site.btaUPDATED Transport Minister Travels with First BDZ Sofia-Burgas Train Comprising Modernized German Train Cars

Bulgarian State Railways' (BDZ) first train comprising five Deutsche Bahn cars left Sofia in direction of the Black Sea city of Burgas on Saturday morning with caretaker Transport Minister Georgi Gvozdeykov and BDZ Manager Ventsislav Slavkov as two of its passengers. The train departed at 6:15 am and made 418 km distance in 6 hours, arriving at 12:10 pm, 6 minutes late due to traffic restrictions in place.

At the railway station in Burgas, the passengers were welcomed by Burgas Mayor Dimitar Nikolov.

The cars are equipped with an air conditioning system. The train will travel this route every day until the end of the summer season. 

Gvozdeykov shared his first impressions of the new train. "It moves fast, rides extremely comfortably and softly, there is no noise in the carriages," he told journalists on Saturday. This is the best that can be done for the railway transport in the country, the Minister said.

Gvozdeykov noted that  this trip proved to the institutions responsible for railway transport in Bulgaria that this type of transport has great potential for the future. The Minister appealed to the institutions to be more proactive and responsible.

Asked when the railway infrastructure would be renewed, Gvozdeykov replied that the renewal work had not stopped. Key projects are being implemented on the lines to Plovdiv and Burgas, he said and added that the line to Burgas should be completed by 2026 and by 2027 the route should be traversed in just over three hours.

"We have not stopped working on the renovation of the stations," Gvozdeykov said. He pointed out that the railway stations in Stara Zagora and Karnobat have recently been renovated. Renovations are currently underway at Shumen railway station, the caretaker Transport Minister said. "We have the ambition to modernize the stations according to European standards," he noted.

Gvozdeykov also recalled that the next batch of new train cars is expected to arrive next week.

On June 18, BDZ said that the new train from Sofia to Burgas will run every day until the end of the summer season. The composition will be made up of four air-conditioned saloon-type cars and one for citizens with reduced mobility.

On May 23, the first 19 modernized passenger cars that BDZ bought from the German company Deutsche Bahn arrived in Bulgaria. The value of the entire project is a little over BGN 30 million for 76 train cars, BGN 400,000 per train car.