THE Ofoten Line in Norway and Sweden’s connecting Iron Ore Line is one of the world’s most northerly railways and a remarkable engineering achievement. Snaking from the Swedish mine at Kiruna to the Norwegian port of Narvik, much of the Norwegian section is chiselled from granite cliffs, providing spectacular views for those lucky enough to visit the Arctic Circle.
The 169km line was built in just four years, between 1898 and 1902. Teams of up to 5000 Norwegian navvies worked in extreme conditions, succeeding where a British-led project to build a railway to the now-abandoned town at Rombaksbotn failed a few years before.
The experience of the navvies provided food-for-thought for the railway men and women who gathered for the International Heavy Haul Association’s (IHHA) bi-annual conference in Narvik on June 10-14. Mr Michael Roney, long-time Canadian Pacific general manager and chief engineer and now an independent consultant, compared the experience of the navvies with the modern-day railway engineer.