt part of the reason for Kintetsu’s earlier threat to close their tiny Hokusei line.

4194][JP] Kintetsu-Tomida - Sangi-Asake - Ise-Hatta - Nishi-Fujiwara: (Quail 4B4-4B3) On 19 June 2004 the standard-gauge private-sector Sangi Railway was operating a half-hourly service from end to end with trains passing at Ise-Hatta. Rolling-stock comprised four-car electric multiple-units as wide as UK main-line stock with full-width gangways between coaches and full air-conditioning by roof-mounted units. The interior had longitudinal seating along the body-sides, with a large central standing area near the doors. The mid-afternoon Saturday services had only a handful of passengers at best, not justifying such a service frequency and capacity. A cement-works north-west of Ise-Hatta provides the line’s freight traffic, inbound fuel-oil and outbound cement. At the northern terminus, Nishi-Fujiwara, enthusiasts had built a ground-level miniature-railway circuit alongside the station building, and a number of stations on the way back to Kintetsu-Tomida, junction with Kintetsu’s standard-gauge main line, had various preserved items including a steam locomotive and carriages. After crossing the scheduled down electric unit, a down freight train comprising an electric locomotive with loaded oil and empty cement tanks was crossed at another passing loop.

4195][US] Los Angeles, CA: Metrolink commuter rail: Nationalised Amtrak (R.4169) chose not to re-bid to run the 830km Metrolink heavy-rail commuter system of Southern California Regional Rail Authority, based on Los Angeles and comprising seven lines serving 53 stations (R.2416). Private-sector French multinational operators Connex are to take over from 1 July 2005 for five years, with Burlington Northern Santa Fe as their main subcontractor. The contract is the second in the USA for Connex, who in July 2003 took over operation of commuter rail services around Boston for Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. (partly Railway Gazette International)

4196][CD] Congo: Lubumbashi - Kamina - Kabalo - Samba - Kindu: In a full-page advertisement in the Guardian of 5 February 2004, the aid charity Concern appealed for finance to restore an unspecified 112km of damaged railway line. A very basic diagram illustrated the course of the 1067mm-gauge railway stretching from Lubumbashi (the former Belgian Congo provincial capital Elisabethville) for over 1000km north through the small town of Samba to Kindu (another provincial capital), indicating that Concern had it in mind to repair part of this line. The project was successful, as confirmed by a Guardian article of 27 December 2004. Lubumbashi - Kindu trains, halted by war in 1998, were re-inaugurated in June 2004. The now twice-monthly trains enable farmers along the line once again to sell their palm oil and maize in markets at the termini, and consumers in rural towns like Samba to buy in essentials such as salt, soap and medicines at less prohibitive prices.

It would be interesting to know which other sections of the once quite extensive railways of the former Belgian Congo, later the failed state of Zaïre, are able to operate amid the continuing relative disorder of the present-day Democratic Republic (sic) of Congo - which is not to be confused with the smaller (former French) Congo republic whose capital is Brazzaville (R.1022).