European Railroad Discussion > Freight train meet, Carpathian Mountains, Ukraine

I’m in the Carpathian Mountains in Ukraine for a couple days.  

Best mountain freight train watching in Europe, that I’ve seen. Trains here are 50 cars long, wide gauge, look and sound like a classic American freight train.  

I’ve also seen plenty of freight trains in Poland and Hungary, but they are much shorter, cars are much smaller, have that funny coupling mechanism that is strangely silent.  

Videos:

1) freight train meet at a local train stop 5 kms east of Volovets, Ukraine. 

2). Odessa => Uzhhorod passenger train.  There are 7 trains like this over the pass each way.  Plus about the same number of locals.  

3) riding a local train westbound, approaching the summit tunnel. 

Ted in Ukraine



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/19 14:16 by gobbl3gook.

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17 cars, it took some scouting to find a location where I could see a whole train at once.  

All Soviet-era sleepers. There are about 100 of these trains that come through Kiev daily, and many more(like this one) that don’t.  Ukraine certainly has 150 daily sleeper trains, probably more.  Very impressive.  

Ukraine as a whole is a very chill place.  You can walk or bicycle around the whole country and rarerly get any flak from anyone.  I’m not sure how land ownership works here in farmland, but you can see there are few fences, and nobody had a problem with me perching on. The side of the hill for an hour.  This was Sunday afternoon, 70 degrees and sunny.  



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/19 14:13 by gobbl3gook.

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The helper district on the pass is about 20 miles long, 10 up
and 10 down.  

on Saturday I bicycled over the summit from Volovets (Western endpoint)  to the other end.  It might be “Stari” or something.  Then rode a local train back.  Here is the local train crossing a bridge.  

Enjoy, 
Ted in Ukraine 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/19 14:21 by gobbl3gook.

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These clips are very enlightning!  Thanks for posting them.  On this first one, I am guessing the second train, approaching from behind you, might have been a surprise.  So how to record them both?  Decisions, decisions, decisions!

Thanks,
Norm
 

Fascinating!

There are many videos of cab rides on the TransSiberian ... almost all of the bridges have shanties such as seen in your video of the psgr train. For guarding the bridge?

And for one who grew up with IC 1926 suburban cars, the sounds of your 'local' [8 cars!] are sweet indeed. Grinding traction motors - married-pair equipment ... sigh!



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/29/19 21:41 by JGFuller.

Excellent videos.  Totally enjoyed watching.
Thanks for the posting.
ALLEN

I rode the Trans Siberian Train way back in 1986. Six days and six nights. A great adventure.
At that time, all those shanties were occupied. Both ends of bridges and tunnels all the way across, by armed military personel.
And we were meet by the local police everytime we stopped.
Graham.

Thanks for sharing all three videos. Double track, electrified, concrete ties, heavy CWR, "North American size" freights, helpers; long EMU --not what makes the news about Ukraine lately. It would be interesting to know how Ukraine is commercially and industrially integrated with western Europe vs. the former Soviet block. Is this "standard" gage or Russian?

These are great!  Especially the freights; lots of interesting cars there and the electric helpers are cool.

Andy

outstanding videos.  thanks for posting..............

66

Thank you so much.  This brings back wonderful memories of my trip to Ukraine in February of this year. I spent 2 weeks in the country and did some railfanning for myself at the "Vokzall" in Kyiv as well as Lviv.  Several days in the Chernobyl exclusion zone and an overnight trip to Ivano Frankivsk where I took a taxi to Bukovel in the Carpathians for 5 days of skiing at the resort.  The railroads in this country are absolutely amazing.  On the way back I took a train from Tatariv.   How far is this from there?

By the way, I would recommend this country to anyone that wants a truly unique experience away from the tourists in western Europe.  The railfaning is great.  The country felt safe and everything was very, VERY affordable.  My overnight sleeper from Kyiv to Ivano Frankivsk was around 25 USD I believe.  



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/19 18:00 by HogheadMike.

Nice videos!  Thanks.

Thank you for sharing these. Interesting stuff to see, nicely done videos!

Fascinating video of Ukrainian railroading! The second video , it seems the train is headed up grade. What is the percentage?

SantaFeRuss



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/19 22:26 by SantaFeRuss.

Excellent stuff, I wonder whether some of those open box wagons / gondolas were from the broad / standard gauge interchange at Cierna nad Tisou in Slovakia.

One of the sleeper trains through the Carpathians originates in Kiev and runs throught to Rakhov. 

Excellent video, that location is beautiful and that is a wonderfully timed meet. Thanks for posting and explaining.

When western Ukraine was part of the Austro-Hungarian empire, did they use the Austrian 4' 8.5 inch gauge, or the 5' Russian gauge used in what is now eastern Ukraine and Belarus?

The current boundaries of what are now Ukraine, Belarus, Slovakia, and Romania are relatively new as boundaries go