Opened 161 years ago, on December 15, 1863, the Oravița-Anina railway has been considered for many years as the most beautiful in Eastern Europe, annually attracting numerous tourists from the country and abroad and being compared to spectacular mountain railways from Austria and Switzerland.
Oravița-Anina railway PHOTO Facebook Heartland of the Villages of Romania
With a total length of 33.4 kilometers, the railway climbs from an altitude of 218 meters, at Oravița, to 558 meters, at Anina, which means a total difference in level of 338 meters. The spectacular railway bypasses the Anina Mountains through the Jitinului Valley, over which the grandest viaduct on the route was built in the 19th century, with a height of 35 meters, a length of 230 meters and five openings.
The construction of the Oravița-Anina railway began in 1861 and lasted over two years, being an extremely difficult engineering work because it was located in a difficult-to-access mountainous region. The route of the spectacular railway has no less than 14 tunnels with a total length of 2.1 kilometers and 9 viaducts.
Concretely, the route of the railway considered the most spectacular in Eastern Europe starts from the city of Oravița, after which it climbs to the plateau of the Semenic Mountains massif, following a route on which there is no other road. Due to the small radii of curvature, some as short as 104 meters, and the large ramps with a maximum gradient of 21 per thousand, the railway line is extremely similar to the famous Semmering railway in Austria.
The Oravița-Anina railway was the fourth one built in Romania in the 19th century.
“A journey on this fascinating railway is a truly memorable experience. I went for the first time in December 2017, when there was snow, and it was something unforgettable. I returned to Romania a month ago with my family, spent a week here, and dedicated one day to traveling this impressive railway route. We sat near the back door of the last carriage of the train and from there we saw landscapes that actually took our breath away. The Oravița-Anina railway is something really special and should definitely be included in the list tourist attractions essentials from Romania, you have something to be proud of”says Timothy Bronson, an American travel enthusiast from the state of California.
