The Kalávryta Narrow-Gauge Rack Railroad, Peloponnese, Greece

The Kálavrita (Καλάβρυτα) Railway was engineered by an Italian company in 1885-1895 in the fantastic gorge of the Vouraikós River. The original steam locomotives are long gone and have been replaced with modern diesel-electric cars, but nothing detracts from the magnificent scenery or from the achievement of the engineers some 120 years ago. The route starts in the coastal town of Dhiakftó and proceeds south (uphill) through the gorge to a high fertile plateau. Kalávryta is in the East Central part of the prefecture of Achaea. You can drive there through the mountainous and scenic Peloponnese, but many people opt to park their car at Dhiakftó and take the famous train for a day-long excursion.

This is the station in Kalávryta (2480 ft altitude). Although in use on weekends, it is pretty quiet and has a lost-in-time look to it. The town is historically noteworthy for two events. First, at the nearby Monastery of Ayia Lávra, Germanos, the Bishop of Patras, raised the flag of revolution against the occupying Turks on March 21, 1821. This eventually led to Greek Independence. The second event is more tragic. On December 13, 1943, German occupying troops massacred 1436 males over the age of 15 and burnt the town (from Blue Guide Greece, 1973 edition). (This photograph is a scan of a Kodachrome slide.)
Here are the young beauties in the old rail car.

Zachloroú is the first stop north of Kalávryta, where many people get off the train and hike downhill through the gorge. In my case, I took a taxi from the coast to this station to begin the hike. The route is part of the E4 European long distance hiking path (if you are really energetic, you can walk the E4 from Tarifa, the southernmost point of mainland Spain, to Crete!). There are two tavernas right at the edge of the rail line. One of them specializes in delicious roasted rooster and local retsina, where you can fortify yourself with calories in preparation for the 4-hr trek. One of the nice things about travel in Greece is that even small rural places prepare amazingly good food. There is also a nice little hotel if you want to stay the night (perhaps you had too much retsina...).

As you proceed downhill, you pass stone work sheds and water tanks, which have been restored and painted. The Ο.Σ.Ε. must have put a lot of money into the project.

All the track was replaced in 2008-2010. From Wikipedia: "The railway is single line with 750 mm (2 ft 5½ in) gauge. It climbs from sea level to 720 m in 22.3 km with a maximum gradient of 17.5%. There are three sections with Abt system rack for a total of 3.8 km. Maximum speed is 40 km/h for adhesion sections and 12 km/h for rack sections." The total route is 33 km.


The gorge gets more and more rugged, and you wonder how the engineers managed to tunnel and bridge their way up this valley. What ambition. The tunnels are interesting because you need to be sure you are not in one when the train comes. The first time I walked the route in 2008, the system was closed while the tracks were being replaced, but the next time, I had to remember to look for the train. It's really not a problem except for the bridges and tunnels.

Finally, as you approach the coastal plain, the gradient levels out and you have an easy walk to the depot in Dhiakftó. The geology is also fascinating, and you pass through regions of conglomerate, sandstone, limestone, and alluvial outwash.

At Dhiakftó, the excursion train meets the main Athens-Peloponnese line (also narrow-gauge). A new full-gauge rail is being built to connect to Patras, but I do not know if the new line will come to this rail yard or be routed further inland.

This is the train barn. I wish I could have gone in and explored, but I was with relatives who wanted to move on to lunch.

For more information: http://www.odontotos.com/index-en.htm (accessed 11 July 2016).

The 2011 photographs were taken with an Olympus E-330 digital camera. Older frames are from film.

A Ride on the Piraeus, Athens, and Peloponnese Railway

As I wrote in the previous article, the Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railway was a narrow gauge (1.00-meter) line that once connected small towns in the Peleponnese area of Greece with Athens. Let's take a trip down memory lane, riding the rail from the west end of the Gulf of Corinth to Athens.

The circles show locations of photographs. Background maps from ESRI Maps and Data.

This is the station at Kato Achaia, a farming community west of Patras. It has a sleepy land-that-time-forgot look to it. The water tank for steam locomotives still stands. As I recall, the train was delayed and we sat at a café for an hour or two.

As of 1997, the train consisted of modern but well-used diesel-electric rail cars. The windows were open and the train trundled along through vineyards and orange groves.

In Patras, we had to change trains for the main line to Athens. This was a busy station because tourists from Italy disembarked from ferry boats and many boarded the train here.

You see some refugees or gypsies on a bench. A historical note: After the Communist Bloc collapsed in 1989, thousands of Greeks from Bulgaria, Romania, and other countries were finally free to return home. Some had been stranded in the Soviet Union since the 1917 revolution. In Czarist Russia, Greeks were an important part of the merchant class and traveled throughout the vast land, but when the Bolsheviks imposed Communism, the Greeks were unable to leave. Many of their descendants spoke no Greek and had not been able to worship in Orthodox churches. After 1989, Gypsies (the Roma) also were able to travel across borders that had formerly been sealed. Finally, Albania, once a forbidden dictatorship every bit as secretive as North Korea is now, collapsed, opening the borders to thousands of impoverished Albanians who desperately wanted to find work in Greece. The people on the bench may be gypsies. These refugees have caused major disruptions to Greek society and its fragile economy.

This "Splendid" hotel was across the street from the Patras rail station. It was probably clean enough but noisy; I will pass.

The next major junction was Diakopto, where tourists could take the famous rack train up the gorge to Kalavrita (subject of a future blog).

This is the station in Kiato, closed as of 2011 because the new, regular-gauge train had been extended this far west. This station looked clean and modern, and the Ο.Σ.Ε. administration must have spent money on it only a few years before it was superseded by the new line.

Further east, we see the station at Nerantza, probably not used in decades. I used to vacation near here, and from my sister's house we would hear the trains periodically rumble by. One engineer was distinctive because he tooted the horn more than other train drivers. Continuing east, the train would have stopped in the city of Korinthos, featured in the previous blog article.

Then the train crossed the narrow Corinth Canal (Διώρυγα της Κορίνθου), which connects the Gulf of Corinth (Korinthiakos Kolpos) with the Saronic Gulf (Saronikos Kolpos). The canal, dug in the 1890s, is narrow and mostly used by cruise boats. This photograph, looking down on the railroad bridge, was taken from a relative's helicopter in 1999, using Kodachrome 25 film in a Leica  M3 rangefinder camera with 50 mm f/2.0 Summicron lens.

Finally, after chugging through the industrial suburbs of west Athens, we reached the Peloponnese Railroad Station on Sidirodromon Street (built in 1889). It was pretty sleepy in 1997 and some men were sitting around playing backgammon and drinking coffee (Greek gents do a lot of this). I think the station is now unused and am not sure what its fate will be.

For some photographs of abandoned steam locomotives from the Peloponnese system:
http://www.retronaut.co/2011/10/abandoned-steam-engines-argolis-greece/

Photograph notes: The square black and white frames are scans of Kodak Tri-X Professional film exposed in a Rolleiflex 3.5F camera (medium format 120-size film) with 75mm f/3.5 Zeiss Planar  (5-element) lens. I developed the film in Kodak HC-110 developer at dilution B. Tri-X has a characteristic look that has never been excelled. The Kiato photographs were from an Olympus E-330 digital camera. Digital is much easier, but film is more distinctive and requires a methodical approach.

The Athens to Peloponnese Railroad Station, Corinth, Greece

Dear Readers, this is the first of five posts about railways in Greece.

The Piraeus, Athens and Peloponnese Railways or SPAP (in Greek: Σιδηρόδρομοι Πειραιώς-Αθηνών-Πελοποννήσου or Σ.Π.Α.Π.) was founded in 1882 to connect the port of Piraeus (Πειραιεύς) with Athens and the Peloponnese region of southern Greece. The late-1800s was the era of great railroad building throughout the world. Greece, at that time a poor nation with isolated market towns and limited roads, hoped to support economic development by building a rail system. The Peloponnese line reached Corinth in 1885 and Patras in 1887. SPAP was absorbed by the Hellenic State Railways in 1962, now called OSE (Greek: Οργανισμός Σιδηροδρόμων Ελλάδος or Ο.Σ.Ε.). The Peloponnese rail was narrow-gauge 1,000 mm (3 ft 3 ⅜ in.), in contrast to the continental-standard 1,435 mm (4 ft 8 ½ in.) used in most of mainland Greece. The line from Piraeus to Corinth was 99 km long. In the 1890s, it was the fastest way to make the journey, the alternate being a steamship trip.


The postcard, from Wikipedia, shows the old station in Corinth (or Korinthos) in 1910. The map shows the location (background street map from ESRI maps and data). During the mid-20th century, tourists arriving from Italy typically took a ferry boat from one of the Italian Adriatic ports to the city of Patras, where they disembarked. Then the SPAP train took them on a leisurely day-long ride to the old central rail station in Athens. Once the modern highway was built in the 1960s, many travelers took diesel buses instead. As a result, they rushed past the charming little market towns clustered along the shore of the Gulf of Corinth and missed the train experience.


Today, the rail station in Corinth on Dimokratias Street stands semi-abandoned. As of 2005, the modern suburban rail connects the Athens Elefthérios Venizélos (Ελευθέριος Βενιζέλος) International Airport with Corinth and, now continues further west to the town of Kiato. Eventually, the modern rail will extend all the way to Patras, and the rest of the historic 1-m gauge train will be discontinued. As part of its financial restructuring, the Greek government plans to privatize the Ο.Σ.Ε., but I do not know if there are any potential buyers.


This station looks like it is late-1940s or 1950s-vintage. Corinth was badly damaged by an earthquake in 1928, and possibly that eventually necessitated a new station. Another hypothesis: The railroad suffered extensive damage during the second World War, and maybe the original station was damaged.


In 2011, the rail yard was pretty quiet, with abandoned rolling stock sitting on sidings. The arm sticking out in front of a graffiti-covered box car is an old water tap for filling the tenders of steam locomotives.

Finally, these mechanical control units actuated track switches. Oddly, they were on the platform in front of the station waiting room. Wouldn't tourists be tempted to fiddle with them? It's strange they had never been electrified or adapted to control from a central control room. I will show more examples of the railroad in a future blog entry.

All photographs taken with an Olympus E-330 digital camera using the Olympus 14-54mm f/2.8 lens, tripod-mounted.

Shotgun Shacks on Grammar Street, Vicksburg, Mississippi

Grammar Street is another one of those semi-hidden streets in Vicksburg that most people do not know exist unless they live there or have a specific reason to visit. There are two parts to Grammar. The east section is approximately parallel to Harrison Street and runs from Court Street to the Stout's Bayou. There is no bridge, but on the opposite side, Grammar Street picks up again and proceeds uphill to the west to Martha Street. See the circled areas on the map.
The photograph above shows the opening to Grammar street when standing on Court Street. This little house is still present but has been painted since I took the photograph in 2000.
The east part of Grammar was once a typical Southern "court," lined with identical shotgun shacks. The white house being engulfed with trees is no. 1318 and has been demolished.
Proceeding west, we come to nos. 1314 and 1312. Obviously, 1312 was a mess and ready to be demolished.
The next two were nos. 1310 and 1308. The latter is still standing.
No. 1306 had the faded green paint.
No. 1304 was already gone in the early 2000s, when I took these photographs, but 1302 was present. In the 2003 photograph, 1302 was pretty rough looking, but by 2006, it had been painted and had flowers on the front porch.
No. 1300 was the last house before you reach Stout's Bayou. I am not sure if it ever floods on this part of the street. (Update January 2021: All of these little cottages have been demolished.)
Across the street is a cottage, which may be no. 1301. All in all, this was a pretty rough street. Around the corner on First North, I met a lady who grew up on Grammar. She said she remembered when a bus would come to pick up workers to go to the cotton fields. She thought that was 30 years ago, but I think it must have been at least a decade earlier because by 1980, most cotton harvesting was mechanized.
Across the bayou to the west, the neighborhood was a bit higher grade and older, possibly late 1800s. The tall handsome house is no. 1228, and is still standing. (Update January 2021: this house is gone)
No. 1213 is more modern. Vicksburg has more hidden streets like this steeped in history.

Film note: These are all scans of Kodachrome 25 transparency film. The first photograph was taken with a Minox 35 compact camera, the rest with Leica rangefinders using Leica Summicron lenses. Kodachrome 25 was the finest-grain transparency film, and it really shone when you used the best prime focal length lenses (like Leica) to record fine details. But, its slow speed almost insured that you had to use a tripod. Some photographers disliked Kodachrome, but it had a unique color palette and rewarded deliberate workers. It also had excellent archival properties, and the colors remain vivid for decades.

Scanning Note: I scanned these on a Nikon Coolscan 4000 at 3000 dpi and saved them as TIFF files. It is difficult to scan K25, especially if the frames contain dark areas. With a Nikon unit, you have to manually increase the gain significantly. Also, the color balance is difficult to correct at dusk. Unlike modern digital camera, color film recorded the color as it was. If the day was overcast and the light was cool (blue), the pictures looked blue. Commercial photographers used color-correcting filters, but most documentary photographers did not bother.