Belgrade–Bar railway


The Belgrade–Bar railway is a long electrified main line connecting the Serbian capital of Belgrade with the town of Bar, a major seaport in Montenegro. Completed in 1976, which connects Belgrade with the Mediterranean port of Bar. It was built by the Yugoslav State Railways in 25 years of construction and is now operated by its successor companies Železnice Srbije, Željeznice Republike Srpske and Željeznička Infrastruktura Crne Gore.
The mountain railway crosses three mountain ranges in the Dinaric Mountains and has its highest point at south of this, the maximum gradient of the route is 25 ‰, north of it 17 ‰. The route in the difficult terrain required 254 tunnels and over 243 bridges. The route is considered one of the most difficult in Europe.
The connection from the Serbian capital to the Adriatic coast was one of the major railway projects in Europe in the second half of the 20th century. At the time, it was considered the most important railway construction project after the Second World War and the most expensive infrastructure project of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. At present, it is Serbia's shortest connection to a Mediterranean port and Montenegro's only international passenger transport connection. Albania has also been connected to the European railway network via the branch line Podgorica–Shkodra since 1986. From the opening of the line until 2018, the Belgrade Main station was the starting point for trains to Montenegro; since 2021, all trains have departed from Belgrade Centre station.

Overview

The Belgrade–Bar railway is long, of which is in Serbia and is in Montenegro. It is standard gauge and electrified with 25 kV, 50 Hz AC for its entire length. It passes through 254 tunnels of total length of and over 435 bridges. The longest tunnels are "Sozina", and "Zlatibor". The biggest and the best-known bridge is Mala Rijeka Viaduct, long and above ground level.
The highest point of the railway is above mean sea level, at the town of Kolašin. The railway descends to above mean sea level at Podgorica in a relatively short distance, resulting in a gradient of 25‰ on this section.
A short section of the railway passes through Bosnia and Herzegovina, where there is a station at Štrpci.
When the line was completed in the late 1970s, the trip between Belgrade and Bar took approximately 7 hours. Today, the same trip takes around 11 hours due to speed restrictions necessitated by poor track conditions and border controls at Bijelo Polje.

History

The decision to build the railway connection between Belgrade and Bar was made in 1952, as a national project of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia. However, the construction was passed to the constituent Republics, SR Serbia and SR Montenegro, to build on their own.
The sections of the railway were completed as follows:
The construction works were concluded on 27 November 1975, by joining the railway tracks south of Kolašin. The railway was opened on 28 May 1976. Electrification was completed at the end of 1977.
In February 1993, during the Yugoslav Wars, short Bosnian section of the railway was the site of the Štrpci massacre. Maintenance of the Belgrade–Bar railway suffered from chronic underfunding during the 1990s, which has resulted in the railway deteriorating and becoming unsafe. This culminated in the Bioče derailment, when a passenger train derailed, causing the deaths of 47 passengers. As a result, efforts are being made to thoroughly reconstruct the railway.
The Serbian part of the railway was targeted several times by NATO during its bombing campaign in 1999, seriously damaging portions of the railway. Also, the small section that passes through Bosnia and Herzegovina was blown up by SFOR ground forces. All of this damage was later repaired.
In 2016, Serbia started a thorough reconstruction of its portion of the line in order to restore its original maximum speed of. The first section, between Belgrade and Valjevo was completed in 2017, with speeds of up to 120 km/h, however Serbian Railways Infrastructure later stated trains reached speeds of 100 km/h, causing some confusion as to what the maximum speed actually is.

Present status

Traffic continues to operate on this line today, but due to its long-standing lack of maintenance, on certain sections through Serbia the speed limit is 30 km/h. On the Montenegrin part of the line, the maximum permitted speed is 50 to 80 km/h.

In popular culture

The railway line and its construction were the subject of interpretations from the folk music genre in Yugoslavia, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s, such as by Lepa Lukić, or the Braća Bajići. In the latter song, meters from the Starogradska Muzika and the Kolos with the sounds of the gusle represent the symbolic connection between the republics. The same was true of Dragan Antić's record Pruga Beograd–Bar, on which, of the four songs, the number Jadran Ekspres began with the solo singing of a guslar. Antić's album, like Lepa Lukić's album of the same name, was released on the Yugoslav major label RTB. These albums were financed by the Jugoslovenska Investiciona Banka and featured identical covers with the railway line, once in blue and once in red.
The last train to leave the Beograd-Glavna station, on 15 June 2018, was bid farewell at the station by playing the cult hit A sad adio. The Serbian media spoke of the end of an era, and the locomotive driver of the last journey said goodbye to the station and the waiting passengers with a siren. In 2024, the Croatian film The Man Who Could Not Remain Silent by Nebojša Slijepčević covered the 1993 war crime at the Bosnian section of the railway.