Skoder Along the Belgrade-Bar Railroad

"There’ll be a train as long as the rails are there," a railroad man at Podgorica station told impatient passengers whose train to Belgrade was already 100 minutes late.

A state of emergency was declared because several trains jumped their tracks in a couple of days, doing away with stories of safe rail travel along the "dream railway".

"It’s not easy for us," the railway man said. "The train can’t leave Bar until the team that’s replacing the tracks comes back. Yugoslavia hasn’t got more than 20 kilometers of spare rails and we have a hard time getting people where they want to go. We take rails off station tracks which aren’t in use and replace them with old ones. We take rails off the Podgorica-Skoder line. You think we like doing that."

This VREME reporter saw the rails being removed from the Podgorica-Skoder line the next day. Workers replaced the rails they removed with old rails, turning them inside out. One worker who insisted on anonymity said those rails can be in use for a long time in flat parts of the line. He said there wasn’t any traffic along the railway to Skoder and it’s rails are like new. The Blok company from Novi Sad is helping the whole thing along in an effort to keep the Belgrade-Bar line open.

Dragutin Borcic, assistant director general for infrastructure of the railroad Company unwillingly told VREME that the rails on the Podgorica-Skoder railway are being removed. "Don’t write about that because it can be abused in many ways. we only do it in the most critical situations."

I didn’t want to press Borcic so I didn’t ask how many kilometers of track had been replaced on the Skoder line and how much from station lines. Borcic did say that a total of 11,820 meters of track had been replaced on the Belgrade-Bar line, half of that from stocks.

At the moment efforts are underway to buy about 20 kilometers of rails.

At its latest session, the Djukanovic government discussed the railroads and drafted a program to revitalize the Belgrade-Bar line by the year 2000 at an estimated cost of 565 million dollars. Repairs on the part of the line through Montenegro will cost about 174 million USD. It’s hard to say how fast the revitalization will be but we know that the government just barely came up with the money to buy the 20 kilometers of track. Every rail weighs about a ton and cost 515 USD.

The government instructed the railways to continue importing rails but they don’t know how much they’ll have to import to stop replacing rails from other lines. The government also concluded that in 12 places totaling 44 kilometers in the republic train speeds were limited. No one said if the tracks on those parts of the railway have to be replaced. In any case when the 20 km of rails come in it’ll be just a drop in the sea because, VREME was told, the Montenegrin railway company should have that much in stock at all times.

"The railways are a state public company and the government sets the terms for it. Nothing was invested, we worked for nothing for years because the state set prices and there are no loans. What we had melted down and we can’t count on income because there are few trains. I remember when I had 35-36 freight trains in every shift. That won’t come back soon."

The railway man’s story was lent support by his co-workers who complained of standards, lack of funds for protective gear and similar things. They said the state’s lack of care melted down the money invested in the Belgrade-Bar line and the railways will end up guilty.

The government seems about ready to lay the blame on their shoulders since a statement from its latest session said the train drivers were to blame when trains jumped their tracks, that the rails were breaking up because maintenance work was badly organized and suggested special care should be taken in selecting drivers. The government instructed the railway director general to impose adequate measures and eliminate internal weaknesses including personnel changes.

Some people say 1,000 tons of rails could have been bought if the state bought just a few less cars for civil servants and added that the cost is the same as the 1,000 mobile phones the state intends to provide for civil servants.

In any case, trains on the Belgrade-Bar line are moving thanks to rails from the Podgorica-Skoder line.