Pehlivanköy–Svilengrad railway

Pehlivanköy–Svilengrad railway
Overview
Type	Heavy rail
System	TCDD, BDZ
Status	Operating
Locale	Western Thrace
Termini	Pehlivanköy, Turkey; Svilengrad, Bulgaria
Stations	7
Operation
Opened	23 May 1971[1]
Owner	Turkish State Railways (Pehlivanköy–Kapıkule); Bulgarian State Railways (Kapıkule–Svilengrad)
Character	Mainline
Depot(s)	Edirne Yard, Kapıkule Yard
Technical
Line length	80 km (50 mi)
Number of tracks	1
Track gauge	1,435 mm (4 ft 8 1⁄2 in) standard gauge
Electrification	25 kV 50 Hz
Operating speed	100 km/h (62 mph)
Route map
	Istanbul-Pythio railway
	to Istanbul
	0 km
	0 mi
	Kırklareli
	Edirne
	4.3 km
	2.7 mi
	11.6 km
	7.2 mi
	12.9 km
	8 mi
	20.1 km
	12.5 mi
	26.2 km
	16.3 mi
	37.4 km
	23.2 mi
	46.7 km
	29 mi
	49.3 km
	30.6 mi
	66.5 km
	41.3 mi
	Turkey
	Bulgaria
	70.6 km
	43.9 mi
	86.5 km
	53.7 mi

The Edirne cut-off is a 80 km (50 mi) long rail line from Pehlivanköy, Turkey to Svilengrad, Bulgaria. The line was built in 1971 by the Turkish State Railways in order to avoid crossing the border with Greece twice, on the former Oriental Railway's main line, in order to get to Edirne. The Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) also built a cut-off from Neo Vyssa to Marasia in the same year. These two new rail lines led to the abandonment of the former CO main line in to Edirne Karaağaç Railway Station.

Route description

From Pehlivanköy, the line follows the line to Pythio for about 5 km before turning North West to go to Edirne in almost straight line across flat lands. Near Edirne, the line is on the bank of the Meriç River (Maritsa), squeezed between the river itself and the old city. The line goes over the Tunca (Tundzha) river and then goes in almost straight line again to Kapıkule railway station. the Bulgarian border is crossed after Kapıkule and before Kapitan Andrevo. Finally, the line will cross the Meriç River to enter Svilengrad station.

gollark: I vaguely remember reading about RTL-SDRs being used to reverse-engineer (partly) LoRa and some satellite phone encoding.

gollark: If they were using some bizarre exotic encoding but not actually encrypting it it would still be *possible*, if *very hard*, to decode it without the actual docs.

gollark: Presumably the encoding pagers use is well-known/documented enough that someone implemented a software decoder.

gollark: That's an example of it, I guess? You turn... what is it again... 3 bits into 7 bits and can convert it back even if it's scrambled a bit.

gollark: I feed `multimon-ng` audio data from the `rtl_fm` program (which demoduldates FM from the RTL-SDR) and it decodes the POCSAG-whatever protocol(s) and outputs the text again.

References

Milliyet 10 May 1971

Railway lines in Turkey
District 1	Istanbul-Ankara Istanbul–Pythio Pehlivanköy–Svilengrad Mandıra–Kırklareli Muratlı–Tekirdağ Arifye–Adapazarı
District 2	Istanbul–Ankara Ankara–Kars Irmak–Zonguldak Ereğli–Armutçuk Boğazköprü–Ulukışla
District 3	İzmir–Eğirdir¹ İzmir–Afyon Manisa–Bandırma Torbalı–Ödemiş Çatal–Tire Ortaklar–Söke Goncalı–Denizli Menemen–Aliağa Çobanisa–Kemalpaşa
District 4	Ankara–Kars Kars–Tblisi Kars–Baku Samsun–Kalın Hanlı–Bostankaya Samsun–Çarşamba
District 5	Malatya–Çetinkaya Adana–Kurtalan Yolçatı–Tatvan Van–Sufian
District 6	Adana–Mersin Konya–Yenice Toprakkale–İskenderun Köprüağzı–Kahramanmaraş Şenyurt–Mardin Fevzipaşa–Aleppo Narlı–Nusaybin Aleppo–Karkamış
District 7	Eskişehir–Konya Alayunt–Balıkesir Afyon–Karakuyu İzmir–Afyon İzmir–Eğirdir Gümüşgün–Burdur Bozanönü–Isparta Kütahya–Seyitömer Tavşanlı–Tunçbilek Sütlaç–Çivril
High-speed	Ankara–Istanbul Polatlı–Konya
Under construction	Ankara–Sivas Polatlı–İzmir Istanbul–Kapıkule Bursa–Osmaneli
Railways in italics are not in service. ¹ Partially disused.

Pehlivanköy–Svilengrad railway

Route description

References

See also