RAILWAY AT LAST

Wairarapa Times-Age, 4 November 1938, Page 7

RAILWAY AT LAST

BIG EVENT IN MONTENEGRO. jyiontenegro, land of the Black Mountains, now has a railroad (says a Belgian correspondent of the "Christian Science Monitor”). For the first time in history the whistle of a locomotive has echoed through its bleak valleys. People gathered from a score of distant villages to see the first train come in. And it came two hours late. But the crowd were patient. “We've waited two decades,” they said, “we can wait two hours more.”

Little Montenegro, with less than 250,000 inhabitants, was long an independent kingdom, glorying in the fact that it alone, of all the Balkan States, ' never submitted . to Turkish domination.

Montenegro was incorporated in Yugoslavia in 1918, and ever since then Montenegrins have been hoping for substantial economic benefits. The basis of this was to be the railroad. Its coming is the greatest event since the formation of Yugoslavia, they say. But this is only the first step. The new line barely comes to the edge of the Black Mountains. It is eventually to pierce through to the capital, Cetinje, and then another line will come in from the east.

The recent inauguration of a railroad in Montenegro marks the end of a long period in which many lines have been planned for the little province, but none have quite reached it. In 1916 bridle paths and poor motor roads were to give way to a projected railway line, but the idea was not carried through. Again in 1928 a railway was built from Belgrade to Dubrovnik on the Dalmatian coast, but it did not quite reach Montenegro. A motor-car was necessary to complete the trip into Cetinje.

A plan for an Adriatic railroad line running south from Belgrade, through Serbia, Montenegro and on to the Adriatic, was undertaken in 1930; but 35 miles of the railway did not find it very near Montenegrin borders, and the remaining 465 miles were not then completed.