Motifs: a steam locomotive of SüdB 18 series and a steam locomotive of MÁV 326/JŽ 125 series The 150th anniversary of the Croatian railroads will be celebrated in 2010. Two steam locomotives from the SüdB 18 and MÁV 326/JŽ 125 series have been chosen for that very occasion as the motives of the commemorative postage stamps from the "Steam locomotive" series. The aforementioned locomotives were among the first participants in the Croatian railroad traffic and they, therefore, tell their own story of this year’s anniversary. Building railroads in Croatia was a task set out within the traffic policy of the Habsburg Monarchy which, in 1836, accepted the technical study of a Vienna university professor Franz Xaver Riply as a framework of its railroad network. The study predicted a construction of 13 railroad tracks, with their starting points in Vienna and Budapest, from where the railroad tracks network was intended to spread in the shape of a star towards the areas that were a part of the Monarchy. A part of the plan included linking the centres of the Monarchy with the ports on the Adriatic Sea (Pula, Rijeka, Šibenik and Split) via the railroad, as well as the rivers Sava and Danube. Railroads Zidani Most – Zagreb – Sisak, Zagreb – Karlovac and Budapest – Rijeka were supposed to be the first Croatian railroad tracks. However, due to the political situation, the first 42 kilometres of the railroad tracks in Croatia were built between the Machine station, on the today’s Slovenian and Croatian border, and the Kotoriba railway station, as a section of the Pragersko – Čakovec – Kotoriba – Nagykanizsa railroad tracks. The aforementioned railroad, known as the "Croatian stub", was opened for public on 24 April 1860 and it connected Budapest directly to the main Vienna – Trieste railroad. The construction of the railroad tracks through the Zagreb area followed. The first of them, the Zidani Most – Zagreb – Sisak railroad, was opened on 1 October 1862, and three years later the Zagreb – Karlovac railroad was opened as well. Both railroads had the status of lateral railroads within the main Vienna – Zidani Most – Ljubljana – Trieste railroad and they were built by the Imperial Royal and Privileged Southern Railway Society. Alongside the first railroad tracks, in 1862 Zagreb also got its first railway station, the Zagreb South Railway Station, today known as the Zagreb West Railway Station. The construction of the railroad tracks continued with the objective of establishing a railroad connection with Rijeka. In 1870, the Hungarian National Railroad Company finished the construction of railroad tracks between Zakany, Koprivnica, Križevci, Dugo Selo and Zagreb, and in 1873 it completed the railroad connection between Budapest and Rijeka by finishing the last section between Karlovac and Rijeka. The same year, the Southern Railway Company succeeded in establishing a railway connection with Rijeka by a railroad between Sveti Petar, i.e. today’s Pivka, and Rijeka. At the same time, in 1871, first railroads were also built in Slavonia, between Erdelj, Sombor, Erdut, Dalj and Osijek and between Osijek and Beli Manastir. Seven years later a railroad connection between Dalj, Vinkovci and Slavonski Brod was completed as well. At that time, Austria was simultaneously building a railroad between Divača and Pula, which was opened for public in 1876. Railroads in Dalmatia were the last on the list of railroads built within the Monarchy’s railroad network. The first kilometres sprung up in 1877. It was the Split – Siverić section with branches leading to Perković and Šibenik. In 1888, the railroad was extended from Siverić to Knin and the Dalmatian railroads were not included into the entire railroad system up to 1925, with the construction of the Lika railroad between Ogulin, Gospić and Gračac. The Zadar area gained its only railroad in 1967 by the construction of the Zadar – Knin railroad. During that first period of building railroads in Croatia, all railroad tracks were financed from state resources and they were categorized as main railroads of the first and second order. However, the possibility of building vicinal railroads, which connected the economically developed smaller towns and were connected to the already existing railroads, was legally verified in 1880. Vicinal railroads could have been built by individuals using their own resources, as well as by towns and companies, which aroused interest of wealthy farm and factory owners in Croatia and Hungary and led to a sudden expansion of the railroad network, particularly in Slavonia and Hrvatsko zagorje. Thanks to that, at the beginning of the 20th century all larger industrial centres in Croatia (Zagreb, Sisak, Karlovac, Osijek, Rijeka and Pula) were interconnected by main railroads, and they were also directly connected to capital towns of the Austrian-Hungarian Monarchy. Other smaller Croatian towns were connected to the main railroads via the widely spread network of vicinal railroads. In the 20th century the railroad network in Croatia was expanded in accordance with the interests and needs of the new international law systems which Croatia has been a part of since 1918. In terms of transport, the framework of the railroad system was the newly established main railroad Zidani Most – Ljubljana – Zagreb – Belgrade. Redirecting and connecting the existing railroads in a different way followed, and the construction of new railroads was synchronized with the traffic demands of a different railroad system. Nowadays, the railroad network of the Croatian railroads includes the 2976.276 kilometres of railroad tracks. The international transport takes place on a total of 1711.622 kilometres of railroad tracks, the regional transport on 600.296 kilometres and the local transport on 664.218 kilometres of railroad tracks. The total length of the electrified open railroad tracks amounts to 1228.4 kilometres, and the total length of Croatian Railroads’ sections of the Pan-European traffic corridors is 767.6 kilometres. The railroad network counts an overall number of 252 railway stations. A steam locomotive of the SüdB 18 series Steam locomotives of the SüdB 18 series were designed by Austrian constructors between 1859 and 1872. They were used to pull the passenger trains on the lowland railroads. According to the information available to us, the locomotives of the SüdB 18 series also pulled trains on the first Croatian railroad tracks between Čakovec and Kotoriba, and Zidani Most, Zagreb and Sisak. The locomotive’s power amounted to 258 kW (350KSi), it was 8105 millimetres long, weighed 32.90 tons and could reach the maximum of 60 km/h. The locomotives were a part of the Croatian traffic since 1922. Not a single locomotive of this series remains preserved in Croatia today. A steam locomotive of the MÁV 326/JŽ 125 series Steam locomotives of the MÁV 326/JŽ 125 series were built between 1882 and 1897 in factories in Vienna, Linz and Munich, and since 1888 in Budapest as well. They were primarily used to pull the cargo trains but they were used for transport of passengers as well. These locomotives first operated on a railroad track between Budapest and Zagreb, and then they were also used on the Rijeka railroad. The power of the locomotive amounted to 302kW (410KSi), it was 15.131 mm long, including the tender, it weighed 48.750 kg, also including the tender, and it could reach a maximum of 45 km/h. Locomotives of this series were used for transport for sixty years. Only one locomotive of this series (mark 125-052) has been preserved in Croatia. It is now a part of the Croatian Railway Museum and it is on display on the Main Railway Station in Zagreb. The locomotive was built in 1891 in Budapest and it is the oldest vehicle in the Museum’s collection. Helena Bunijevac
