Trainose

Volos is a port on the coast of Thessaly, 330 km north of Athens, near to Pelion, the 1624 high mountain on the peninsula that divides the Pagasetic Gulf from the Aegean Sea. The 1000 mm gauge Thessaly Railway Volos to Larissa and Kalampaka was completed in 1886, and extended by a narrower 600 mm line to Leleai on Pelion, built between 1892 and 1903. Hellenic State Railways operated the line from 1955, then handed it over to the Hellenic Railways Organisation (OSE) which subsequently closed it. The section from Ano Lechonia to Mileai was opened in 1996, as a heritage line, initially with steam traction, although it is now usually operated by diesels. The preserved section includes two tunnels, seven stone bridges and a notable steel bridge at Taxiarhis.

The line’s collection of steam locomotives include a 2-6-0T built at Tubize in Belgium in 1909 and one of the Baldwin 4-6-0T tank engines brought to Europe from the United States in the closing months of the First World War. The line provides 90 minute journeys for visitors at weekends and on public holidays.