“Granny Bear” has proved a big hit in Bulgaria since the 1930s steam train returned from retirement, chugging day-trippers through stunning scenery from Sofia to the Cherepish Monastery.
“She is super, the engine. I like it better than a modern one,” said Dimitar Kirilov, 12, taking the trip on the Baba Metsa train with his grandparents.
A particular attraction is the luxury carriage used by former Bulgarian king Boris III (1918-1943).
Photo: AFP
“So elegant and modest,” Rada Gancheva, 58, said.
The comforting hoots, whistles and puffs of steam trains have proved a big moneymaker for Bulgarian State Railways (BDZ), earning it 250,000 euros (US$272,388) last year.
“The Vitosha Express diesel train of [former communist Bulgarian president] Todor Zhivkov will soon be made available also,” BDZ’s chief executive officer Georgy Drumev said.
However, the success belies the dire state of the railways in the EU’s poorest nation.
According to a 2015 Boston Consulting Group study, Bulgarian trains have the worst quality and safety record among 25 European nations surveyed.
The number of Bulgarians using trains halved between 2000 and 2015 and the volume of freight is a 10th of what it was in the 1980s, Georgy Minchev of the Freight Transport Association said.
Creaking infrastructure, aging locomotives and rolling stock mean that the average train speed is just 55kph. The 440km trip from Sofia to Varna on the Black Sea takes eight hours — and that is on the so-called “express train.”
“We started with a 40-minute delay and it grew to four hours by the time we arrived in Varna, making it a 12-hour journey,” one traveler, Maria Damyanova, 48, said.
Horror stories abound on the Internet about people’s experiences, particularly in winter when the simplest journey can turn into a nightmare.
“Iron nerves and plenty of food are needed if you want to take the train in Bulgaria,” read a social media entry by Margarit Blagoev, 35.
People are sometimes forced to take extreme measures.
In January, 50 frustrated passengers jumped off their regional train when it was brought to a stop mid-journey and stood on the adjacent tracks in the path of an oncoming express train to make it stop and allow their train to head off first.
The BDZ is saddled with debts of 240 million euros, hindering investment and renovation.
Obsolete infrastructure, and thefts of bits of track and signaling systems make derailments common, especially of cargo trains.
A freight train transporting gas in December last year derailed and exploded, killing six people, injuring dozens more and devastating a small village in the northeast.
However, after failing for years to attract funds, help might be on the way from China, which is seeking to invest heavily in infrastructure projects in eastern Europe and elsewhere.
The China Railway Rolling Stock Corp (中國中車) group has pledged to reimburse 130 million euros of BDZ’s debts and invest 170 million euros in new trains, according to the Bulgarian Ministry of Transport.
In addition, it has offered to invest 300 million euros in a new train assembly plant.
The Bulgarian government is studying the proposals.
However, not everyone in Bulgaria is pleased at the prospect.
“This offer will result in a mere restructuring of the debt and to new borrowing due to the BDZ’s overindebtedness,” economist Georgy Angelov said. “The project will aggravate the risk of bankruptcy.”
Taiwan Transport and Storage Corp (TTS, 台灣通運倉儲) yesterday unveiled its first electric tractor unit — manufactured by Volvo Trucks — in a ceremony in Taipei, and said the unit would soon be used to transport cement produced by Taiwan Cement Corp (TCC, 台灣水泥). Both TTS and TCC belong to TCC International Holdings Ltd (台泥國際集團). With the electric tractor unit, the Taipei-based cement firm would become the first in Taiwan to use electric vehicles to transport construction materials. TTS chairman Koo Kung-yi (辜公怡), Volvo Trucks vice president of sales and marketing Johan Selven, TCC president Roman Cheng (程耀輝) and Taikoo Motors Group
Among the rows of vibrators, rubber torsos and leather harnesses at a Chinese sex toys exhibition in Shanghai this weekend, the beginnings of an artificial intelligence (AI)-driven shift in the industry quietly pulsed. China manufactures about 70 percent of the world’s sex toys, most of it the “hardware” on display at the fair — whether that be technicolor tentacled dildos or hyper-realistic personalized silicone dolls. Yet smart toys have been rising in popularity for some time. Many major European and US brands already offer tech-enhanced products that can enable long-distance love, monitor well-being and even bring people one step closer to
RECORD-BREAKING: TSMC’s net profit last quarter beat market expectations by expanding 8.9% and it was the best first-quarter profit in the chipmaker’s history Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), which counts Nvidia Corp as a key customer, yesterday said that artificial intelligence (AI) server chip revenue is set to more than double this year from last year amid rising demand. The chipmaker expects the growth momentum to continue in the next five years with an annual compound growth rate of 50 percent, TSMC chief executive officer C.C. Wei (魏哲家) told investors yesterday. By 2028, AI chips’ contribution to revenue would climb to about 20 percent from a percentage in the low teens, Wei said. “Almost all the AI innovators are working with TSMC to address the
Malaysia’s leader yesterday announced plans to build a massive semiconductor design park, aiming to boost the Southeast Asian nation’s role in the global chip industry. A prominent player in the semiconductor industry for decades, Malaysia accounts for an estimated 13 percent of global back-end manufacturing, according to German tech giant Bosch. Now it wants to go beyond production and emerge as a chip design powerhouse too, Malaysian Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim said. “I am pleased to announce the largest IC (integrated circuit) Design Park in Southeast Asia, that will house world-class anchor tenants and collaborate with global companies such as Arm [Holdings PLC],”