The Volovets Pass: legendary tunnels and magnificent bridges

One of the most picturesque and highest mountain passes in the Ukrainian Carpathians lies right here in Transcarpathia. This is the astonishing Volovets Pass, or the so-called Beskyd Pass. It enchants you with its landscapes and beckons you to walk out to the Borzhava high meadows, which are just a stone’s throw away from here.

The Volovets Pass - a fairytale place. Sitting at an altitude of 974 m, this beauty runs across the Watershed mountain range. It lies between the Beskyd and Skotarske stations, on the border of Transcarpathia and the Lviv region. It is through this pass that the railway runs from Mukachevo to Lviv by way of Stryi station.

The Volovets Pass: local landmarks

The true treasures of the Volovets Pass are considered to be the Beskyd Tunnel and the "Volovets Loop". Besides these, the area also holds several tunnels carved straight into the mountain, and a host of wonderfully photogenic bridges. Some of them are old, resting on reinforced-concrete piers built back in Austro-Hungarian times; others stand on so-called "stools" and were built in the Soviet Union. And all around lie incredible mountain panoramas: little cosy cottages with thin ribbons of smoke curling from them look like small boats sailing quietly and peacefully among the wave-like hills of this mountain sea. On the horizon rises the majestic Borzhava ridge - the longest and most picturesque in Ukraine.

The terrain has an undulating relief with great differences in elevation, which gave rise to one of the pass’s most fascinating features, the so-called "Volovets Loop", whose purpose is to minimise the steep local gradients. The "Volovets Loop" is a stretch of railway almost 3 km long, along which the track winds and descends by roughly fifty metres. In the area of the "Volovets Loop", two tunnels have been hewn straight into the rock, and a towering bridge has been built over the river, between two mountains.

The new and old Beskyd Tunnel

The Beskyd Tunnel - the highest point of the Volovets Pass and an important section of the Fifth Pan-European Transport Corridor. It is Ukraine’s most valuable strategic asset, through which practically half of all transit freight to Europe is carried. The high-altitude, 1,750-metre tunnel runs through almost the entire pass - it is one of the oldest and longest working railway "portals" in Europe. You enter this tunnel while still in Transcarpathia and emerge from it in an entirely different region - the Lviv region - and vice versa. Built back in Austro-Hungarian times, in 1886, the tunnel is literally cut into the Krosno rock and consists of such rocks as sandstones and siltstones. Halfway along, the tunnel begins to slope gently downwards - this is that very "turning-point" descent that means: this is the Volovets Pass and you have just been at its highest point!

But there is one "curiosity". The Beskyd Tunnel was always utterly unprofitable and a dreadfully awkward track: when the train moved through the tunnel, terrible smoke and steam filled the inside of the carriages. For first-class passengers, an attempt was somehow made to solve this problem: the windows were closed and handkerchiefs were handed out, whereas everyone else was forced to suffer. During the Second World War the tunnel was blown up by the Hungarian army in six places. It was restored only two years later, after the war had ended. But this did not change the fact that the tunnel has a low capacity (just a single track) and only runs at a loss.

Construction of the new tunnel

Today, on the Volovets Pass large-scale construction is under way - a new Beskyd Tunnelis being built. The tender for the reconstruction was announced ten years ago by Ukrzaliznytsia. All the works, from the design stage through to the construction itself, are being carried out with funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development - that is 102 million euros. As a result, right beside the old one a modern, twin-track railway tunnel is to appear, which will break its predecessor’s record length - it will be 1,822 metres long, around 11 m wide and almost 9 m high! A passage will be built between the new and the old tunnel. In all, over a single day 100 pairs of trains will be able to speed through here in various directions - that is several times more than in the old Beskyd (a maximum of 30-40). Just imagine: every day, to blast the tunnel through the rock, around 400 kg of explosives are used!

In September 2018, the builders had already completed 90% of the works on the Volovets Pass - they had built 1,414 m of the tunnel. The project is planned to be fully finished by 2020. The old Austrian tunnel, which stands literally 30 metres from the new Beskyd Tunnel, will be used as an emergency one.