Croatian Railways

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Croatian Railways, (Croatian Hrvatske Željeznice (HŽ)) is the national railway company of Croatia, formed after the dissolution of Yugoslavia.

1 Railway network
- 1.1 Tilting trains
- 1.2 High-speed rail line
2 See also
3 External links

[edit] 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)
from Zagreb to Osijek via Koprivnica
from Zagreb to Rijeka
from Zagreb to Split

There are also other routes to Slovenia, Hungary, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia.

The railways urgently need to be modernized, since after communism there have been hardly any investments into the railway infrastructure. Many important routes are still not electrified and allow only single track traffic along series of bends. The aforementioned routes have been in constant renovation for the last ten years, with the result of increased maximum speed: on the Zagreb-Novska-Vinkovci line, there are sections where the limit was raised from 80 km/h to 120 km/h, and there are plans to go to 160 km/h on certain sections with the same rail tracks.

[edit] Tilting trains

Croatian ICN Tilting Train in a railway station

Croatian ICN Tilting Train in open field

Recently, the Croatian railways ordered an initial series of 32 modern Bombardier VT-612 tilting trains called "ICN" (short for InterCity Nagibni; Tilting InterCity) from the German branch of Bombardier Transportation. 16 trains will be diesel powered, while the other 16 will be electrical powered. As of 2006, 12 trains are delivered. These trains are normally deployed on the mountainous route between the two largest Croatian cities, route Zagreb - Split, but are also sometimes on the InterCity routes in the continental part of the country. In the case of the Zagreb-Split route, this offers passengers a much more comfortable and time-saving journey with regard to previous trains whose journey took 8 hours, whereas the tilting trains take less than 5 and a half hours, and are more quiet and better equipped as well.

In the future, when all trains are delivered, ICN trains should all major cities in Croatia: Pula, Rijeka, Osijek, Varazdin, Split, Zadar, Sibenik and Sisak.

The Croatian railways hope to revitalize rail traffic through further improvements and to establish the rail as serious competitor to rising car traffic, particularly during the summer months.

[edit] High-speed rail line

A fully electrified line connects Rijeka with Zagreb (though with power system break from 3kV DC to 25kv/50Hz AC at Moravice), and onwards towards Koprivnica and the Hungarian border, as part of the international 5b corridor. A transportation bill, to be passed by the Croatian Parliament, will see the start of construction of Croatia's first high-speed rail line, following the aforementioned 5b corridor, enabling speeds nearing 250 km/h. The plan consists of updating the existing track between the Hungarian border and Karlovac to a double track line and building a complete new track between Karlovac and Rijeka. The line's complete length will be 269 km, 61 km shorter than the current line. Construction on the new line will start in 2007 and is slated to be completed by 2010. The speeds of this line will enable a trip from Rijeka to Zagreb in around an hour, as opposed to the current four hours.