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 about a kilometre, 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 was 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 had a low capacity (just a single track) and only ran at a loss.

Construction of the new tunnel

From 2013, on the Volovets Pass large-scale construction was under way - a new Beskyd Tunnel was being built. The tender for the reconstruction was announced back in 2006 by Ukrzaliznytsia. All the works, from the design stage through to the construction itself, were carried out with funding from the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the European Investment Bank and Ukraine. As a result, right beside the old one a modern, twin-track railway tunnel appeared, which broke its predecessor’s record length - it is 1,822 metres long, around 11 m wide and almost 9 m high! A passage between the new and the old tunnel was provided for. In all, over a single day 100 pairs of trains can now speed through here in various directions - that is twice as many as in the old Beskyd (47). Just imagine: to advance a mere three metres into the rock, the builders needed 400 kg of explosives!

The new double-track Beskyd Tunnel opened on 24 May 2018. The old Austrian tunnel, which stands literally a few dozen metres from the new Beskyd Tunnel, is used as an emergency one.

The Slavske - Volovets road over the pass itself is barely passable, so the easiest way to see the tunnel and the "Volovets Loop" is from the window of a train on the Stryi - Batiovo line. Volovets station is about 55 km by rail from Mukachevo (170 km from Lviv), and the neighbouring Skotarske station is 7 km away. Volovets is served by suburban and regional trains as well as long-distance services, including towards Lviv and Uzhhorod. Or skip the timetables: we take guests to the Borzhava meadows on our photography tour of the Carpathians.