Rail Travel in Bulgaria

Below is a detailed map of the railways of Bulgaria. You can zoom in by using the +/- buttons or by using the wheel on your mouse whilst hovering over the map.

The map has been extracted from the Railway Map of Europe with kind permission of the publishers.
You can purchase copies of the full map, as well as rail timetables, from The European Railway Timetable website

BULGARIA

Bulgaria has a standard gauge network with a mix of diesel and electric traction. There are good domestic services connecting Sofia and Plovdiv with the Black Sea towns of Burgas and Varna. One very interesting narrow gauge line runs into the Rhodope mountains from Septemvri, which is on the main line between Sofia and Plovdiv, going south to Dobrinishte a distance of 125 kms: see link below . Another very interesting and scenic ride is south from Gorna Oryakhovitsa via Veliko Tarnova, a major university city and former capital of the second Bulgarian Republic: this route has recently had a major upgrade and is the direct route from Bucharest through to Istanbul via Dimitrovgrad.

See the link below for Bulgarian State Railways with nothing on mobility or cycles but they have an online ticket purchase system, a dynamic map of train locations. They offer you a Balkan Flexipass which can be purchased in both 2nd and 1st class for travel in Bulgaria, Greece, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania (only valid on CFR Calatori services), Serbia, Turkey and Bosnia-Herzegovina.

INTERNATIONAL CONNECTIONS:

Turkey is served by a night train from Sofia & Plovdiv to Istanbul where the main line ends in the suburbs at Halkali. From there you need to take the metro through to the old Sirkeci Station near the Galata Bridge. The metro continues through to the Asian side via the Marmara tunnel and connects with the Turkish high speed line to Ankara and Konya.

Romania is linked with a daily service from Sofia to Bucharest via the vast Soviet built double deck 2.5km long Danube Bridge between Ruse and Giurgiu. There is also a daily connection from Sofia to Craiova with a change at Vidin. Links to Greece and Serbia are presently not being operated.

In October 2021 the governments of Bulgaria, North Macedonia and Albania signed a memorandum to complete what is known as Corridor VIII: this would enable the building of a railway infrastructure which by 2030 would link Varna on the Black Sea with Durres in Albania on the Adriatic.

DS December 2021