Vanishing Tracks: Short History of a Cancelled line

In December 2013, a Croatian national daily newspaper published news that the train connecting the port town of Ploce in Croatia and Sarajevo in Bosnia and Herzegovina (via Metkovic, a town in Croatia near the border with Bosnia and Herzegovina) had ceased to operate. This railway route with over a hundred years of history started its life during the Austrian-Hungarian empire and survived the Second World War and the 1990s conflict in the former Yugoslavia. However, it was unable to survive the “structural adjustments” of the national railway system in Croatia underway over the recent years. Using a combination of ethnographic methods involving different participants in the history of this route (former passengers and their memories, railway workers), this presentation explores how this restructuring is reflected on the local level, when routes pregnant with histories, stories and memories are closed. It also aims at situating the discontinuation of the line between Ploce and Sarajevo in the wider context of the restructuring of the national railway company which, as is feared by many, is a preparation for its privatization.