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Albania
Railroads
In 1991 Albania's 509 kilometers of standard-gauge rail lines
linked Shkodėr with Durrės, Tiranė, Elbasan, Pogradec, Ballsh,
and Vlorė. The country's only international rail link, opened
in 1986, connected Shkodėr with Yugoslavia's rail system. Albania's
communist government focused on developing new rail lines to serve
mining regions and the coastal plain. According to official figures,
Albania's railroad in 1987 and 1988 carried about 33 percent of
the country's total freight tonnage for that period. The opening
of the rail link with Yugoslavia facilitated the movement of goods
to Europe, and Yugoslav railroads reportedly shipped 174,300 tons
of Albanian goods in the first half of 1990, a 19.4 percent increase
over the first half of 1989. None of Albania's railroads was electrified.
In 1991 vandals and thieves caused so much damage to the tracks
and rolling stock that the rail system's transport capacity was
cut in half; operations later ceased altogether.
Data as of April 1992
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