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15 August 2007
Today the first meeting of the Consortium formed to represent the interests of the SAR took place. Among the things discussed, the most important were the future legal form of the Consortium (since now it is just informal) and the proposal to ask the Sibiu County Council to join.
So far the members of the Consortium are the Hartibaciu Valley Association, the "Mihai Eminescu Trust" and the Sibiu Department of Culture.
12 June 2007
Years of hard work have been rewarded yesterday, when the Sibiu Culture Department announced in a press conference that the Sibiu-Agnita Railway, along with the branch line to Vurpar and the station buildings and bridges from the Agnita-Sighisoara section is now officially declared a historical monument.
This means that the line has been saved from scrapping and makes possible its revival.
We wish to thank everybody involved in this operation, especially Mr. Marius Halmaghi and the head of the Sibiu Culture Department, Mr. Crisan.
7 April 2007
An official letter was sent to the CFR Infrastructure Dept. regarding the selling price of the narrow gauge maintenance rolling stock which they own.
2 April 2007
A BBC crew filmed a working steam narrow gauge train in front of the depot in Sibiu, as part of a documentary regarding saxon life in Transylvania.
The documentary will be shown on BBC 1 channel on 29th April, as part of the Countryfile show.
20 March 2007
An official letter was sent by the New Europe Railway Heritage Trust and Fedecrail to the Romanian Minister of Transport and Tourism requesting the transfer of the railway to the local community.
17 January 2007
Our representatives met with the chief executives of both SAAF and SFT to discuss a possible short distance narrow gauge operation in Sibiu during this summer, as part of the Sibiu - Capital of Culture 2007 program.
Since its closure in 2001, the line was effectively abandoned. In 6 years the station buildings have deteriorated and some even collapsed, with others becoming shelters for gipsy families. Numerous telephone poles have fallen and some portions of the track have been stolen.
In some places where the line runs close to the Hartibaciu River the trackbed has washed out. Most of the track is overgrown and in some places completely hidden under sand and weeds. However the infrastructure remains generally sound, and the bridges are in good condition still.
After the break-up of the Romanian railway company CFR, ownership of the SAR was split between two companies, SFT, the Railway Tourism Company, which now owns the railway's rolling stock and some of the buildings, and SAAF, the company which took over CFR's unused assets, which owns the track, infrastructure and most of the buildings.
Though the SFT reportedly had plans to reopen the railway for tourism purposes, SAAF was not able to repair the line sufficiently to permit operation. Indeed in 2006, SAAF expressed their wish to lift the tracks, to realise their scrap value, thus ending any plans to reopen this railway.
This caused the many people who cared about the railway to work together to try to save and even revive this important part of Transylvania's history. A combination of local people, local authorities and even international organisations like the Mihai Eminescu Trust have been making their feelings felt, and endeavouring to put pressure on the owners of the assets to behave responsibly.
Plans were advanced to declare the Sibiu-Agnita Railway a historical monument, thus saving it from being sold as scrap iron, and this process is nearly complete. Meanwhile we have requested the Romanian Ministry of Transportation to transfer the line to the local authorities (in the first instance to the County Council) which are in the best position to acquire the European funds needed to revive the railway, which will clearly be of benefit to this deprived region.
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The railway runs through the Hartibaciu valley, the most deprived area of the county and one of the most deprived in Transylvania.
For the communities of the Hartibaciu valley, this railway is the only hope of social and economic development.
Along its route there are villages which are not connected to the main road and which don't have access to a bus transportation service. For those villages the railway passenger transportation service will prove to be the a great social benefit. Even for the communities which have access to the bus, the railway will provide a much cheaper way to travel, which is what the villagers of the poorest area of the Sibiu county are looking for.
Economic development can finally become a reality for the communities along the Hartibaciu river once the railway is reopened.
The cheap freight transportation offered by the railway will improve the profitability of companies located along its route, thus making the Hartibaciu valley a more desirable location for future investments.
Apart from the jobs created by these new investments, the railway itself will become a workplace for people in each community.
The social and economic development will also be greatly influenced by the tourism opportunities which the railway will offer. Everybody knows that this kind of tourism (narrow gauge railway tourism), especially in a rural area untouched by modern developments, with a great tourism potential (saxon villages with fortified churches), is a great magnet for all kinds of tourists, from children to railway enthusiasts. And the fact that steam locomotives built for this railway over a century ago still exist, and that at the Sibiu terminus of the railway lies the biggest museum of steam locomotive in Romania, makes the Sibiu-Agnita Railway one of the most desirable locations for tourists.
In time, we are planning to restore everything that this railway had, the track and trackbed, the station buildings, every rolling stock that still exists in the Sibiu narrow gauge depot, and also to find and bring back all the rolling stock that belonged to this railway.
If bringing back and restoring the steam locomotives is relatively easy, most of them being preserved in the Sibiu museum, we cannot say the same thing about the passenger carriages and freight wagons. Almost all of them were cut and sold as scrap iron in 2003, all that remained are 6 passenger carriages and 2 wood wagons.
I want to get involved !
The surviving Sibiu - Agnita railway is actually only half of the original railway, and the second half, at that. The Sighisoara - Sibiu Local Railways Company (SCFL) as it was then known, began construction from Sighisoara, which was then in Hungary, in 1895, and despite delays caused by severe flooding, had reached the 48km to Agnita by the end of 1898. It did not reach Sibiu, 62km further, until 1910, passing through the middle of Agnita. This gave the line a total length, including its 13km branch from Cornatel to Vurpar, of 123km, the longest narrow gauge railway in Romania at that time.
In September 1908 the Hungarian state railway company, MÁV, took over operation of the line, although its owner remained the SCFL.
In 1912 plans were made to further extend the railway from south of Agnita towards the extensive military base near Cincu and on across the Olt river to meet the standard gauge railway at Voila. Unfortunately the First World War put an end to these plans.
In December 1918, after the war, Transylvania became part of Romania, so in 1919 operation of the SSR was transferred from MÁV to the Romanian Railways - CFR. It remained under the private ownership of SCFL until 1948, when it was purchased by the Romanian Ministry of Public Works and the SCFL disappeared.
In 1965 the original Sighisoara - Agnita section was closed and dismantled, due to its steep slopes and sharp curves, which made it difficult and expensive to operate. It was replaced by a new road that linked Sighisoara to Agnita.
The line was also lifted from the streets of Agnita and a new terminus built 3 km outside Agnita, towards Sibiu. The remaining Agnita - Sibiu railway, including the Vurpar branch, was modernised to the standards of the day, with an emphasis on freight handling.
This line was closed on 1 September, 2001, ostensibly due to lack of funds for engine maintenance. Since closure the line remains in place, although it has been breached in various places, there have been some washouts, and many buildings have been vandalised or robbed, or sometimes stolen completely.
Operating History
The Sighisoara - Agnita line was operated by 3 new 0-6-0 locomotives of the 388 series from 15 November 1896 until the line closed on 1 June, 1965. They could pull passenger trains of 60 tons or freight trains of 180 tons, at an average speed of 10kph.
On the Agnita - Sibiu section mixed trains were operated from 1914, with three round trips in the first years, between 1940 and 1960 and between 1980 and 1990. From 1990 until 1995 there were two round-trips and from 1995 until closure only one round trip operated between Sibiu and Agnita daily.
The first 5 locomotives that ran on this section, namely the 389 and 399 series, were similar to the Sighisoara - Agnita locomotives and were brought from the Maramures Salt Mines Railway and the Teresva - Ust Corna Railway (now in Ukraine) respectively. Various types of tank engines, manufactured by Maffei, Borsig Schwartzkopf or in Budapest, as well as several Romanian Resita 0-8-0 tank engines, were brought in from other narrow gauge railways and sometimes regauged (like the Alba Iulia - Turda Railway), to help the small 0-6-0s, while in the 1960s the railway received 5 powerful Romanian Resita tender locomotives of class 764.20x to pull the heavy freight trains.
The 1970s brought the Romanian L45H diesel locomotives, resulting in many of the old steam locomotives being scrapped or taken elsewhere, with those that remained used for winter train heating. However some of them remained "preserved" outside in Sibiu, waiting for better days. What remained of the 388, 389 and 399 series were taken to the Sibiu museum and to Brasov, while at the end of the 1990s two fortunate Resita locomotives (764.155 and 764.205) were restored for tourist trains, which have yet to materialise.
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construction |
construction |
bridge testing |
bridge testing |
Agnita's old station |
old steam |
764.155 |
764.205 |
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www.transylvaniaexpress.com/agnita - website about the Sibiu-Agnita Railway restoration project
www.beyondtheforest.com/Pages/CFR4.html - narrow gauges in Romania, including the Sibiu-Agnita Railway
www.railfaneurope.net/pix/ro/narrow_gauge/diesel/pix.html - the derelict narrow gauge rolling stock in Sibiu
www.helgeharling.de/Osteuropa/t_sibiu.html - list of all steam engines that used to work on the SAR
www.turismferoviar.ro/en/tren8.php - SAR on the Romanian Railway Tourism Company's website
de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wusch - history of the SAR on Wikipedia (German language)
www.europabahnen.de - 2001 article about SAR's history (German language)
www.mihaieminescutrust.org - The Mihai Eminescu Trust's web page
In Romania
Mihai Blotor
SAR Project Campaign Manager
Phone: +40 (0)726 304325
Email: 
The Mihai Eminescu Trust
Sighisoara Office
Phone: +40 (0)265 506024
Fax: +40 (0)265 506022
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In the United Kingdom
Bill Parker
SAR Project Consultant
Phone: +44 (0)7930 993995
Email: 
The Mihai Eminescu Trust
63 Hillgate Place
London W8 7SS
Phone: +44 (0)20 72297618
Email: 
Website: www.mihaieminescutrust.org
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