Traseul Căii Ferate ANINA - ORAVIȚA (Banat, România)

Please turn ON English subtitle! - Vă rog să activați subtitrarea în românește! The video, over the course of almost 19 minutes, condenses the two-hour train journey on the Oravița - Anina tourist line, with the clarification that the filming was done on the way back, from Anina station, the end of the line, to kilometer "0" which is the Oravița train station. The spectacular landscape of the Anina Mountains, completed with the multitude of works of art, especially viaducts and tunnels, make this route a special attraction. It is not for nothing that it is called the "Semmering of Banat" after the famous Semmering Railway in Austria, built just a few years earlier and to which it resembles. From the train we will be able to see not only the beauties of the landscape, but also the remains of industrialization and mining in the Anina and Dobrei areas. The beginnings were given by the construction by the Austrians in the years 1847-1854 (at that time, Banat belonged to the Habsburg Empire, and from 1867 to 1918 to the Austro-Hungarian Empire, after which in 1918 it joined Romania) of the first railway line on Romanian territory, Oravița - Baziaș, 62.5 km, through which the mining products of the Mountain Banat (Oravita was the administrative-economic center of the "Montanistic Banat") were transported to the Danube and from there to Austria by river. With the intensification of the exploitation of coal in the Anina area, the issue of extending the railway line from Oravița to Anina was urgently raised, but major technical problems were looming. There were several projects, and the line was actually built between 1860 and 1863 by the Austrian company StEG, specialized in the construction of railways and locomotives, thus becoming the first mountain railway on the current territory of Romania. In 1869, the first passenger trains began to run. Although the air distance between Oraviţa and Anina does not exceed 15 km, the railway is more than double that, with a length of 33.4 km, having to mold itself to the rocky slopes of the Anina Mountains and cross them in many places. 14 tunnels totaling 2,084 m, 10 viaducts totaling 843 m, 89 footbridges and rock cuts totaling 21 km, as well as retaining walls over a length of 10 km were executed . The "natural" problems were also accompanied by technical ones generated by sections with much higher than usual slopes, as well as viaducts built in a circular arc with a very small radius, which led to the need to design and build special locomotives (and wagons?) for this line. The Oravița-Anina railway line was operated in the period 1863-1891 by the Austrian State Railways, in the years 1891-1818 by the MAV (Hungarian Railways), after which it passed into the ownership of the Romanian state and is operated to this day by the Romanian Railways (C.F.R.). Currently, the railway line has remained almost unchanged from its beginnings and has the following stations: km 0 - Oraviţa (train station, historical monument, the oldest train station in Romania), km 6 - Brădişoru de Jos, km 12 - Dobrei (the train did not stop here), km 16 - Lişava, km 17 - Ciudanoviţa, km 25 - Gârlişte, km 34 - Anina (train station, historical monument).