Romania boiler work gets Angie, 20, a fortnight at the Flour Mill
TRANSYLVANIA’S historic Sibiu-Agnita Railway, locally known as The Mocanita and which is being supported by British preservationists, now has its first full-time employees.
There is now sufficient income from regular diesel train rides, essentially aimed at local families, for Mihai Blotor, who set up the Friends of the Mocanita in 2007, to swap a high-tech career designing websites for the challenge of running a railway. Another employee with engineering and technical expertise will soon follow.
Greatly encouraged by support from the UK – in particular in the early years by SARUK (the Sibiu-Agnita Railway UK Supporter’s Group) and most recently by Prince Charles, whose letter of support (issue 274) made a real difference – the SibiuAgnita got its first steam locomotive last year. Bill Parker, owner of the Flour Mill workshop at Bream in the Forest of Dean, and SARUK stepped in at only days’ notice to buy a 1949 Bucharest-built 0-8-0T.
No. 764-158 had spent years as a ‘gate guardian’ outside Romanian Railways’ Sighisoara station, which until 1963 was the northern terminus of the then Sighisoara-Sibiu railway.
Although presently there are no facilities to overhaul or maintain a steam engine on the SAR, a team from the Flour Mill spent a week in October dismantling it at the current ‘end of the line’ at Hosman. One of the team’s volunteers, Angelica Tinca, a 20-year old from a Christian orphanage in Cornatel, where the railway is based, climbed into the boiler and used a needle gun and a descaler to clean the bottom of the barrel, after emptying it of debris from the tube removal.
Her reward was a trip to England in January, for two weeks of work experience at the Flour Mill and an easier boiler to climb into – that of LSWR T3 4-4-0 No. 563, being overhauled for use on the Swanage Railway.
“We don’t expect to make her an engineer in a week or two,” said Flour Mill foreman Geoff Phelps, “but we saw how she was willing to work and figured that this would help give her a start in life that the average orphan doesn’t get – she earned it.”
Angie also got to see a friend in Manchester – the train fare cost more than the flight from Romania – and visited Tower Bridge and the Tower of London, the Houses of Parliament, and Westminster Abbey – choosing a pub in Covent Garden over Buckingham Palace, even though she doesn’t drink!
Steam services so far on the SAR have involved 0-8-0Ts hired in for short periods once or twice a year from Georg Hocevar’s operation at Brad. The next steam event is on September 10/11, and UK visitors are welcome. With continued encouragement and support from the UK, the SAR will soon be ready for its next challenge – training steam crews!
Romania’s late 19th-century Hungarian administration constructed a 2ft 6in gauge railway 30 miles south from Sighisoara to Agnita, which it reached in 1898. By 1910, the line was extended through Agnita to Sibiu. Steam was replaced in the 1970s by Romanian L45H Bo-Bo diesel hydraulics, and the 38 miles from Sibiu to Agnita carried on until closure in 2001. In July 2006, the Mihai Eminescu Trust approached Stephen Wiggs, of the New Europe Railway Heritage Trust, with the idea of reopening the Sibiu-Agnita section of the line to help revive the local economy, which had collapsed in the wake of the fall of Ceausescu in 1989.
Mihai recruited a team of volunteers, mostly from Sibiu, starting with his wife, Ioana.