Hidden gems in the Baltic
Lithuania is considered by many a completely boring country when it comes to its railways. Despite its Soviet past, it could almost be said that the Lithuanian fleet will msot likely be one of the most modern ones in the whole of Europe, with most of their traffic being done with fresh new ER20 Eurorunners and TEM TMH locomotives, a very extensive modernisation of the old reliables from the TEM2 family. It is therefore omitted by a lot of our railfan coleagues.
It was already the third time that I had visited my family in Vilnius and I was trying really hard to find some places to go to for interesting sightings in Lithuania. I had a couple of places on my map, two of them in Vilnius and three in other parts of Lithuania.
Jonava (Polish Janów) is a mid-sized town lying 75km to the North-West of Vilnius. With its 27 thousand inhabitants, it sits at a comfortable place in the list of top 10 most inhabited cities of Lithuania. The main eployer in the town is AB Achema, the owner of one the largest chemical plants of the Baltic states. The factory located in Jonava produces artificial fertilisers and other general use chemicals at a very large scale - so much in fact, that they have their own fleet of locomotives in the daughter-company UAB Transachema. Among them are one of each series: TEM2, TEM2U, TEM2UM, TEM7A and 2TE116. Here one of the locos - TEM2U-8940, built 1987 - is seen shunting around the facility's internal railway network with a rack of old Soviet tanker wagons. The factory itself can be seen in the background.
Photo by Piotrek/Toprus
Hidden gems in the Baltic
Lithuania is considered by many a completely boring country when it comes to its railways. Despite its Soviet past, it could almost be said that the Lithuanian fleet will msot likely be one of the most modern ones in the whole of Europe, with most of their traffic being done with fresh new ER20 Eurorunners and TEM TMH locomotives, a very extensive modernisation of the old reliables from the TEM2 family. It is therefore omitted by a lot of our railfan coleagues.
It was already the third time that I had visited my family in Vilnius and I was trying really hard to find some places to go to for interesting sightings in Lithuania. I had a couple of places on my map, two of them in Vilnius and three in other parts of Lithuania.
Jonava (Polish Janów) is a mid-sized town lying 75km to the North-West of Vilnius. With its 27 thousand inhabitants, it sits at a comfortable place in the list of top 10 most inhabited cities of Lithuania. The main eployer in the town is AB Achema, the owner of one the largest chemical plants of the Baltic states. The factory located in Jonava produces artificial fertilisers and other general use chemicals at a very large scale - so much in fact, that they have their own fleet of locomotives in the daughter-company UAB Transachema. Among them are one of each series: TEM2, TEM2U, TEM2UM, TEM7A and 2TE116. Here one of the locos - TEM2U-8940, built 1987 - is seen shunting around the facility's internal railway network with a rack of old Soviet tanker wagons. The factory itself can be seen in the background.
Photo by Piotrek/Toprus