Missing Service
At present passenger trains run on none of the four cross border lines to Greece (1 from Turkey, 1 from North Macedonia, and 2 from Bulgaria). The poor quality infrastructure at 3 of these borders means running passenger trains would be complicated, short term. At the fourth, between Ormenio and Svilengrad in Bulgaria, the infrastructure is in good condition on both sides of the border, but currently no trains (neither freight nor passenger) use the 8.7km of cross border track.
What needs to be done: extend the one daily Alexandroupouli – Ormenio service as far as Svilengrad, and medium term increase frequencies on the whole line
European Commission Analysis
In 2018 the European Commission published its “Comprehensive analysis of the existing cross-border rail transport connections and missing links on the internal EU borders”. The main report (74 pages, PDF) summarises the issues, and Annex 3 of the report (384 pages, PDF) analysed every single border.
For the sake of simplicity, I have made a PDF just of the relevant pages of Annex 3 that cover Ormenio-Svilengrad – you can find that PDF here.
Photos from this location
