Broader selction in progress for the forthcoming exhibition

The Hungarian town Lenti, in the vicinity of NE Slovenia, is one of the terminals of the still active narrow gauge (760 mm / 2' 6") logging line Lenti - Csomoder - Kistolmacs. Of once vast system some 100 km / 62 miles still exist. Besides being the logging line, in the summertime the little railroad also acts as a tourist line, carrying the tourists between the Lenti and Csomoder. While dieselized, I believe one steam locomotive is still operational.
I've bumped into this line by accident some Friday afternoon, at the end of the May 2011, and I spent some 3 hours exploring the branch north of Lenti. I will return to this line as soon as possible, explore the rest of it, and hopefuly ride it.

The Tuesday following the Halloween or All Saints Day, depending where you live, was supposed to be sunny and so I decided to go railfaning for a whole day into my beloved Sava River gorge and catch some trains adorned by the nature in the autumn colors. Sava River gorge is a cleft that river cut through the hills in the very center of Slovenia, some 40 km east of Ljubljana. As difficult as it was for building the railroad line through it, 160 years ago it was still chosen by the builders of the Südbahn (Southern Railway), the second railroad line in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, connecting the capital Vienna with the most important and at that time still Austrian port Trieste. The reason for this decision were the rich coal fields hidden in the hills on the north side of the river. Because of these coal mines, today all but one closed down, and because of the topography, this region is to me as a miniature equivalent of the American Appalachia.

My plan was to photograph the gorge and the trains passing through from the tops of the hills. Alas the weather prognosis turned wrong and the hilltops remained shrouded in the fog so thick that even the birds were grounded. So nothing else remained for me but to drive along the narrow roads paralleling the tracks and try to find those few spots where view to the line is not obscured by the trees lining the both sides of the river. To make my railfaning even more difficult, a landslide slipped on the left track somewhere near Zidani Most, blocked it, reduced the number of trains, and caused delays on those running through. Anyway, part of my catch from the shoot that day is here.

This is a collection of my photos currently on exhibition at the front office building of the Central Workshops of Slovenian Railroads in Ljubljana. Portrayed on the photos are the workers in this and other three workshops - at Maribor, Ptuj, and Dobova. After the new year the exhibition will travel to all those three workshops, but no other plans have been made at present. However, these photos will be included together with other from the workshops in the book I plan to produce, hopefully before the Christmas.

Prekmurje is a small piece of Slovenian land squeezed between three borders – Austrian, Hungarian, and Croatian, and the Mura River – the latter gave the name to this land as Prekmurje roughly translated means across the Mura. Until the end of WW1 it was part of Hungary, but with the defeat of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and its disintegration it became part of Slovenia.

At that time this was extremely poor and underdeveloped rural place, full of swamps, with the majority of cultivable land belonging to the Hungarian count family Zichy. After the WW2 the last countess of this family has fled to Austria and the land partly belonged to the state and partly it was divided among the peasants, the swamps were dried and turned into the fields or grassland, and quite a few industries built or moved their plants there, but it was not before the last quarter of the past century that any substantial progress was visible.

My father, a Slovenian writer, was born there in 1908, and this land and its people were the subject of the majority of his novels. When I was starting my photojournalist's career in late 70s, the “old” Prekmurje, the one my father wrote about, was rapidly disappearing – old people were dying, small, clay plastered cottages with the thatched roofs were giving place to the modern brick and concrete houses, and tractors were fast replacing the cows used for drawing carts and plows.

I wanted to record as much as possible of that old Prekmurje, while it still lasted , and the photographs in this album are small part of my effort. They were taken mostly between 1973 and 1980, when the changeover was almost complete and except for the few isolated cottages the old Prekmurje was practically gone.

Goričko is a tiny patch of a lovely hilly land in the northeastern corner of Slovenia, squeezed tightly between the Austrian and Hungarian borders on the north, while on its south end it flattens into the plain land which extends from here far to the east, all across the Hungary, northern Croatia, and northern Serbia. Long time ago, in the ancient times, all these flatland was actually the bottom of the Pannonian sea, extending from Austria to Romania, and the Goričko hills were actually the islands rising out of this shallow sea. Some 600,000 years ago the Pannonian Sea drained through the Djerdap Gorge, and only part of it remained till these days, in the middle of Hungary, known as Balaton Lake.

Goričko is still predominantly rural area, but because of its lovely, gentle hills, colorful flora, mushroom and chestnut-rich forests, and lakes rich with fish, all of them the reasons why it was declared the regional park by the Slovenian government, it is very popular tourist region, favored especially among the bicyclists, hikers, fishermen, and all who seek the peace away from the crowded cities

On Friday, August 26th, 2011, a serious accident happened at the Jesenice station, the most serious after the 1983 disaster at the Divaca station. In the crash between the two trains, heavy inbound coal train, hauled by two Siemens Taurus motors and outgoing Fiat DMU, 34 passengers were injured, out of them 9 quite badly. Fortunately, none of them has been life threatened, and after 3 days only 4 of them are still hospitalized. Both engineers saved their lives by jumping from the cabs into the innards of their vehicles and none of them has been seriously wounded and the At the time of this writing the investigation is still ongoing and the reason for the accident is not yet known.

In the collision the cab of the Fiat DMU has been totally smashed, and the DMU itself is most likely damaged beyond repair. Both Tauruses passed through the accident much better and at the first sight only the buffer assemblies, the pilots, and the cab fronts have been damaged. However, only more detailed inspection at the shops will tell if there were any other damages on the motors, especially on the trucks, undiscovered during the accident clearing.

The accident happened at 2.35 pm, when the Nova Gorica-bound DMU, loaded with the commuters going home, has been leaving the Jesenice station from the track 4, while the coal train was entering the yard from the Ljubljana - Jesenice mainline and crossing the DMU's path while heading toward track 6. The primary investigation lasted somewhere until 9 pm, and afterwards the clearing begun. Both Tauruses have derailed, as well as the DMU, whose front truck has jumped almost to the parallel tracks, and the first coal loaded gondola behind the engines. Fortunately the mainline and the first three yard tracks were not blocked and the traffic continued, even if somewhat hampered. The separating and re-railing of the vehicles lasted until 8 am, when they were moved to the side tracks and the track maintenance workers begun to repair the damaged tracks and switches.

At 3 am on the Sunday, Feb. 20th night SŽ switcher 643-011, built by Djuro Djakovic in 1967,was dragging a heavy train of gondolas loaded with the scrap metal toward the end of the yard lead of the Ljubljana – Zalog marshaling yard. Due to the terrain configuration the lead, paralleling the two-track mainline, is relatively short and it ends at the edge of some 8m / 25' high and steep bank of the Ljubljanica River.

For the reason not yet determined – the investigation is still in the process – something went wrong with the air brake system and instead of stopping short of the track end bumper, the train hit the bumper, tore it off the rails, crashed into the stone foundation of the mainline bridge, knocking out several heavy stones, and came to rest with the locomotive and two gondolas laying on slope. In the collision the locomotive was completely destroyed and only the trees prevented it from ending in the river. As it is hard to believe when seeing the wreck of it, the engineer crawled out of the totally ripped apart cab almost unharmed. He was rushed to the hospital for the medical exam and he left it shortly thereafter with just few stitches. He returned to the site of the accident and the rescue team had some troubles to prevent him from crawling back to the remains of the cab in search of his wallet.

Before any mess cleaning work could start, the first steps of investigation took place and it continued while the cars and the locomotive were lifted to the higher, flat ground in the successive days. The left, inbound mainline track has been closed during the first day, but was reopened for the traffic in the evening of the same day. The locomotive will be inspected on the spot and thereafter the reusable parts will be salvaged while the rest of it will end as a scrap steel in some steelworks' furnace. What will happen to the two wrecked gondolas remains to the owner, Slovakian Railroads.

The accident caused also a minor environmental damage as some 1,500 liters / 400 gallons of fuel spilled into the river. The firemen, which arrived quickly to the scene, prevented the bigger contamination by spreading the floating barriers around the locomotive, and by pumping the remaining liquids – the fuel, lubricating oil, and cooling water - out of the particular locomotive systems.

These photos were taken during the fist few days of the rescue operations.

On a one of the hottest days in the summer 2011, a group of gandy dancers was replacing some rotten ties at the coach yard of Ljubljana Main station, as well as fixing some switches. I was there too and recorded some moments from their hard labor.

Slovenian Railroads (SZ) have several workshops where their rolling stock is maintained. One of the workshops is located in the northeastern part of the country, in the smaller town Ptuj (P-tooy) on the Pragersko - Hodos line. In the past this medium-sized workshop cared mainly for the railroad cars, the passenger cars being their specialty, and DMUs' bodies and trucks, while the mechanical parts were serviced in the nearby Maribor workshops. Besides, they were also inspecting and maintaining the wheelsets. In the past they did this only for the SZ and the volume of the work was relatively small, but in the last few years the railroad companies from other countries - Austria, Germany, and France - showed the interests to use their capacities and knowledge. The orders begun to grow and the management responded to the increased demand with the new workshop hall and by buying some new machining equipment. Now they are flooded with the orders and the wheelset servicing has become their main business.

I had the opportunity to spend a couple of hours roaming through the shops and the part of what I've recorded during this rambling is presented in this album

One of the old Slovenian ethnographic peculiarities are painted fronts of the beehives in the bee houses. The pictures, painted in the naive, homemade manner, depict mainly the moments from the fairy-tales, superstitious beliefs, hopes, fears, or religious moments. One of such traditional paintings shows the mill where the men bring in their aging wives and, after they were rejuvenated by some miraculous process inside the mill, take them back home again. This particular painting was in my mind when I revisited the Central Workshops of the Slovenian Railroads in Maribor and found there five Reagans - the GM EMD G26 HCW-2 diesel-electric locomotives, nicknamed thus by Slovenian railroaders - in the various stages of the overhaul. To see one quarter of the 20 units strong roster going through the rejuvenating process at the same time was the sight unseen before and the analogy with the medieval fairytale popped instantly into my mind.

Album shows some details of the diesel locomotive rejuvenating process. Wouldn't be fantastic if such mill... Ah, well, forget it ;-)

This is the first of the series of photos assembled under the collective name "Riding the Steel Roads", showing the people who ride the trains. The former title of the collection "Mind the Gap", borrowed from the warning that can be heard on the London Subway was not appropriate for the other series, so I have discarded it.

I have also re-edit the photos as they were prepared for the video projection and tailored to suit the horizontal screen. Besides, few more photos were added too.