Deja vu? By Carl W. Stephanus

Hundreds (maybe thousands) of rusty, old railroad cars in a big railroad yard of rusty trackage. Is this some yard we overlooked on CSX during our 1990s drive to scrap HBOs (heavy bad order cars) and unneeded trackage? Gee, I thought I was finished with such work! But then, a nudge from my wife sitting next to me, reminds me we are in Romania, not U.S.A., 20 or so years ago.

We were riding many trains during our three week vacation in Romania and saw at least three such yards of old railroad cars. Some passenger trains even seemed a little old, too, and one had a 1973-built electric locomotive. However, many trains did have more recently-built equipment. Every train we rode arrived and left on time. Except for going to and from the Maramures, most trains were crowded in September, 2011, and required advance reservations.

Some major routes have electrified, signaled maintracks, Continuous Welded Rail and concrete ties. Apparently, they have used concrete ties for so long that they are now replacing many, and we saw several “humongous” piles of worn-out concrete ties. Even disposing of wood ties was a continual problem for CSX and its predecessors. Thirty or forty years ago, Chessie bought “tie destroyers” to chew up worn wood ties and spit out the chips along the right-of-way. Looking back, I remember trying to “brain storm” some solutions with Vice-President Kenneth T. Reed. I suggested making piles of ties (nearby space permitting) and covering them with concrete or dirt to “immobilize” them! That idea didn’t fly. But I do wonder how US railroads are handling tie disposal and what Europeans are doing with all those old concrete ties.

Capacity was increased on the line between Bucharest and Brasov, as this line served several winter sports and summer tourist areas. Additional tracks were being added at stations. Still many lines with lesser traffic were single maintrack with diesel pulled trains or diesel railcars. Except for some heavy traffic maintracks, nearly all tracks everywhere had weeds in them. The only active weed control I saw was a man wielding a scythe on the yard tracks of Sibiu.

Most intermediate stations had some or all tracks rusty and covered with not only weeds but also some with bushes and/or trees! While some unused small railroad yards were at abandoned factories, others were just surrounded by farmland. At one station, a signal maintainer was painting the signal masts for tracks that obviously had not been used for a while! While we had seen scrap being loaded onto ships in Constanta, the Black Sea port, it did not look like railroad scrap. With the high prices now paid for scrap going to China, the Romanian RR needs a “rusty rail committee” like CSX had in the 1990s!

Except one route, all the lines of the national RR system we traveled had train signals, with maintrack access controlled by power switches. Everywhere!! Passing sidings, station sidings and yard tracks all had power switches, which would facilitate one-man freight train operations. As most freight trains were shorter than 40 cars (the longest one we saw), doubling in or out yard tracks was probably rare.

Many electrified lines had at-grade vehicle crossings. On each side of the crossings was a heavy metal or hefty wood goalpost-like structure straddling the road. They did not just warn drivers about high clearance motor vehicles; they would probably remove the offending top of the vehicle so as not to damage the railroad catenary! Some steel railroad bridges over highways also had similar structures made of concrete for protection against big highway trucks. One might have saved a waste hauler millions of dollars in damages paid due to their truck hitting a large steel CSX bridge in Kentucky 20 or 30 years ago.

Traveling by railroad, subway, trolleys, and hiking, we visited Bucharest, the Black Sea beaches, the mountains and valleys of Transylvania. Walking in the cities of Brasov, Sibiu, Sighisoara, Bistrita and the countryside under mostly clear skies, with a full moon at night, we encountered no werewolves or vampires, but did see many well-fed wild dogs. The only “scary” incident was dining in Dracula’s Club in Bucharest and meeting their nationally renown Dracula actor. My wife complained that I took too long to take pictures of him with his teeth biting her neck!

Our last objective in Romania was to visit the remote Maramures area in the Carpathian Mountains of northwest Romania to ride on the only active European logging railroad. But getting there would not be easy. That’s the story for Part 2.