Promotion international container train “Bosporus Europe Express 25” which had arrived from Slovenia yesterday (Monday, March 16) at 5.15 p.m. in Sid railway station, was in Dimitrovgrad last night (Tuesday, March 17) at 3 a.m. and left the territory of Serbian Railways after customs control at 4 a.m. This composition passed through Serbia in less than 11 hours, according to the timetable, which proved the competitiveness of international railway traffic on Corridor X.

The Siemens state-of-the-art locomotives, which operated for the first time across Serbian lines were driven by train drivers of Serbian Railways, Dusan Bosnjakovic, Istvan Feldi, Ivan Vukov and Robert Santo.

This composition, which departed from Ljubljana, will arrive to Halkali, Turkey during the day, which would mean accomplishing of the goal which was for an international freight train to cross the distance of 1,577 km and four border crossings in less than 37 hours, i.e. by 39% faster than so far. The train departed Ljubljana yesterday (Monday, March 16) at 8.30 a.m.

The train operates on Ljubljana (Slovenia) – Halkali (Turkey) route, crossing Slovenia, Croatia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Turkey. The railway administrations of these five countries which are included in the pan-European Corridor X, on the route from Ljubljana to Halkali, decided to implement the Initiative of the Stability Pact Business Advisory Council.

Namely, freight train used to cross this distance in 60 hours until now. The objective of the promotion of the new train was for the five national railways accelerate, by intensive mutual cooperation, the border crossing procedures and the entire freight transport, in order to achieve, with the reduced travel time, the reliable, fast and high quality railway connection between the Central and Eastern Europe, as the strongest competition to road and shipping. For the forthcoming period, it is planned to reduce the travel time of freight trains between Ljubljana and Halkali to 25 hours. Thereby, Turkey shall be connected to the developed intermodal network in the Central and Western Europe, and “Bosporus Europe Express” shall be connected to Ljubljana – Munich train, which will enable for wagons to arrive from Slovenia to Germany and Benelux countries in only one day.

Contribution to the reduction of travel time of this train was achieved by introducing of two new Siemens locomotives, out of which one is the state-of-the-art multi-system EuroSprinter locomotive, and the other one is the silent EuroRunner locomotive. The locomotives bear logos of railway administrations participating in this project, as well as of the operators “Adria Kombi” and “Kombiverkehr”.