A TGOJ T43 resting for the weekend in Orsa, August 2001. See more in Ollies trainstuff!, all color photos by Ollie Ahokas
Additional new images taken in April 2003.
By clicking above, you will find some images and my commenatry from several stations from Inlandline, between Orsa and Sweg.Here I discuss a couple of stations along the line, both located in the southern portion of the line between Mora and Sweg. They show a rich variation of small stations on a secondary line middle of nowhere.
Emådalen.
Additional new images taken in April 2003.
Emådalen is located in a scenic area where the gorge of the river Emå opens up in to a narrow valley. If you are riding a car from south you will note the area, by the steep downgrade which turns over a bridge over the river and leads in to even steeper upgrade. 2/3.s of the upgrade you will find a grade crossong and the old wooden watertank and twostory section house. The station, the settlements and the yard, though been located quite close to the grade crossing is invisble from the road, but once you reach there you will find an atmosphere of days gone past.
The depot is fairly large handsome wooden building, seemingly, to large for the small community. The yard is just a long passingtrack, just a couple of switches, no sidings, no industries, nothing more. The station house is large maybe because it used to be the most important siding for train meets, perhaps as a perfectly isolated for troop movements and since it is located at the end of a long grade a location where a helper engine turned back to Orsa. I am just speculating as there is not that much of information, yet. One reason is also that the site was used as a regular waterstop. The small size of freightstation add on witness on rather limited number of loads from the station.
The building dates it post nationalization and according my records the current station replaced a smaller building in 1910.s. My guess is that the orginal looked much like the one in Tallhed, but so far I haven't seen any orginal photos to prove it
The water tank in Emådalen
Emådalen shots.
Click on the small thumbnails!
The depot of Emådalen as seen by the tracks. Though the time had stand still here there are some clues of the 21.century like the satelite dish.
Another view, showing the freight shed ad on, note a commom detail from the area, the piles of wood. The winters here tends to be very cold.
The only angle to take photo from the opposite side of the building. The view from the road is more or less prevented by the vegetation of small trees.
The switch to the south, the siding now a days seems to be unused during the winter. In the background is the grade crossing and the water tank.
The road crossing showing the water tank. The section house is located just out of the picture to the left.
A view of the section house locate next to the watertank, behind to right is a small corge to a stream which mergers to the river.
Tallhed.
Additional new images taken in April 2003.
Tallhed is the next station in south, but allmost a totaly different to Emådalen. The yard is somewhat larger, the online warehouses and sheds are intact, the depot the orginal small from the earlier years. The scenery is not exactly going to exite you, but the small village pretty interesting mix of old farms converted to weekend cottages, mixed with modern cottages.
To keep the costs down, the agents were replaced by this devise, called locally as Plåtstins (Tin Agent), The boarding passangere operated the signal to halt the train.
The Tallhed is close to an airstrip constructed during WWII. The Swedish Airforce built warehouses around the area and may have used the railroad to ship supplies to the airstrip. Today, it is mainly used by light aircraft, the sort that looks like a kite. The track is running on north to south direction, the village and the depot is to west and a leveled area is to east.
The leveled area was also used as a loading area for timber untill the mid 1990-es. During that period the activity in the yard was rather busy, trucks and special offroad equipment were delivering logs and they were stored in the area. When ever the storages of pape rmills were running short a string of 12 to 15 cars were loaded and shipped. Some loads were shipped with logcarrying trucks. For that purpose there were raised inspection platform and a scale.
A close up on the "Tin Agent".
Today, the area is deserted and the depot was for sale for a couple of years ago. But the tracks remains, so does assorted buildings like some extra warehouses. An extra detail that is very typical for secondary lines and branchlines in Sweden is a device called "Plåtstins" (a Tin agent!), that placed in stops and downgraded stations to notify train cerws to stop. The signal was operated by the passenger. This arrangement was used throughout the country.
Tallhed shots.
Click on the small thumbnails!
North enterance to the yard.
The Depot seen from north
This view shows how the shed with toilets and storage is located.