Greek Railway in the modern era as passenger services on new Tithorea-Lianokladi section commence

It could be said that, Saturday, February 10th, was an historic day for the Greek Railway as passenger services on renovated 54 km long, Tithorea-Lianokladi section in Central Greece commenced, confirming the relevant report of Ypodomes.com. Engineers, crew and passengers had the unique opportunity to be the first users of the newly released section, which includes the longest railway tunnel in the Balkans, Kallidroms with a length of 9 km.

It is the first section of the upgraded railway line that has been released on Athens-Thessaloniki corridor in, almost, 15 years, as the last section given to operation, before this one, was in Tempi area. All in all, it is also the first new section after 12 years, as, before that, the newest section of the railway network was Corinth-Kiato.

To date, only one traffic direction (to Thessaloniki) has been released, without electrification either. These works are expected to be completed by the end of March, when the line will have been properly “smoothed”, allowing the second direction to be delivered too. Until then, the speeds will not be significantly high, so the passenger will not sense considerable time reductions on Athens-Thessaloniki-Athens route.

The first train to cover the new route was TRAINOSE’s 1511 with a rail bus (trains that had been covering suburban routes for years, in the past). Finally, with the use of electric trains, from late March to early April, from Athens to Lianokladi (and vice versa) speeds up to 200km/h (at certain points) will become available, reducing time distance drastically. It is noted that cargo services were introduced slightly earlier, on February 2nd.

Nikos Karagiannis-ypodomes.com

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