Railway Station Buildings on Narrow-Gauge Line to be Owned by an Association of Municipalities

07.05.2018

The first incentive for resolving the situation of railway station buildings along the narrow-gauge line was submitted by the Mayor of Bohušov Village in October 2007. His proposal included an offer of transferring or taking over usually unused and abandoned buildings along the line by local municipalities having buildings registered in their cadastres. The Osoblaha region municipalities, associated in the company Slezské zemské dráhy, had ordered the elaboration of a database of railway station buildings with adjoining territorial background for purposes of tourist development in the Moravia-Silesia Region with the intent of using these buildings for tourist trade or family guest houses. The project also intended to put railway station buildings into their original shape.

Negotiations on railway buildings’ sale started in the period from March 2008 to February 2010; however, discussions failed despite mutual effort on both sides due to a lack of agreement on sale conditions so that the issue was postponed as unfeasible. A turn occurred in April 2014. The newly founded company Osoblažská úzkorozchodná dráha, o.p.s., representing municipalities connected by the railway line, submitted a specific request for purchasing the dispensable buildings, constructions and their accessories together with adjoining terrains excluding the railway infrastructure in operation and terrains on which the railway infrastructure is located. A new impulse was the promise that financing of the revitalisation of buildings along the railway line would be assured from subsidy resources outside the railway. In January 2018, a proposition of selling 23 buildings, constructions, premises and 32 terrains in total for an approximate sum of CZK 1.65 million was approved. ”This business transaction has reached its final phase during which the contract of purchase is being concluded. In case of an optimal legal procedure, we assume the registration in the real estate cadastre to be carried out this July or August“, specifies Mr. Jiří Macho, Director of the SŽDC Regional Directorate in Ostrava. The railway line including the remaining terrains remains in the ownership and maintenance of SŽDC.

The Osoblaha narrow-gauge line is a railway line with an atypical gauge of 760 mm, situated in the Osoblaha headland. Regular passenger operation has been carried out on the narrow-gauge line since 1898 already. Moreover, the company Slezské zemské dráhy has been operating a steam engine train for tourists here since 2004. The narrow-gauge line is very interesting due to its winding character; 102 curves in total can be found within a length of 20 kilometres. Therefore the line has a nickname ”the hundred curves’ line”. Another rarity can be found in the vicinity of Třemešná - the smallest curve on the SŽDC network with a radius of 75 metres only.

Files