Malmbanan and Narvik, 27 and 28 March 1980
While I was touring Europe by rail in March 1980, I made up the trip as I went along, generally not planning more than a few days in advance where I was going. Often it depended on where I was and were I could get to overnight on a train.
I had a few specific goals, among them riding Le Mistral and the Rheingold, the premier trains of France and Germany at the time and both TEEs. I saw a new item about Italy’s Paola-Cosenza rack line still running steam in Continental Railway Journal, so I included it in my trip. I wanted to see some of Switzerland and had a day when I rode the Gotthard, Simplon and Lotschberg lines in a day trip from Luzern, where I was staying, to Milan and back. The now well worn February 1980 copy of Cook’s International Timetalbe now on the table next to me was invaluable for figuring all this out.
My Euirailpass had come with a rail map of Europe, showing the lines where the pass was valid, and something I’d noticed was a line in far northern Sweden and Norway ending at Narvik, on the Norwegian coast. I don’t think I knew much about the line at the time, other than that it was above the Arctic Circle and was as far north as I could reach by rail in western Europe. (Wikipedia says its northernmost point is 68.452 degrees north latitude.) I’ve since gone through my collection of rail magazines and realized that I might have read about the line to Narvik before I went there, but at the time it was an abstraction, a far away place that might as well have been Olympus Mons or the Sea of Tranquility for me. Anyway, I don’t think I had any clue of what to expect when I boarded the Nordpilen (Northern Arrow) in Stockholm the night of 26 March.
Cook’s had shown me that the train to Narvik left Stockholm at 1632 and was due into Narvik at 1400 the following afternoon. It was not really a through train as the sleeper and couchettes from Stockholm only went as far as Kiruna. Meanwhile, it would have picked up some coaches and 3 of those would continue on from Kriuna to Narvik. The train was a classic overnight run with cars for various destinations as it left Stockholm as well as picking up cars along the way..
My notes say that out of Stockholm, we had a Rc4, three 2nd class and one 1st class coach for Ostersund, a self service diner, a 2nd class coach for Ange, two couchettes and a sleeper for Krruna and three sleepers and a couchette for Lulea..
I had food with me as European train food was often expensive and not all trains had food service. Cooks says the Nordpilen had a diner for dinner and as far as Kiruna for breakfast.
Normally, on overnight trips, I’d sleep in a first class coach compartment as I had a first class Eurailpass, but on the Nordpilen, I was in a couchette, an economy sleeper with 6 berth compartments. I probably slept like a rock…whether the other people in the compartment did with my snoring is another matter.
At some point in the morning we stopped at the Arctic Circle sign., I thought it was a signal stop at first, but then saw the sign out the window and I presume the stop was made so people could see it and get photos if they wanted.
Kiruna was the last major community in Sweden on our route and it turned out to be a major iron mining center and the reason for the line’s existence. The railroad reached Kiruna in 1899 and then was pushed over the mountains to Narvik to give the ore an Atlantic Ocean port, being completed in 1903.
In addition to shedding the couhettes and sleeper from Stockholm and a coach-diner from Lulea in Kriuna, the Nordpilen swapped its Rc4 electric for a Da 1-C-1 jackshaft drive electric. The Da series dated from the 1950s, had about 2500 HP and a maximum speed of 100 km/h. This was more than adequate for the train and railroad between Kiruna and Narvik.
We left Kriuna on time at 1100 and headed into some very remote country. There were a few towns along the way, but to give you a feel for how small they are, the Nordpilen stops at Abisko, which has 85 people.
At about 1310, we stopped at Bjornfjell, just inside Norway and stayed there for a while. Up to that point, we’d been on time. We heard there was a derailment ahead. another train was in the station, also 3 cars behind a Da. This train was also headed for Narvik, and my notes say that it was coupled to the end of our train when we left. Cook’s lists a train that left Kiruna at 0700, so if that was the train already in the station, it had been there a while.
I got off the train and took some photos of the trains, station and snowsheds. The station had a cafe and I warmed up with coffee from it. At the time, there was not a road from Narvik to Sweden through Bjornfjell, but that changed in 1984.
At about 1515, with the other train’s Da locomotive run around to the end of the train, we headed west, with Da, 6 cars, Da. It is 40 km from Bjornfjell to Narvik and the line is called the Ofotbanan in Norway, although the whole route if frequently referred to by the Swedish Malmbanan.
Bjornfjell is at 514 meters elevation and the line drops to sea level at Narvik. The 40 km separating the two stations is one of the most spectacular routes anywhere in the world and only its remoteness keeps it from being as well known as the Moffat line out of Denver, Donner Pass or various Swiss mountain railways. It runs along Narvik Fjord and the whole trip is nothing short of gorgeous. As we were two hours late, we had late afternoon light, as well.
We stopped again at Katterat, about 10 km from Bjornfjell and met an uphill ore train and a passenger train, probably the Nordpilen, which was scheduled to leave Narvik at 1500. My notes say we were going again at 1650 and arrived in Narvik at 1728, 3 1/2 hours late.
Railroading above the Arctic Circle presents challenges!
Several of us walked from the station to the hostel. I remember talking to one woman who lived somewhere near Narvik that would require a ferry ride to get to and the last ferry had already left for the evening, so she was spending the night at the hostel.
After getting checked in and having dinner, I went out and got photos of the sunset and the lights on the harbor. As this was after the spring equinox and we were above the Arctic Circle, the sky still had color at 10 at night.
The next day (28 March), I explored Narvik. Its main reason for being is as the port for the ore, and is the biggest community in the area with 20,000 people. The photos aren’t really in order by time, but I grouped them by location with the station, ore dock and general harbor and city scenes together. My notes say that in addition to ore trains with the 3 unit jackshaft drive Dm3 electrics and NSB class 15s, I saw an NSB DMU train depart, then the Nordpilen arrive, although I don’t seem to have a photo of the Nordpilen’s arrival.
The Dm3s were quite a sight, They were 3 unit 1’D+D+D’1 jackshaft drive engines built from 1954 to 1971. The last were retired in 2011, but some are preserved. They had 9,700 HP and were geared for a maximum speed of 75 km/h. Not speed demons, but they got the ore up and down the mountain for decades.
The Nordpilen left on time at 1500, and afforded another sightseeing trip up the fjord. My notes say that the train’s 5 cars filled up when we stopped at various Swedish stations with skiers. 28 March was a Friday, so, perhaps, people were also going from remote towns into larger communities for the weekend.
I switched to a couchette at Kiruna. We left almost on time at 1825, having replaced the Da with an Rc4 and added 3 couchettes and a sleeper (or maybe it was 2 and 2, I wasn’t sure about one car) and a diner-coach. The coaches and diner would be taken off at Boden and continue to the port city of Lulea on the Gulf of Bothnia. Aslo at Boden, sleepers and couchettes from Lulea would be added to the train for the run to Stockholm.
After 3 days of beautiful weather in Stockholm and the far north, the weather turned wet. The Nordpilen arrived in Stockholm around 1315, which would have been maybe 5 minutes late. With the wet weather, I just hung around Stockholm station until my next train was due to leave, the 1547 train to Malmo and Copenhagen, which had a through cars to Hamburg and Berlin, the Berlin car being a Mitropa sleeper. (Mitropa was the East German sleeping dand dining car company.)
On the trip south from Stockholm, I rode in the the through car to Hamburg, a DB 1st/2nd composite car. It was packed. It seemed that a Danish gymnastic team had missed an earlier train and was on this one. I wound up on a jump seat in the aisle. At one point, someone saw me reading the International Herald-Tribune and asked if she could see it when I was done. When I said "Sure" she exclaimed, "He’s American!" in shock, which got some laughs. Several of the gymnasts and I got to talking and I swapped addresses with one of them, whom I visited the following year.
After Copenhagen, I had a compartment to myself in the Copenhagen-Konstanz coach and rode that to Frankfurt overnight.
With Norwegian Airlines offering cheap flights on Oslo and Stockholm from Oakland, I have been itching to get back to Scandinavia and have another go at the Malmbanan. No Dm3s these days, but heavy ore trains still run along the fjord and I’d like a few days to do some linesiding at the little stations where we stopped. Perhaps when I retire.
