Blue skies over Brad

A beautiful morning with blue skies, sun and a steam loco at the ready! What more could we want!? After a week waiting for these conditions we didn’t need much encouragement to get snapping…

Our Resita locomotive and freight cars in the beautiful morning light at Brad

The line between Brad and Crişcior (Hunedoara County) was built 1906-1907 by the Mining Association “Ruda 12 Apostoli” and is today recognised as the oldest Romanian narrow gauge mining railway. The original purpose of the line was simply to transfer the produce of the gold and silver mines at Brad to the Arad-Brad railway, but later found a new use transferring coal to the power station at Gura Barza.

In 1998 the line closed and would have gone the way of so many of the industrial railways of Romania had it not been for George Hocevar whose work in rescuing, restoring and reopening lines has preserved some of the most significant lines in the country. The line re-opened in 2001 and has been used for occasional tourist trains ever since (more details of trains can be found at CFI website).

It is an interesting line, running parallel to the road for most of its 7km length, including a stretch through a residential area, through a rural landscape and alongside an industrial pipeline. A bit of everything really!

Horsepower

Our day of photography began in earnest at 8am and ran smoothly for an hour and a quarter. At this point one of the cylinder cocks was broken off, requiring twenty minutes of repairs before we could continue. Luckily for us the repairs held for the morning, the left side piston cock only failing as we arrived at the terminus!

At Crişcior we had a whistle-stop tour of Georg Hocevar’s works, which seemed to hold one surprise after another. At the time of our visit a locomotive from Vișeu de Sus was undergoing restoration for display at the museum (apparently it had been in use until 2001-2 but was too badly damaged for return to working order and had since been used as a donor of spare parts). In another part of the complex we could see carriages being fitted out for a preserved railway in the UK. All very impressive.

Our loco framed by the pipework near Crișcior

Our morning’s work complete we re-boarded our bus and headed on to Câmpeni for a spot of lunch, satisfied that we had the opportunity to produce a decent set of photos. Whether we grasped those chances is another matter entirely!

Gallery