The Mocanița from Vaser Valley
Summer of 2013 (uau, it’s been such a long time!!?) ended with a trip to Maramureș, we tried to visit moast of the historical places and the first Ițm going to talk about is going to be Vișeul de Sus, here you go on a time travel to the past, on the Mocanița forest railway train.
Deep into the mountain forests of Maramures there is a small town, named Vișeul de Sus where small forest trains still live and travel along the Vaser Vally.
The track from Valea Vaserului is the only forest track in Europe that still works for its original purpose and turist purposes as well. It has been working since 1932, when it was used exclusively to transport wood from the hard-to-reach areas in the mountains. It is famous for being the last true forest track that works on steam. According to the official history it was built on Austro-Hungarian gauge of 760 mm. The track runs alongside the Vaser river with lots of curves, several tunnels and bridges for 56 km deep into the wilderness without any villages or roads but with bears and wolfs.
At the beginning of the 18th century the area was inhabited by german speaking settlers, they explored the forests and harvested the timber, sending the logs downstream of the Vaser river. When the railway was build it was a very big progress for the area. The purpose of the small gouge was to make it easy for the trains to take the curves and to actually make it possible for smaller trains to pull empty logging waggons up the mountain and to let the heavily loaded trains to roll down helped by gravity.
Even if after 1945 forest roads began to replace forest rail roads in Europe in Romania there were built even more. In 1970 the State Forest Administration operated over 3000 of tracks. In 1986 new forestry steam locomotives were built in Romania, and in 1989 there were 15 railways operating tantalizing 1000 km. After 1990 the economic changes had a devastating effect on the Forestry industry leading to the collapse of almost all of the operating railways, most of the trains with their wagons were sold or scrapped and the tracks were abandoned. Fortunately one of them survived, The Mocanița from the Vaser Valley.
From 2003 the railway is being managed by a private corporation “R.G. Holtz Ltd”, which holds the depot, most of the locomotives and the wagons, the railway is still state-owned along with the forest in the valley. Since 2000 the railway has been receiving help from abroad, from Switzerland to be exact from the “Hilfe für die Wassertalbahn” (“Help for the Vaser Valley Railway”). The Swiss helped with the restoration of some disused locomotives the porches of some passenger wagons, the refurbish and restoration of the historic train station. From 2005 regular passenger trains hauled by steam locos have been in operation for tourists and since 2007 the Vaser Valley has been under European protection as part of the Maramureș Nature Park.
anca H. PhotoBlog 