Railway Network
The Croatian railway system consists of 2,974 km of rails (of which 248 km is double track). 1,228 km is electrified - 41.3%. (End of 2004).
There are several major railway routes in the country:
- (coming from Ljubljana, Slovenia) from Dobova via Zagreb, Slavonski Brod, Vinkovci to Tovarnik (and on to Belgrade, Serbia)
- there is a connection in Strizivojna–Vrpolje towards Osijek
- from Zagreb to Osijek via Koprivnica
- from Zagreb to Rijeka
- from Zagreb to Split
- from Zagreb to Sisak - the shortest but very important
- from Zagreb to Varaždin
There are also other routes to Slovenia, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.
The railways are in urgent need of modernization. Following the break-up of Former Yugoslavia, there has been minimal investment in railway infrastructure right across the country. Many important routes are still not electrified, are single track, have high grades and meandering sections - ultimately leading to slow speeds.
The network has been improved over the last ten years, with the effect of an increased maximum speed on the Zagreb-Novska-Vinkovci line. There are sections where the speed limit has been raised from 80 km/h to 120 km/h and even 160 km/h. Railway modernisation is set to be extended further with a national 'railway investment plan' (with funding totalling over 18 billion HRK through to 2012.
Read more about this topic: Croatian Railways
Famous quotes containing the words railway and/or network:
“Her personality had an architectonic quality; I think of her when I see some of the great London railway termini, especially St. Pancras, with its soot and turrets, and she overshadowed her own daughters, whom she did not understand—my mother, who liked things to be nice; my dotty aunt. But my mother had not the strength to put even some physical distance between them, let alone keep the old monster at emotional arm’s length.”
—Angela Carter (1940–1992)
“Of what use, however, is a general certainty that an insect will not walk with his head hindmost, when what you need to know is the play of inward stimulus that sends him hither and thither in a network of possible paths?”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)