The Van - Kapıköy railway () is the Turkish side of the Van–Sufian railway, the only railway that connects Turkey and Iran. The line is 116km long and is connected to the rest of the Turkish network through the Lake Van Ferry, a train ferry that goes from Tavan to Van .
The line crosses a pass at an altitude of 2150m, near the village of Çaybağı in the Saray. this is the highest of the Turkish railway network.
Infrastructure and Route The line start at the Van Pier railway station on the Van Lake . From there, the railway will skirt Van city from the north and reach Van railway station after 6.8km. This station is the line head station with a small maintenance facility and stabling yard for the line rolling stock. The line will then exit the station Southward and immediately take a 90° curve to go Eastward. It also start climbing to reach Çeken at an altitude of 1870m and then the bank of Lake Erçek at the altitude of 1830m . The line will follow the south bank of the river to reach the Özalp river valley. It will keep following this river until the city of Özalp, at an altitude of 2001m. From Özalp, the line will exit this valley and make a climb to a pass to the Çaybağı river. This river, also known as Qatur (or Qotur) in Iran is a tributary of the Aras. The highest point of pass near Çaybağı village is at an altitude of 2150m, which the highest on the Turkish railway network. From Çaybağı, the line will follow closely the river and descend to Kapıköy, the last station before the border. Kapıköy station has 6 siding tracks and a small yard, all dedicated to freight train custom inspection. The actual border is 2.7km after Kapıköy. The line will now enter Iran and continue to descent along the Qatur river bank to Razi, the first station on Iran side.
Despite being at high altitude, this line has no major bridges or tunnel. In all, it has 8 tunnels for a cumulative length of 2.7km. 4 tunnels are in fact man made snow shed, for a cumulative length of 1.0km.
The line is single track, standard gauge, with passing sidings which are roughly 40km apart currently on average. The shortest sidings are about 750m long. The line is not electrified and operated with diesel traction.
The sidings are in the following stations:
+ Stations and sidings Station Kilometer point Altitude (m) number of sidings Siding length (m)Çeken23.218701750Erçek46.018301830Özalp76.620012830Kapıköy114.0204861000
At the opening of the lines, there were also sidings in Söylemez (km 35.0); Dibekli (km 61.2); Çimenova (km 91.5) and Çaybağı (km 102.2). They have been abandoned. There are currently two turning triangles for turning locomotives still in use: in Van Gar, and in Kapıköy. There were also two additional turning triangles in Erçek and Çimenova for turning snowplows. They have been abandoned.
The line is operated under manual signaling (Telefonla Merkezden Idare). The trains proceeds from station to station under written train orders transmitted by a line dispatcher. Some stations are protected by a semaphore signal.
Traffic The line does not serve any town of importance. There is not a single industry along the line. The whole area is very sparsely populated. The only traffic is through traffic to Iran. But since the Iranian revolution in 1978, the traffic has been impacted by the various trade restrictions imposed on Iran and with sporadic suspensions of passenger traffic.
The freight traffic is also impacted by the ferry which is a bottleneck on the overall throughput capacity. The current capacity is two round trips per day, per boat, each carrying a 500m long train. This gives a total of 4 trains per day per direction maximum.
In the best years, the line had a direct night train between Istanbul and Teheran: the Transasia Express.
History The history of the line is connected to the history of the Yolçatı–Tatvan railway. the CENTO organization sponsored and financed both the Van - Kapıköy and its Iran extension to Sufian. TCDD executed the construction and the inauguration took place on 27 September 1971 .
See also Van–Sufian railway Yolçatı–Tatvan railway Lake Van Ferry
References