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 (present day Croatia). Like the rest of railway corridors in Krapina-Zagorje County, the line is single-tracked and non-electrified. Trains that operate on this line run between Gornja Stubica (east terminus) and Zabok (about 2 kilometers south from Hum Lug) or more south to Zagreb, using the corridor R201 between Hum Lug and Zabok (Zagreb). Most of trains that run on route between Gornja Stubica and Zabok have daily connections in Zabok with trains that run on R201, largest destinations served through this corridor being Zagreb and Varaždin. According to the current schedule, passenger train ride between Zabok and Gornja Stubica takes 17 minutes in total.^[1]

Infrastructure and train operation

Corridor L202 originates out of the corridor R201 in halt Hum Lug. 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). One track is also separating from the station Gornja Stubica, intended to serve as an industrial railway for the juice factory "Dona". Last bigger infrastructure repair on this corridor took place in the mid-2000s,^[2] which resulted in increasing of maximum speed for passenger trains to 60 km/h on entire route between Hum Lug and Gornja Stubica.

Since the mid-1990s, scheduled passenger transport on this route is operated exclusively by diesel-motor trains that replaced classically compounded passenger trains - steam and later diesel locomotive with two-axle cars. Introduction of diesel-motor trains on this track began by the end of the 1980s with HŽ series 7221 and 7121 and with schedule change in 1990, mostly entire passenger traffic was replaced with HŽ 7121 units. HŽ 7122 series exclusively operated passenger trains on the route in the periods of 1997 and 1998 and from 2014 also cover minor number of lines under dominance of the 7121 series. Other types of trains operated by Croatian Railways stock that can be seen on this corridor are freight trains (rarely) or non-scheduled excursion trains that operate as a transport for various local manifestations.

References