Slovakia
Armatus1995 / Wikimedia Commons · CC BY-SA 4.0 · 2018 · cropped
Slovakia is a landlocked country of 49,035 km² with about 5.4 million people, bordered by Poland to the north, Ukraine to the east, Hungary to the south, Austria to the west and the Czech Republic to the north-west. Most of it is mountainous. The Carpathians run the length of the country and culminate in the High Tatras, a compact alpine range on the Polish border that is the highest ground between the Alps and the Caucasus. Bratislava, the capital, sits at the opposite corner on the Danube, within sight of both Austria and Hungary.
The main network runs to about 3,658 km of standard gauge, with ZSSK working passenger services and ŽSR owning the track. What makes Slovakia unusual is what sits alongside it: a self-contained 1,000 mm electric railway serving the Tatra resorts, a rack railway climbing to a mountain lake, and preserved forest railways of 760 mm gauge in the central uplands — narrow-gauge mountain railways of a kind most of Europe demolished.
Rail journeys in Slovakia
Bratislava to Košice
The Košice express swaps one kind of electricity for another on the way, and since 2015 the change-over has been creeping east. 443 km under the Tatras.
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The Čierny Hron Forest Railway
A 760 mm forest railway saved from the scrapyard by volunteers, whose trains still run between the grandstand and the pitch of a village football ground.
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Poprad to Štrbské Pleso — the Tatra Electric Railway
Hourly, every day of the year, a metre-gauge electric railway climbs almost 700 metres out of Poprad to the highest station in Slovakia.
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The Vychylovka Switchback Railway
A Kysuce logging railway that climbs a mountainside by reversing up dead-end spurs, a switchback system its museum counts as one of two left in Europe.
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How do you get around the High Tatras by rail?
By a railway of its own. The Tatra Electric Railway is a 1,000 mm gauge, 1500 V DC line running 29.1 km from Poprad on the main line up through Starý Smokovec to Štrbské Pleso, with a 5.9 km branch to Tatranská Lomnica. It opened in stages between 1908 and 1912 and has carried passengers only since 1970. There is a train every hour on both arms, every day of the year, and a €6.00 ticket covers 24 hours on the whole network. At Štrbské Pleso it meets the rack railway down to Štrba, and at Starý Smokovec a funicular up to Hrebienok.
Is there a rack railway in Slovakia?
One. The Štrbské Pleso–Štrba rack railway, 1,000 mm gauge, was built in 1896 and later reconstructed, climbing from the main line at Štrba to the lake at Štrbské Pleso. It predates the electric railway by twelve years and was the original way up to the resort.
What are the forest railways?
Narrow-gauge lines of 760 mm built to move timber and preserved after their working lives ended. The best known is the Čierny Hron Forest Railway at Čierny Balog, once nearly 132 km long, closed in 1982 and reopened by volunteers from 1992. Today it runs three short return routes from Čierny Balog, steam on two of them in summer, and one of them passes through the village football ground. The Vychylovka Switchback Railway in Kysuce gains height by reversing up dead-end spurs, and its museum counts it as one of two such systems preserved in Europe.
How long is the train from Bratislava to Košice?
Between five and six hours for the 443 km. ZSSK's expresses run about every hour, with no change: the TATRAN expresses call at seventeen stations and take 5 h 37 to 5 h 51, and the faster KRIVÁŇ expresses run twice a day each way in about 5 h 05 to 5 h 33. The line follows the Váh valley to Žilina, crosses Liptov, tops out at Štrba at 900 metres under the High Tatras and runs down the Hornád valley into Košice.
Is an Interrail or Eurail pass worth it in Slovakia?
Interrail sells a one-country pass for Slovakia, and it covers ZSSK on the national network. Whether it pays depends on distance — fares are moderate and the country is not large. The mountain lines are the thing to check rather than assume: narrow-gauge and preserved railways frequently sit outside pass validity, or give only a reduction.