On that sunny April Saturday, I started my cycling tour at the Railway Station in Šid, where I got off with my two-wheeler. the train. After that, I followed the route of the Šid-Bijeljina railway, which was shut down 20 years ago, to Sremska Rača. Except for the station in Šid, which is in operation due to the traffic to Belgrade, all the others on that road - Adaševci, Morović, Višnjićevo and Sremska Rača - are neglected, full of garbage, in some of them parts of furniture, maps, signaling have been left, and in one even an entire (locked) safe! The railway was built in two stages: the 22-kilometer section from Šid to Sremska Rača was completed by Austria-Hungary in 1912, while the 22,5-kilometer section from Sremska Rača to Bijeljina was built by the FNRJ in 1950. Passengers first traveled "around", and later in the 2005s, Shinobuses were introduced. The last one passed there in June XNUMX.
The station in Šid used to be a transit station, when trains were going from Belgrade to Zagreb. Today it is the last stop on the route from Belgrade to the west. Our "end of the world". It is in solid condition, although the inscription on the facade gives a different impression: one letter is missing in both the Cyrillic and Latin names of the city - in the Cyrillic inscription it is "i" and in the Latin one it is "Š", so the inscription "Šid" seems like a rebus or anagram.
photo: r. shepherd…Adasevic;…
In Adasevci, the station is abandoned, there is no longer even an inscription with the name of the village on the facade. The track is visible under the light green grass. Next to the station is a weighing scale. I enter the station building where migrants apparently lived until recently - scattered furniture, pieces of clothing, dishes...
I continue on towards Morović. The railway station building is abandoned, as is the one in Adasevci. Under the arches where passengers once waited for the train to Šid or Bijeljina, now someone's firewood is stacked. Someone planted a salad next to it.
photo: r. shepherd…Morovic;…
Morović is certainly one of the Vojvodina villages with the most beautiful geography and architecture. At the entrance to the village stands the Roman Catholic church of St. Mary with a small cemetery around it. The 18th-century temple with its Romanesque and Gothic elements and the Bossut River flowing right next to it feels like it's in French Provence. Unfortunately, like many other villages - completely neglected. And it has everything: it is located at the confluence of Studva and Bosut, right next to the highway, there are two beautiful steel bridges in the city center, three churches (two Roman Catholic and one Orthodox), the remains of a medieval fortress from the 14th century; a famous hunting ground and a restaurant... Several boarding houses are also open. Nevertheless, the village seems neglected and neglected, many houses are empty or even demolished, in the center most of the bars are empty... Morović could be a Serbian tourist pearl... but it is not.
After Morović, I continue on the road that goes south, along Bosut and the ghost railway that cuts through the dense forests of Bosut.
In Višnjićevo, the hometown of the famous fiddler, the railway station is also abandoned. An inscription with the name of the village can still be seen on its facade, and Japanese cherry trees have blossomed around it. There is slightly less garbage in the station itself than in Adasevci. It seems that the last tenant (the station chief's wife?) was a tailor because there are old complete magazines of "Burda" stacked on the floor.
Next to the abandoned station, a flock of sheep graze peacefully, giving the whole scene the dimension of some twisted dystopian pastoral.
I go further, through the dense forests of Bosut in the direction of the south and Sremska Rača, the last Srem village on the border with Bosnia, and also the last one on the Serbian route of the Avetinja railway.
photo: r. shepherd…Sremska Raca
The railway station in Sremska Rača is a little outside the village. A tree grew in the middle of the railway in front of the station. Things were left scattered in the station, among other things, a large wall panel "Overview of signals of Yugoslav Railways", and in one of the offices, a large, heavy - locked - safe. Next to the station, there is a large building that someone apparently started building before the railroad shut down in 2005, but eventually gave up.
I continued towards the village of Bosut, which is located at the confluence of the Bosut River with the Sava, and was surprised when I saw a border crossing in front of me. Namely, if you want to go from Sremska Rača to Bosut, you have to "enter" Serbia, even though both villages are in Serbia. I took out my ID card and said that I didn't even leave the country. The young policeman laughed: "You entered the village through the forest, right? What's the road like, is there a pond?"
On the Internet, it is possible to find several news items from the past 10 years about the meetings between the leaders of Bijeljina and Šid, which raised the topic of rebuilding the "Avetinja railway" between these two cities.
When I did an interview last summer with Goran Vesić, the then Minister of Transport and Infrastructure, he told me that the Croats do not show interest in the revitalization of railway traffic on that route, so the priorities of the Infrastructure of Serbian Railways and Srbijavoz will be the rail routes to Timisoara (via Vršac) and to Budapest (via Subotica). The fall of the canopy at the railway station in Novi Sad on November 1 last year delayed (no one says until when!) the opening of the railway to Subotica, and Timisoara is no longer being talked about.
It is interesting that one similar "side" railway in Srem remained alive. Namely, the railway connection between Ruma and Šabac survived all the cuttings from the end of the seventies, when the cancellation of certain railway routes in Vojvodina began, until the last one in 2022, when it was decided to dismantle as many as 435 kilometers of tracks on 15 railway routes in Vojvodina. Thus, trains will probably never run between Senta and Kanjiza, Bečej and Vrbas, as well as between Karavukovo and Bač. However, you can get from Ruma to Šabac by train, there are five departures a day in both directions (one less on weekends), and the stations on that route - Buđanovci, Nikinci, Platičevo and Klenak are in operation, but they are neglected and defaced just like those on the Bijeljina-Šid ghost railway.
The fall of the canopy in Novi Sad on November 1 last year, by all accounts, seems to have hit the last nail in the coffin in which the dreams of rebuilding the railway connecting Srem and Semberija are buried.
