The Banovići Steam Railway

Steam railways survive all over the world — as museums, as heritage lines, as carefully preserved memories of a vanished age. Banovići is something rarer and stranger: a place where the age never quite ended. In this coal town in the hills of north-eastern Bosnia, genuine steam locomotives still go to work every day, shunting wagons of black lignite on a narrow-gauge line, doing the same dirty, thunderous job they were built for a hundred years ago.

The engines are the point. They run on the slender 760 mm "Bosnian gauge", and among them are wartime class 83 "Kriegsloks" and — most remarkable of all — a locomotive built in 1925, restored and still steaming, widely reckoned to be the last of its kind working anywhere in the world. To stand beside it as it clanks and hisses through the coal yard is to touch the living end of the entire steam era.

Bosnia was once laced with these little lines, and the country loved them enough to give their trains a nickname — "Ćiro". Almost all of that network is gone; the most romantic route of all, from Mostar down to Dubrovnik, is now a cycling trail. Banovići is where the real thing still turns a wheel, which is why railway enthusiasts make the pilgrimage here from across the globe.

Know what this is before you come: Banovići is a working industrial coal railway, not a polished tourist attraction. In summer the mine welcomes visitors and offers rides, and specialist operators run steam charters for photographers — but there is no glossy visitor centre and no fixed public timetable. Arrange a visit ahead, and take it on its own rough, magnificent terms.

The setting is not pretty in the conventional sense, and that is part of the honesty of the place. Banovići exists because of coal, and the railway exists to move it: a 760 mm narrow-gauge line running some twelve kilometres from the mine down to the yard and washery at Oskova, where the lignite is cleaned and tipped into standard-gauge wagons for the outside world. Pit-head gear, spoil heaps, sidings full of coal — this is a landscape of work, threaded through green Bosnian hills.

Into it comes the sound that has all but vanished from Europe: a steam whistle, and the hard, rhythmic bark of a locomotive under load. The class 83 engines — squat, black 0-8-2 "Kriegsloks", designed for wartime and built tough for this narrow track — spend their days at Oskova, assembling trains of coal, snorting back and forth between the wagons in clouds of steam. Nearby, the fleet's oldest survivor, a tank engine from 1925, is kept in working order; when it steams, you are watching a machine older than almost anyone alive, still doing its job.

Around the running engines lies a kind of open-air museum that nobody planned: the depot and its sidings hold a scatter of older, retired locomotives, some cannibalised for parts, some quietly waiting for a restoration that may or may not come. It gives Banovići a haunting, end-of-an-era atmosphere — living steam working amid the ghosts of its own kind.

The visitor's experience of it varies. In summer the mine runs tourist trips along the line behind one of the veteran engines — short, smoky, unforgettable. And for the dedicated, specialist tour companies charter "photo freights", putting the working engines to hauling loaded coal trains through the coalfield purely for the cameras, staging the smoke and steam that the daily grind doesn't always provide. Either way, what you come away with is not the polish of a heritage railway but something more valuable: the real thing, still alive, still working, on the very last narrow-gauge steam line of its kind in Europe.

Banovići is not a scheduled railway, and it is important to come with the right expectations. There is no fixed public timetable and no walk-up ticket window — this is a working coal mine that opens its line to visitors, rather than a heritage railway running to a clock.

In practice there are two ways to ride:

• Summer tourist rides. During the warmer months the mine (RMU Banovići) runs trips along the line behind one of its veteran steam engines. Days and times are irregular and can change year to year, so contact the mine ahead to find out when trains are running and to arrange a visit. Roughly a thousand steam enthusiasts make the trip each year.
• Steam photo charters. Specialist tour operators periodically book charter trains here for railway photographers — the working locomotives hauling coal wagons for the cameras. These are organised, ticketed group tours, advertised in advance; joining one is the surest way to see the engines in full steam.

Good to know:

• Arrange it in advance. Turning up unannounced may mean seeing engines shunting in the yard but no ride. A phone call or email to the mine first is well worth it.
• Best in summer. The tourist rides run in the warmer season; charters are also usually scheduled for the drier months.
• It's an active industrial site. Follow the mine's instructions and keep clear of working tracks; this is a place of real trains doing real work.
• Getting there. Banovići is near Tuzla in north-eastern Bosnia, reached by road; there is no direct passenger-train connection for visitors.

There is no regular published timetable for visitors; days and times vary by season and year. Always arrange your visit with the mine, or book a charter, before you travel (see the Tickets section below).

There is no online booking engine for Banovići — it is a working colliery, run by RMU Banovići, that happens to welcome visitors to its remarkable steam railway. Getting aboard takes a little more effort than buying a ticket, and rewards it.

For a summer ride, the practical approach is to contact the mine directly ahead of your trip to ask when trains are running and to arrange a visit; local tourist information in Tuzla can also help. Because the operation is informal and seasonal, flexibility and a little advance planning go a long way.

For the full experience — the engines in hard-working steam, hauling loaded coal trains — the reliable route is a charter tour with a specialist steam-travel operator. These run as organised group trips, advertised well in advance, and take care of access, timings and staging the trains for photography. Several international railway-tour companies have featured Banovići in recent years.

Below are the mine and an example specialist operator as starting points. As always with a place like this, confirm the current arrangements before you commit to travel.

No rail pass covers this railway, and none ever will. The Banovići line is an industrial coal railway that offers tourist rides — it is not part of the national network, it is not run by either state operator, and it does not appear in any pass scheme.

Getting here is the part a pass can help with

What a pass can do is bring you to the region. There is no One Country Pass for Bosnia and Herzegovina — Interrail says one "is not available" — so the only option is the Interrail Global Pass, or the Eurail Global Pass if you live outside Europe.

Then a warning that matters more here than almost anywhere else in the country. ⚠️ On ŽRS trains — the Republika Srpska operator — only a paper Interrail pass is accepted. A mobile pass on your phone is not. ŽRS runs Doboj–Banja Luka–Novi Grad–Dobrljin and Doboj–Petrovo Novo, which is the network you are most likely to be crossing on the way into this corner of Bosnia. If you are travelling on a pass, bring a paper one.

⚠️ Note also that the Doboj–Tuzla passenger service is currently suspended, so do not plan a rail approach to Banovići on the assumption that it runs. Check before you commit to it, and be ready to finish the trip by road.

Reservations

Not applicable, and not needed anywhere in the country: Bosnian trains carry no seat reservations, and in Interrail's own words "you can board all trains and find your preferred seat."

For the steam train itself

Arrange it directly with the mine. The tourist rides are a separate commercial operation with its own charges, unconnected to any national ticket or pass.

Pass conditions checked against Interrail's Bosnia-Herzegovina page, August 2026.

Banovići lies in the coal-and-salt country of north-eastern Bosnia, an unglamorous but genuinely interesting corner that few foreign visitors reach. This is working, everyday Bosnia rather than a tourist set-piece — which is exactly its appeal — and the surprise is how much medieval and Ottoman stonework sits within an hour's drive of the pit-heads.

Tuzla is the natural base, and its great oddity is the Panonska jezera — swimming lakes of salt water opened in the city centre in 2003, a legacy of the centuries of salt mining beneath it, complete with beaches and a reconstructed neolithic salt-making village. It is a genuinely surprising way to spend a summer afternoon.

Further afield, the wider region offers the mineral spa at Kreka, and — for the steam pilgrim making a wider tour — a road south toward Sarajevo and the great Neretva canyon railway, tying Bosnia's living steam relic to its most beautiful scenic line.

Banovići is a small mining town with limited accommodation, so most visitors base themselves in nearby Tuzla, about half an hour away, and make Banovići a day trip.

Tuzla has the fullest choice in the region: a handful of comfortable modern hotels in and around the centre, close to the famous salt lakes, plus smaller guesthouses and apartments at budget prices. It is an easy, pleasant place to stay, with good restaurants and a walkable old core, and it puts the Banovići railway within a short drive.

In Banovići itself there are a few simple guesthouses and small hotels, handy if you want to be on the spot for an early start with the engines — ask the mine or local tourist information for current recommendations, as options are modest and change.

For those touring Bosnia's railways more widely, Tuzla also works as a staging point between the steam of Banovići and the scenery of the south: from here it is a half-day's drive to Sarajevo and the start of the Neretva canyon line. Accommodation everywhere in this part of Bosnia is inexpensive and rarely needs booking far ahead, except around local festivals and the peak summer weekends at the Tuzla lakes.