For the average European, railways are a given. It is hard to find a European who would not travel by rail. And yet! There are five countries in Europe where there are no trains. They are San Marino, Andorra, Iceland, Malta and Cyprus. And Cyprus of these countries is the largest, and in the capital of Cyprus - Nicosia - which we find ourselves today. You may ask, how is this channel focusing on railways, and I’m going to mention a country where there are no railways? There isn’t, but yes - there was! This is Cyprus. An island in the eastern Mediterranean Sea. Located 50 miles from the coast of Turkey and about 60 miles from the coast of Syria. And that too is plotted with all the borders on its map. To understand the history of the railway in Cyprus, we also need to understand how such a politically confusing situation came about, and what one word means: Enosis. Cyprus has changed hands multiple times over the centuries. The Arabs, Byzantium, the English, the Kingdom of Jerusalem, Venice. Then in 1570 the Turks, and then in 1878 Cyprus came into British hands again. Invariably, for centuries, two peoples, Greeks and Turks, existed there side by side. And until the 19th century it didn’t matter. Formal nationality was not so important. One spoke one’s own language, blew one’s own horn. We were natives. However, the nationality movements that swept through Europe in the 19th century turned this upside down. Now it was important to belong to a larger community. This seems to have been particularly felt by Cypriot Greeks, who badly wanted their island to be incorporated into a newly independent Greece. They even found this word Enosis for this desire. Enosis was a big problem for the ruling British in Cyprus. All sorts of insurgent groups sabotaging the actions of the administration and government bodies made it clear what the Greek Cypriots thought of British supremacy. That sovereignty, in turn, Cyprus did not want to let go. Cyprus, Malta, Gibraltar, you had to admit, was a dream sequence of military bases in the Mediterranean. Let’s return to the subject of railways in Cyprus. The Cyprus Government Railway, because that’s how its name translates into Polish, was built by none other than the British. Its was built in stages from 1905 to 1915. Initially, this railway had a gauge of two feet, six inches. It initially ran from Farmagusta to Nicosia - and thus from a significant center on the coast to the island’s capital. The ride on this stretch took about 100 minutes (one hour,40 minutes), twice as long as today by car. And let’s remember that we’re talking about a narrow-gauge railway, more than a century ago. Further extensions extended the railway westward, so that eventually it reached the village of Evrichou at the foot of the Troodos Mountains. A railway museum is located at the end station there today. Unfortunately, the ride through the mountains took a little longer than I had originally planned, and I got there just after closing time. So I did what a transport lover does at least once in his life: I trampled down a path under the fence behind the fence of the depot. The Government Railway was plagued by many problems. The main one of these was the aforementioned Enosis. The railway was built by the British, and was therefore an ideal target for attacks aimed at what they thought was an oppressor. Such attacks took place in 1931, for example, when the belligerents demolished more than 300 feet of track. But some sort of difficulty in running trains in Cyprus, due to the Enosis in question, was not surprising throughout the life of the Government railway. Despite becoming an important means of transporting freight on the island, the railway was never profitable. And what is to be done with an unprofitable railway, my dears? It gets unwisely cut sharply. For starters, the last-built segment to the slaughtered village of Evrichou was closed in 1932. Where a museum is now. Then came the war, and after the road was built, for cars connecting Nicosia and Famagusta, and the remaining days of the Cyprus Government Railway were numbered. The railway closed definitively in 1951. By the way it was on New Year’s Eve of that year. All that remained of it were two sections captured on film. So the question remains: could this railway survive today? Well, no, at the latest 20 years later, it would have ceased to operate anyway. The reason, of course, is the partition of the island. In the mid-1950s, Greek Cypriots a.k.a.Cypriot Greeks, organized their insurgent struggle against the British in the form of an organization called EOKA. With more effective and targeted attacks, the British finally surrendered the island in 1960. Cyprus declared its independence. The first president of Cyprus was the head of the Cypriot Orthodox Church, Makarios III. Yes, a Greek cleric. Arrangements between the Greeks and Turks living in Cyprus involved the sharing of power, armed services, offices. Greeks were to be the majority of them, which more or less reflected the ratio of the population of each nationality. The British were to retain two military bases on the island. Oh! And one more thing - an absolute ban on even thinking of uniting the country with Greece or Turkey. They held out for three years. In 1963, Makarios proposed constitutional amendments that would facilitate entry into union with Greece and that would place numerous restrictions on the number of Turks in public services and offices. The proposals were met with protests from Turkish Cypriots and Turkey as such. At the same time, EOKA said it would further fuel these protests, as something might come of it. It was then that the British and the UN had to intervene. Over the next decade, Makarios tried to push through various reforms that would bring Cyprus closer to Greece, with mixed results. In 1967, a military junta, with a much colder attitude toward Makarios, took power in Greece. Until they said, enough, on July 15, 1974 they concluded that Makarios was not doing all he could about Enosis. So they initiated a coup d’etat, ousting the Cypriot president from office. This, in turn, raised great fears in Turkey about the reunification of Cyprus with Greece, and consequently fears for the fate of Turkish Cypriots. On July 20, or five days later, Turkey decided to launch an armed invasion of the island. It ended rather quickly, after one day, when the Turkish air force mistakenly sank its own destroyer. Well, it happens! On August 14th, Turkey returned to the subject and occupied ⅓ of Cyprus’s territory in a swift move. A cease-fire was signed on August 16, 1974, drawing the border as we know it today. The UN added a buffer zone between the two territories, and Britain still retained its military bases. The Cyprus Government Railway, made multiple crossings of the border between Cyprus and North Cyprus. It would have been closed anyway. What about the current situation? Are the two parts of Cyprus perhaps looking for some modern transportation solutions? I don’t know about the Turkish part, probably not. But Greek Cyprus clearly is looking. Especially since, like very country in the European Union, it has a sizeable cash injection planned for the near future. The Cypriot minister of transport revealed last October that the government was thinking of using light rail to connect the largest cities (presumably Nicosia, Larnaca and Limassol) to the airport located in Larnaca. We’ll see how this plays out. The history of Cyprus, which we have covered in a superficial way in this episode, is immensely fascinating. So, I’m off now to explore this 21st century Berlin, as Nicosia is said to be, and thank you for watching this footage. And we’ll see you in the next video very soon. Howdy!

Szybki i przyjemny film z którego można poznać historię Cypru

Ciekawostki kolejowe ze świata to pomysł na długą i bardzo ciekawą serię. Ja widzę w tym ogromny potencjał. Nie trzeba nawet jeździć po świecie, by nagrywać dobre materiały na ten temat :)

Podobało mi się wplecienie szerszej historii Cypru, niż ograniczenie się wyłącznie do kolei. Pozdrawiam 😁

Świetny materiał. Dziękuję.

Fajny materiał! Pozdrawiam! 🙂

To ile punktów ma ten dworzec za świeżość, ilość zatrzymań i zgodność z instrukcją PLK? 😃

Wspaniały materiał

To co, następne San Marino (bo chyba jeszcze nie było w tym cyklu)? Bo tam ślady po linii kolejowej się w wielu miejscach jeszcze ostały (tunele, wiadukt, wagon kolejowy, dworce...), a i historia tej linii ciekawa.

Witam serdecznie

0:05 Ciekawostka: nie został wymieniony Watykan, ponieważ przez jego mury są poprowadzone tory do jedynej stacji tego dziwnego państwa. Nie ma tam jednak żadnej regularnej linii.

Mam pomysł może ocena stacji na remontowej linii kolejowej nr 351.

Gdzie są te tory w Nikozji konkretnie? (Ulica itp

2:10 😂😂😂

Słowackim prezydentem też został duchowny jednak w tym przypadku ksiądz katolicki. Polecam zapoznać się z Jego biografią

To Watykan ma kolej? Na obszarze 0,44km2?

Cypr posiada najlepsze koleje świata 😊, dlatego że się nie spóźniają 😊

Czy niecałe Podlasie to polski Cypr?

Panie dzieju, a Kreta będzie? :D

Fajny materiał ale Islandia jest dużo większa od Cypru.

Nikt nie pytał, każdy potrzebował, dzięki za tą miłą w słuchaniu historię Cypru. Natomiast czy wiadomo o jakich parametrach ma być wybudowana kolej lekka?

Tylko kulturowo i historycznie Cypr jest uważany za część Europy. Geograficznie to azjatycka wysepka.

Szkoda że nie ma tam kolei, nawet Watykan posiada swoją mikroskopijną sieć a w o wiele większym państwie czegoś takiego nie ma!

Islandia to chyba jest jednak większa od Cypru

Przecież Islandia jest dużo większa od Cypru. A w filmie mówisz że Cypr jest największy z tych krajów.

Turkowie - ratunku!

nie trzeba miec specjalnej wiedzy zeby wiedziec ze Islandia jest wieksza niz Cypr… XD

Drobne czepialstwo - Cypr nie jest w Europie, tylko w Azji. 😉