L202 railway (Croatia)

The Hum Lug-Gornja Stubica railway, officially designated as the L202 railway, is a 10.823 km (6.725 mi) railway line of local significance in Croatia that connects the station Gornja Stubica (corridor's east terminus) along with the halts Donja Stubica, Stubičke Toplice and Oroslavje with the R201 railway corridor (Zaprešić-Čakovec) in Hum Lug.

Route Overview

Passenger train makes stop at Stubičke Toplice (route L202).

The line is officially opened on June 18, 1916 in former Kingdom of Croatia-Slavonia (autonomous kingdom within the Austro-Hungarian Empire;^[1] present day Croatia). Like the rest of railway corridors in Krapina-Zagorje County, the line is single-tracked and non-electrified. All of scheduled passenger trains that operate on this line run between Gornja Stubica and Zabok or Zagreb (about 2 kilometers south from Hum Lug), using the corridor R201 between Hum Lug and Zabok (Zagreb). Most of trains that run on route between Gornja Stubica and Zabok have scheduled daily connections in Zabok with trains that run on R201, largest destinations served through this corridor being Zagreb and Varaždin. According to current schedule, passenger train ride between Zabok and Gornja Stubica takes 17 minutes in total.^[2]

Infrastructure and technical equipment

Corridor's west technical terminus, halt Hum Lug, represents a place where corridor L202 originates out of the corridor R201. On L202 route, Stubičke Toplice is the only stop that hosts only one track - halts Donja Stubica and Oroslavje have an extra added track made for cargo manipulations, although these tracks are nowadays rarely served (if ever). Last bigger infrastructure repair on this corridor took place in mid-2000's,^[3] which resulted in increasing of maximum speed for passenger trains from approximately 30 km/h (approximately 18 mph) to 60 km/h (approximately 37 mph) on entire route between Hum Lug and Gornja Stubica. Like the majority of Croatian railway lines, this line is not equipped with neither automatic block signaling or centralized traffic control (especially due to its short distance) and competent station crew members in Gornja Stubica and Zabok mutually provide traffic regulation on this route through telegraph way.^[4] Therefore, only one train at a time is permitted to operate or be situated between these two stations.

Types of operating trains

Nowadays, scheduled passenger transport on this route is operated exclusively by diesel-motor trains which replaced classically compounded passenger trains - steam locomotive with two-axle cars (which don't operate on Croatian Railways anymore) and later diesel locomotive (present series HŽ 2041) with two-axle cars. From 1990, mostly entire scheduled passenger railway traffic on this route was replaced by HŽ 7121 units (few years before, several types of diesel motor trains operated circa two trains daily on this route, including HŽ 7121 unit, while all the other trains were operating in classical contain).^[5] In summer of 1997 and in the beginning of 1998 passenger trains on this route were operated by HŽ 7122 units. This idea was rather rejected and trains again continued to operate as HŽ 7 121 units. From 2015, there is again one train per week day on this route which operates as diesel motor unit HŽ 7 122.^[6] Other types of trains which can be seen on this local route are freight trains (rarely) or some special excursion trains (they run only few times per year) which are not scheduled and can be compound of classical contain or can run as other diesel motor units which are in possession of Croatian Railways.

References