The Gyula salt train
Sugar beet used to be one of the main agricultural products of Hungary up until the end of communism.
After that, a fraction of the 12 sugar factories remained active in the country, with their number decreasing to 5 by the 2005s.
Later, when Hungary joined the EU, according to the EU sugar market policy 4 factories had to shut down, leaving the Kaposvár plant the only one processing Hungarian-grown sugar beet.
Most of the beet is being grown in the fields of the Alföld. After collecting at nearby train stations, the beets are loaded onto local freight trains, to be unified into unit trains transporting them to the Kaposvár factory on the main lines.
Csabacsűd on Line 125 is one of the loading spots still seeing weekly trains: the empty cars usually arrive on Thursdays, get loaded on Fridays, to then head to Békéscsaba on Saturdays.
On the 15th of October, we headed down to Szarvas, to catch one of these loaded runs with Levente, only missing a little detail that would interfere with our plans: that day was an extra workday.
This meant that the designated freight crew of Békéscsaba with Sergei 109 got some other duties according to their Monday schedule. This usually means switching cars at Orosháza, but that morning also entailed a mysterious-sounding "salt train" to Gyula.
Freight traffic is very rare in this direction. So naturally, we made our way to the line in the early morning, disembarking the Bzmot at Bicere stop, where the station dispatcher welcomed us with overwhelming joy and quickly confirmed that the freight train will be soon en route from Békéscsaba, with 4 cars.
We took our positions, and soon the sound of the 6-axle Soviet beast started to echo around the Southern Alföld... with 4 wood-loaded cars. Quite salty indeed!
The Gyula salt train
Sugar beet used to be one of the main agricultural products of Hungary up until the end of communism.
After that, a fraction of the 12 sugar factories remained active in the country, with their number decreasing to 5 by the 2005s.
Later, when Hungary joined the EU, according to the EU sugar market policy 4 factories had to shut down, leaving the Kaposvár plant the only one processing Hungarian-grown sugar beet.
Most of the beet is being grown in the fields of the Alföld. After collecting at nearby train stations, the beets are loaded onto local freight trains, to be unified into unit trains transporting them to the Kaposvár factory on the main lines.
Csabacsűd on Line 125 is one of the loading spots still seeing weekly trains: the empty cars usually arrive on Thursdays, get loaded on Fridays, to then head to Békéscsaba on Saturdays.
On the 15th of October, we headed down to Szarvas, to catch one of these loaded runs with Levente, only missing a little detail that would interfere with our plans: that day was an extra workday.
This meant that the designated freight crew of Békéscsaba with Sergei 109 got some other duties according to their Monday schedule. This usually means switching cars at Orosháza, but that morning also entailed a mysterious-sounding "salt train" to Gyula.
Freight traffic is very rare in this direction. So naturally, we made our way to the line in the early morning, disembarking the Bzmot at Bicere stop, where the station dispatcher welcomed us with overwhelming joy and quickly confirmed that the freight train will be soon en route from Békéscsaba, with 4 cars.
We took our positions, and soon the sound of the 6-axle Soviet beast started to echo around the Southern Alföld... with 4 wood-loaded cars. Quite salty indeed!