Borzhava “route” is a huge potential for Transcarpathian tourism

As we reported, this Friday, August 4, the historic train driven by a retro-locomotive will depart from Vynogradiv for its first trip on the Borzhava narrow-gauge railway. The route of the train is twenty kilometers long, runs through the city of Beregovo to Khmilnik station and lasts three hours with stops. According to the plan, the train, which consists of three passenger and one freight cars, will be running on the narrow-gauge railways during August every Friday and every Saturday.
              

As the director of the department of information and public relations of the regional state administration Yaroslav Halas emphasized during the press conference, the launch of the retro-train is still just a pilot project designed to popularize the Borzhava narrow-gauge railway, and the regional administration is planning to revive it. "According to calculations of experts, the restoration of the badly neglected railway requires more than 160 million hryvnias. The region cannot afford such money. Borzhava narrow-gauge railway is one of the projects that should be implemented in Transcarpathia with the help of the central government in the coming years. We hope that the revival of the narrow-gauge railway will be taken under the personal patronage of the President of Ukraine. We have preliminary agreements on this", – Ya. Halas said.

The author of the project, adviser to the Minister of Infrastructure of Ukraine Sebastien Trolle, who has experience in the revival of such facilities in Germany, said that a full-fledged development of the narrow-gauge will take at least five years. "The length of the Transcarpathian narrow gauge is about one hundred kilometers. This is an inexhaustible potential for the development of tourism in Transcarpathia, because it is unique not only for Ukraine, but also for Europe. The Ministry of Infrastructure intends to continue this pilot project next year", – he says.  They can receive three retro-cars for the narrow-gauge railway from Switzerland. And they plan to find several more locomotives, – the press service of the Transcarpathian Regional State Administration informs.