European Railroad Discussion > Ukraine 2019 Part 1 — Batavo freight yard

I crossed the border from Hungary at a little rural border crossing.  Then I picked up the Ukrainian railway system at the town of Batavo.  There was a long footbridge across done industrial tracks snd msi line tracks to get to the station.  

It looked a bit like 1980s America -- with seemingly disused, overgrown industrial tracks, and rail cars parked seemingly going nowhere. 

Oct 2019

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A few minutes later I was on the section of bridge over the passenger tracks, snd noticed the sound of a diesel locomotive.  I saw that an engine had hooked up to the string of seemingly derelict cars, and was getting ready to haul them off.  

So, even though the cars looked like they were pretty much abandoned in place, they were very much in service.  

That's kinda the way a lot of things were in Ukraine.  It's a dusty, unkempt sort of place in appearance, but everything was more functional than it might seem to the untrained eye.  

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4) another photo from the bridge.  

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Bonus photos -- Lonya/ border crossing.  (A little out of sequence). 

4) This was the smallest border crossing I've ever been through.  I think the woman ahead of me had gone over to Hungary to buy groceries... 

5) Coming back the other way, 10 days later 

6) Welcome to Ukraine!  

Coming back 10 days later there was even more bicycle traffic.  I saw a group of 4 people at one point, and gave them the last of my Ukrainian currency (about $10 worth).  
 

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Just rotated
 

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Thanks for flipping the image, Norm.  It just irritates me that 28 years into the WWW the software has gone to heck and an iPhone can't provide the "right side up" data with the photo.  And I can't just bring it into a basic photo editor, I need to bring it into paintdotnet, copy, paste into a new blank template, and re-save. So I find it hard to get the motivation to clean these up.  :^(

Also, the parked cars in the "Welcome to Ukraine" photo were probably people who drove to the border, then walked across.  

This was a very good day of bicycling -- a little longer than I expected, but, I had all day, and made good use of it.  

Route in Hungary, 25 km
https://goo.gl/maps/EeiYRDR5qX2acncd7

Route in Ukraine, 45 km
https://goo.gl/maps/pcfqacwYYctd7mo79

At the border crossing I was 30 km into a 75 km day, plus a few more for side excurisions, and also a few going into the Nyzg. train station in the morning.   Figure 75 km, or 50 miles.  Not bad for an middle aged guy with a loaded bicycle!  

Looking at the video of the empty gondolas on the full screen, it's a pretty good show!  Also the fast through train of gondolas rolling through in the background.  A suprising about of flange squeal for a very shallow curve and empty cars.  

Maps -- Lonya Border Crossing 
https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=22.3170387&y=48.3181548&z=17
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=standard&lat=48.31869597646126&lon=22.318822145462036&zoom=17
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.3185568,22.3176534,931m/data=!3m1!1e3
https://opentopomap.org/#map=17/48.31867/-337.68205
https://goo.gl/maps/wGREwXaL96QhUUoFA

Batavo yards
https://www.google.com/maps/@48.3607792,22.3856115,553m/data=!3m1!1e3
https://en.mapy.cz/zakladni?x=22.3854029&y=48.3612225&z=17
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=standard&lat=48.360975522766125&lon=22.387003898620605&zoom=16
https://opentopomap.org/#map=17/48.36121/-337.61653

Looking at the gauge layer on openrailwaymaps, you can see that the gondolas were spotted in a yard with alternating tracks of standard and Russian gauge track.  The stub ends facing me in the photo are standard gauge, while the track the gondola train was on is Russian gauge.  Presumably for transloading.  But it seems odd that the areas between the tracks are overgrown with weeds -- there is no evidence of a backhoe having spent time there digging ore, coal, or anything else out of the one set of gondolas to put into another set.  The tracks to the right of the gondola tracks would be for container transfer, with the overhead cranes?  
https://www.openrailwaymap.org/?style=gauge&lat=48.360738495654495&lon=22.38513171672821&zoom=18

I'm guessing this yard is busier now, with the war, and with Ukraine needing to take almost all imports/exports overland, rather than some on the Black Sea :^(

Another observation, seeing the video on the big screen for the first time, is how there are no roads in the yard.  Everyone walks from place to place.  US yards would have well gravelled roads next to pretty much every track.  I suspect that the track maintenance is done more by hand here, rather than machine.  At least in the yards.  

Any other comments, questions, observations?  

Ted in OR
 



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/05/22 01:00 by gobbl3gook.

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