Šargan Eight
Шарганска осмица
Interesting facts
- In 1916 a blast in the Budim tunnel brought down its ceiling, killing between 150 and 200 Russian and Italian prisoners of war who were building the line.
- Austro-Hungarian engineers drove the first route straight through the village cemetery at Markovo Polje, which remains split in two, though trains never ran there.
- The mountain rock was so hard that locals called it kremenjak, flint, because it struck sparks from the workers' pickaxes.
- Because of the loop, trains pass the same spots twice at different heights; from Krst station the figure eight looks like two separate railways.
- About 365 springs have been counted along the route, which is why the village is called Mokra Gora, 'Wet Mountain'.
- In its heyday the narrow-gauge line formed part of a route linking Belgrade with the Adriatic coast at Dubrovnik and Zelenika.
- At the portal of the Vardište tunnel stands a sculpture of a Serbian soldier crushing the crown of Austria-Hungary underfoot.
- Golubići station served as a set for Emir Kusturica's film 'Life Is a Miracle', and the film sets grew into his village of Drvengrad.
- A small wooden church built in 2011 and dedicated to the Seven Sleepers of Ephesus honours everyone who worked on the railway, including the dead prisoners.
- The heritage train is officially called 'Nostalgija' but universally known by its nickname 'Ćira', and in 2019 it carried about 88,000 passengers.
Why it is worth it
The Šargan Eight is a narrow-gauge mountain railway in western Serbia that solves a steep climb with a single stroke of engineering wit: instead of tunnelling straight through the Šargan pass, the line loops over itself in the shape of a figure eight. Between Mokra Gora and the station of Šargan Vitasi it covers about 15.5 km while climbing some 300 metres, passing through 22 tunnels — the longest over 1.6 km — and over five larger bridges, so that from the carriage windows you see the track you have just travelled lying below, and then above, you.
The line was built to the 760 mm "Bosnian gauge" as part of the narrow-gauge route between Belgrade and Sarajevo. Work began during the First World War under Austro-Hungarian occupation and was halted after a tunnel collapse in 1916; it resumed in 1921 under the new Kingdom of Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, and the first train reached Vardište on the Bosnian side on 25 January 1925. Replaced by standard-gauge railways and roads, the whole route closed in 1974 and the track was lifted.
Rebuilt as a heritage railway, the Šargan Eight was fully back in operation on 1 September 2003, with the Nostalgija heritage train; an extension across the border to Višegrad in Bosnia and Herzegovina was completed in 2010. The trip from Mokra Gora to Šargan Vitasi and back takes around two and a half to three hours.
The surroundings are part of the pleasure: the Šargan–Mokra Gora Nature Park, protected since 2008 and covering over 100 square kilometres of forested hills and meadows, and Drvengrad, the timber ethno-village built above Mokra Gora by the film director Emir Kusturica. Mokra Gora was named one of the UN Tourism Best Tourism Villages in 2021.
Getting there
Trains start from Mokra Gora station in western Serbia, close to the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina. The nearest town is Užice, roughly 27 km away. Morava Airport near Kraljevo (KVO) is the closest airport in Serbia with scheduled flights, and Belgrade Nikola Tesla Airport (BEG) is the main international gateway.
Plan your visit
We have no confirmed visit data yet. Once it is confirmed, this block also carries the date it was checked.
Nearby places
- Mehmed Paša Sokolović Bridge 18.9 km · bridge
On these lists
From the encyclopaedia
The Šargan Eight is a narrow-gauge heritage railway in Serbia, running from the village of Mokra Gora to Šargan Vitasi station. The modern line was restored on 1 September 2003. An extension to Višegrad in the Republika Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, was finished on 28 August 2010. It was planned to extend the railway to the village of Kremna by the end of 2011, and in 2013 to extend to the city of Užice, but this was only partially carried out.
Wikipedia · CC BY-SA 4.0
43.80000, 19.52194per Wikidata