Travel Photographers Network

A week at a logging railway in the Carpathians

Text and images by Ian Lawrence - All rights reserved.

In the north west of Romania, close to the border with Ukraine there is a small narrow gauge logging railway which still uses steam engines to transport wood out of the surrounding woods down to the saw mills in the valley. FarRail tours , a German tour operator which caters for the discerning railway photographer and videographer, organized a tour travelling on chartered and regular trains on the entire network. I joined the travel photography tour in Budapest, Hungary. From there we went by train to Mateszalka where we changed onto a private bus which would take us over the Romanian border and on to Viseu de Sus.

The train ride was quite uneventful, but the bus ride proved more challenging. A large minivan had been ordered and was actually there waiting for us. We piled in, stacking our luggage on the rear seats as we usually do until somebody counted the number of seats… There were 17 seats and 18 of us. So out came the luggage, in we got, stacking the luggage in the aisle behind us in a way which would meet no western safety regulation. The tourleader sat on some cases near the door. It was only for a four hour drive, theoretically that is, but due to the condition of the roads it took more like 7 hours.

Crossing the Romanian border wasn’t as hard as we’d expected. The tourguide took our passports, then a policeman stood in the doorway and called our names. Hands went up in response from amidst the mass of suitcases and camerabags. He soon gave up on comparing faces to passports and waved us through.

EU inspectors probably hadn’t visited this area when they decided Romania was ready to join the EU. The Maramures region is one of the poorest in Romania. Many people have moved out in the past, finding work elsewhere. Horse and carts are commonplace. But then there are expensive cars too. Young people with trendy western clothing, old people with tradition hats and headscarfs give the typical mix of a society moving into the 21st century. The last few years tourism has brought some new money to the region. Going for walks in the woods, visiting the churches and… riding on the old steamtrain.

On the first day of the tour we arrived at the depot early, but had to wait until a track maintenance gang had arrived (that took some time as it was sunday). Apparantly some people had tried to steal wood during the night. Using a heavy tractor they had tried to haul a large tree trunk out of the forrest. At one point they had dragged the log over the track seriously damaging it in the process. We travelled to the spot were heavy trackmarks in the riverbed showed where the tractor had been stuck and the log was abandoned. It looked like it might be the end of the line for us. Then the trackgang got to work. Earlier we had thought one of the men had brought his wife and child along being a normally work-free Sunday, but it turned out that the woman was part of the gang too. A case of good old Soviet emancipation. Using steel bars they soon shifted the track sideways a few metres into something resembling it’s original position. Then the boss, who’d done nothing up to that point came forward... good old Soviet equality. He proceeded to measure the distance between the rails, which to our eyes had some quite disturbing differences. Somehow he deemed it was within reasonable tolerances. Slowly the heavy steam engine rode over the relaid tracks, pressing the rails into the right gauge as it passed. Job done. We reboarded the train and continued up the line.

On Monday we got our first impression of the local forestry workers. As the railway is the only way into the woods, workers gather at the end of the sawmills on a monday morning to take the train to work, travelling back on friday evening. Well-built women with headscarfs, young strong men with chainsaws, old men with weathered faces carrying axes. Standard supplies for the week included big plastic 2.5 litre bottles of beer and plastic bottles containing homemade spirits. As we moved down the line people got off and disappeared into the woods. We saw some of them at work on our other tours during the week.

On the last day but one it happened. We’d feared it all week. We were riding a diesel railcar, which we used to chase the steamtrain (remember there are no roads). You should know that this railcar had the diesel engine and cab situated at one end of the coach. When reversing the engineer would simply look out of the side window past the train every now and then just to check that the tracks were still in place. Chances of him seeing any obstacle on the tracks were minimal at the best of times and it was just starting to get dark. Suddenly there was a loud bang and the front of the railcar rode up off the rails. We came to an almost instant stop. We’d de-railed. Both axles of the front bogie were off the rails and there was a log lodged under the railcar.

Handjacks and other re-railing aids soon came out. Every train carries them. The traincrew was soon assisted by the crew of the next production train which came along a short time later and stopped behind us. Spirits were handed around and then a bonfire was built. Re-railing was hampered by the fact that we were also towing a small inspection car which was too heavy to manhandle off the rails, but too light to be able to use the more powerful steam engine from the following train to aid in pulling the bogie back onto the rails. They did try though, but soon ended up with a selection of spare parts of what had once been the drawgear of the inspection vehicle. Two Austrians from our party set off walking. The assumption was that the road (dirt track) on the other bank of the river started not far from where we were and there was a foot bridge across. An hour later a British couple set off walking too. I was among the third group that left the scene more than 4 hours after the derailment. We’d been told that a car had managed to make it up the dirt track and could take four of us to the hotel. Hardy travellers as we were, most of us had flashlamps with us and we set off down the track.

Soon the only light we had came from our lamps and the stars. It was dark unlike any dark most West-Europeans have ever seen. Black-out dark. The bridge we had to cross was a pedestrian suspension bridge we’d crossed earlier in the day to take photos from the other bank. The planks were old and rotten. Many were missing. Some had been replaced by longitudinal timbers with the round, slippery side up. Crossing this bridge in daylight was adventurous. Doing the same by night was bordering on dangerous. Heavy camerabag over one shoulder, one hand holding the torch illumating the planks and the fastflowing river beneath where the planks were missing, the other hand clasping the steel wire which was provided as a handrail. Somehow we all made it across dry and alive. The last of our group turned up at the hotel long after midnight.

The next morning when we showed up at the depot somehow the railcar had made it back onto the rails and to the depot during the night. A worker was still tinkering around with the bogie with some steel wire and a hammer. The Romanian motto is “if it’s broken but still works use it”, so no doubt the next group of tourists would be using it for a tour into the woods.

Technical information

I shot with two DSLR cameras. There was so much action I’d lose shots if I’d only used one body. One body was pared with a 28-75/2.8 and the other with a 70-200/L4 lens. I had decided beforehand I wanted to work on my “people” shots. I routinely went for these shots with a shallow dof mostly with the long lens at f4. I also discovered that people shot in confined spaces, like inside carriages sometimes called for a wider lens than I currently have (19mm).

About the Author

Ian Lawrence lives in the Netherlands and works as a civil engineer (piping and pipelining). He spends his spare time photographing trains in their surroundings, always looking for the perfect shot in the best light. As the Netherlands don’t have many locations where he can get the type of shots he likes, he travels abroad whenever he can.

More of his work can be seen on his homepage at www.railway-photography.net

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