Query re status of line in Croatia

[Calthrop]

I'm in some puzzlement, re a particular stretch of railway in Croatia. Namely, the line from Karlovac to Sisak via Glina. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, this line -- running through an area particularly heavily affected by the horrors attendant on that break-up -- was for many years, out of use. I find nowadays, tantalising hints that it might be functioning again, including for passenger traffic (can derive from Google, no certain indication "one way or the other"). Would be very grateful if anyone knowledgeable about this part of the world, could let me know for sure about this line's current status.

 

[hexagon789]

I'm in some puzzlement, re a particular stretch of railway in Croatia. Namely, the line from Karlovac to Sisak via Glina. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, this line -- running through an area particularly heavily affected by the horrors attendant on that break-up -- was for many years, out of use. I find nowadays, tantalising hints that it might be functioning again, including for passenger traffic (can derive from Google, no certain indication "one way or the other"). Would be very grateful if anyone knowledgeable about this part of the world, could let me know for sure about this line's current status.

Might be freight if they've re-opened it but I can find no passenger service listed anywhere for the line

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

It's not shown at all on the official HŽ map.
This shows lines which are "out of use" (eg parts of the Sisak-Knin line) as a line of dots, so its status must be worse than that.
Not shown on Mike Ball's detailed regional map of the Balkans either.

 

[JB_B]

I noticed that https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de will find connections between Karlovac and Sisak but Glina isn't even recognised as a destination. ( Obviously that's just another hint - not definitive.)

 

[30907]

I noticed that https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de will find connections between Karlovac and Sisak but Glina isn't even recognised as a destination. ( Obviously that's just another hint - not definitive.)

The connections are all via Zagreb.
The Bueker map (not up to date) http://www.bueker.net/trainspotting...a/croatia---slovenia---bosnia-hercegovina.gif shows it as "without traffic"
OpenRailwayMap https://www.openrailwaymap.org/mobile.php? shows the Karlovac end as abandoned up to a river bridge and the rest disused.

 

[Calthrop]

Thanks, all. Picture overall, is that the line is still -- and maybe forevermore -- "out". (Some Googled references seemed to show passenger times between K. and S. -- apparently to me, taking amazingly little time -- whether via Zagreb or otherwise; but "what do I know"?) I travelled on the line concerned, steam-hauled, in 1982 -- i.e. before the extreme "unpleasantness" in those parts: have been contemplating a piece to publish, re that journey -- had been wondering whether it was still accurate to say "line out of action this past quarter-century or so". Answer there, seemingly in the affirmative.

 

[30907]

Google/your device might translate this for you?
https://hr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Željeznička_pruga_Sisak-Caprag_–_Karlovac
Confirms what we've collectively discovered!

 

[oldman]

There are odd bits of track on Streetview here, here and here. It's very difficult to trace in places on the satellite image.

 

[hexagon789]

Google/your device might translate this for you?
https://hr.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Željeznička_pruga_Sisak-Caprag_–_Karlovac
Confirms what we've collectively discovered!

And how slow it was, 40km/h linespeed! Journeys on the line must've taken quite some time.

 

[oldman]

Google threw up this report from 1982, with steam!

Karlovac – Sisak was another instance of a branch line with all workings scheduled “šinobus” except for one each way daily, designated as “mixed”; only unlike on the Bijejlina branch, that diagramming was here faithfully adhered to in reality, with class 51 haulage of the trains concerned. The westbound working was a “morning job”, whereas the eastbound ran overnight: they were allotted about five-and-a-half hours to cover the 109-km. line. A far from onerous schedule; but thus planned, to allow for the trains’ “mixed” character. G. learned that goods wagons were not always included in the consist, but that at certain intermediate stations, the loco usually cut off from the train and shunted the goods yard. Circumstances dictated that if we were to cover this line, it had to be on the overnight eastbound Karlovac – Sisak; its daytime counterpart in the other direction would have been preferable, but that turned out not to be an option. What we got, was certainly a memorable night-time spectacular – the 51 hauling seven or eight four-wheel coaches (no wagons included on this occasion, but en-route shunting performed) – we picked a seat in the front coach and duly “valued” the noise and fireworks.

 

[hexagon789]

Google threw up this report from 1982, with steam!

5.5hrs though, not even a 20km/h average!

Though perhaps the mixed shunted the intermediate stops as was done on many narrow guage and some secondary standard guage lines in Europe by mixed passenger trains even at the expense of journey times.

Hopefully the šinobus was a bit quicker. I take it that means railbus?

 

[mugam4]

Hopefully the šinobus was a bit quicker. I take it that means railbus?

by the early ‘80s, infinitely more Jugoslav branch passenger duties were handled by JŽ’s idiosyncratic variation on the railmotor theme: four-wheeled railbuses in silver-grey livery, almost always running in multiple, in various numbers. The undertaking’s designation for such workings was “šinobus” -- the word used accordingly, in this article.

See schienenbus (and those of ŽS and HZ respectively).

 

[hexagon789]

See schienenbus (and those of ŽS and HZ respectively).

Shienenbus was enough, I'm very familiar with those, a sort of German pacer. They had battery versions as well as I recall, but a quick look suggests JZ had only diesel ones.

 

[oldman]

I have found some references to the possible reopening of the 10km section from Sisak-Caprag to Petrinja, which is in a built-up area, quite different from most of the route. It is part of the network (although out of use) and appears in HZ Infrastruktura documents as route L210. There are occasional press reports, with HZ saying they don't have the funds. This part of the line can be clearly followed on Google Maps, with quite a lot of track still there.

The rest of the line is, I think, history.

 

[hexagon789]

I have found some references to the possible reopening of the 10km section from Sisak-Caprag to Petrinja, which is in a built-up area, quite different from most of the route. It is part of the network (although out of use) and appears in HZ Infrastruktura documents as route L210. There are occasional press reports, with HZ saying they don't have the funds. This part of the line can be clearly followed on Google Maps, with quite a lot of track still there.

The rest of the line is, I think, history.

Given HZ have closed a few more minor bits and pieces to save money on maintenance I don't think it will re-open, at least not anytime soon.

The Croatian section of the Sarajevo-Ploče line is now closed on the Croatian side despite the Croatians having upgraded their side of the line not long before the Bosnians did! Now swish Talgos out of Sarajevo run no further than the border station of Capljina.

 

[70014IronDuke]

I'm in some puzzlement, re a particular stretch of railway in Croatia. Namely, the line from Karlovac to Sisak via Glina. After the break-up of Yugoslavia, this line -- running through an area particularly heavily affected by the horrors attendant on that break-up -- was for many years, out of use. I find nowadays, tantalising hints that it might be functioning again, including for passenger traffic (can derive from Google, no certain indication "one way or the other"). Would be very grateful if anyone knowledgeable about this part of the world, could let me know for sure about this line's current status.

I drove east from Karlovac one afternoon about 11 years ago. The area just outside the town still had much damage from the war, which had been, what, 18 years or so previously at the time.

I also visited a S African couple who had bought a house near Glina. They said that in their house search they found homes where you could see the images on the walls of people who had been shot in their own homes. I think the victims were Serbs, murdered by Croat Ustashe. (Of course, the Serbs were just as brutal in eastern Croatia and BiH.)
I can't remember seeing any railway - but I could have just forgotten.

 

[Calthrop]

@oldman, @mugam4: rather amusingly, "things have come full circle". Your quotes about the 1982 venture, are from myself: writing on Rob Dickinson's "International Steam Pages" about my doings then in Yugoslavia ! My query here was initially: because of my entertaining ideas of submitting an additional piece to those "International Steam Pages", about a comical aspect of that night-time Karlovac -- Sisak bash. It just occurred to me to try to find out whether -- with things maybe becoming a little bit better in that tragic part of the world -- the line concerned, long dormant or worse, might have come back to life. Answer overwhelmingly: pace a little bit at the eastern end, no.

Shienenbus was enough, I'm very familiar with those, a sort of German pacer. They had battery versions as well as I recall, but a quick look suggests JZ had only diesel ones.

I being aged and an obscurantist -- pacers and stuff, mean rather little to me: Yugoslav sinobuses recalled and recall to me, British Railways' 1950s / 60s four-wheel diesel railbuses (which I gather had in that era, numerous close "cousins" in both Germanies: weren't some BR railbuses, German-made?). JZ's way seemed to be, to have lots of these four-wheel diesel jobs. They were used in abundance, on branch-line and local services; tended to run in multiple -- often, "very-multiple": for public consumption, this business always referred to just as "sinobus". In my small experience of JZ, I never encountered one of these vehicles running singly: smallest "multiple" number thereof which ever came my way, was two.

I have found some references to the possible reopening of the 10km section from Sisak-Caprag to Petrinja, which is in a built-up area, quite different from most of the route. It is part of the network (although out of use) and appears in HZ Infrastruktura documents as route L210. There are occasional press reports, with HZ saying they don't have the funds. This part of the line can be clearly followed on Google Maps, with quite a lot of track still there.

The rest of the line is, I think, history.

Thanks. As they say up north, "owt's better'n nowt". (There must be a Serbo-Croat equivalent.)

Given HZ have closed a few more minor bits and pieces to save money on maintenance I don't think it will re-open, at least not anytime soon.

The Croatian section of the Sarajevo-Ploče line is now closed on the Croatian side despite the Croatians having upgraded their side of the line not long before the Bosnians did! Now swish Talgos out of Sarajevo run no further than the border station of Capljina.

These former-Yugoslavs, they crazy !

I drove east from Karlovac one afternoon about 11 years ago. The area just outside the town still had much damage from the war, which had been, what, 18 years or so previously at the time.

I also visited a S African couple who had bought a house near Glina. They said that in their house search they found homes where you could see the images on the walls of people who had been shot in their own homes. I think the victims were Serbs, murdered by Croat Ustashe. (Of course, the Serbs were just as brutal in eastern Croatia and BiH.)
I can't remember seeing any railway - but I could have just forgotten.

At the risk of coming across as hard-hearted: from everything that I hear, South Africa is a highly violence-bedevilled country -- though from reasons not identically the same, as re former Yugoslavia. One hopes that the S.A. couple of your acquaintance had not been so naive as to, envisagedly, buy a country retreat in a part of Europe where all was sweetness and light and tranquility (maybe "everything's relative")...

One gets the picture that in those horrific years, "the 'tribes' were all at it" -- except perhaps the Slovenes; who got their country out of Yugoslavia with minimal bloodshed -- and who are generally reckoned as a rather "different breed of cat": even their language differs significantly from Serbo-Croat.

I feel the whole thing to be terribly sad: I liked Yugoslavia, in my small experience of it. Notoriously "gricers' hell" -- one either accommodated oneself to the pathological hostility to rail photography; or didn't go there at all, or else "switched off for the duration" from anything railway-related. For me -- interestingly "less-developed" -- easy-on-the-eye countryside, sometimes beautiful / spectacular (though the north-east of the country-as-was, drearily low-lying and flat) -- burgeoning wildlife -- the inhabitants, with various likeable traits among their less-so same. I was perhaps lucky -- many reports pre-country's break-up (these, from various sources -- railway enthusiasts re things other than anti-photter-mania; and "normal non-railfan" folk) tell of unpleasant dealings with the locals. I found them in the main not effusively friendly; but perfectly OK. I feel that even obnoxious people, don't deserve what has happened there in recent decades...

 

[70014IronDuke]

.....
At the risk of coming across as hard-hearted: from everything that I hear, South Africa is a highly violence-bedevilled country -- though from reasons not identically the same, as re former Yugoslavia. One hopes that the S.A. couple of your acquaintance had not been so naive as to, envisagedly, buy a country retreat in a part of Europe where all was sweetness and light and tranquility (maybe "everything's relative")...

Ironically, they had indeed left SA because of the violence there. They hailed from Pietermaritzburg (IIRC) but had moved to Pretoria/Joburg for work. They told me a specific story how they were driving to work one morning and they saw a smart, young black woman kidnapped (by blacks) into a car in front of their very eyes. The guy phoned the police and they simply did nothing.

They were planning to set up some sort of ecological green farm - but they were very disappointed as they found the bureaucracy in HR overwhelming. As investors in a poor area (they were less than 10 km from the Bosnian border) they were also supposed to get some special aid/tax breaks - which they never got. I lost contact with them, I suspect they quit - as indeed have almost all the ex-patriates I know of in the country.

One gets the picture that in those horrific years, "the 'tribes' were all at it" -- except perhaps the Slovenes; who got their country out of Yugoslavia with minimal bloodshed -- and who are generally reckoned as a rather "different breed of cat": even their language differs significantly from Serbo-Croat.

The Slovenes had no "historical" Serbs living on their territory, so they didn't have the absurd situation as in Knin, where the Serbs (understandably) refused to live under the Croats as second class citizens after living there for 500? years.

I think it was a Serb who once told me: "In Yugoslav times, Slovenes were foreigners in their own country [of Yugoslavia]."

Macedonia and Montenegro did get peaceful independence too, of course, but that was later. And the Serbs got equal status, AFAIK.

I feel the whole thing to be terribly sad: I liked Yugoslavia, in my small experience of it. Notoriously "gricers' hell" -- one either accommodated oneself to the pathological hostility to rail photography; or didn't go there at all, or else "switched off for the duration" from anything railway-related. For me -- interestingly "less-developed" -- easy-on-the-eye countryside, sometimes beautiful / spectacular (though the north-east of the country-as-was, drearily low-lying and flat) -- burgeoning wildlife -- the inhabitants, with various likeable traits among their less-so same. I was perhaps lucky -- many reports pre-country's break-up (these, from various sources -- railway enthusiasts re things other than anti-photter-mania; and "normal non-railfan" folk) tell of unpleasant dealings with the locals. I found them in the main not effusively friendly; but perfectly OK. I feel that even obnoxious people, don't deserve what has happened there in recent decades...

I got detained/taken to the police twice as a 'suspect' in Yugo when I first went, almost 47 years ago, August 73. Those tales will have to wait for the book.
But I have to say, it was the most disappointing country of my travels up to then, cold and rude. Cheating in the shops too. This was not Slovenia, but Zagreb, eastern Slavonia an Bosnia.

Since then, I've been back to all the successor states, including Kosovo, and I love going there. (I don't really know Montenegro though. ONly been once, quite a limited visit.) Sarajevo is the third most interesting city/area in Europe, I'd say. (After Kosovo and the winner - Transnistra.)

Slovenia is definitely more civilised though. Rarely get cheated there, and then only by taxi drivers, who are probably not natives.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Ironically, they had indeed left SA because of the violence there. They hailed from Pietermaritzburg (IIRC) but had moved to Pretoria/Joburg for work. They told me a specific story how they were driving to work one morning and they saw a smart, young black woman kidnapped (by blacks) into a car in front of their very eyes. The guy phoned the police and they simply did nothing.

They were planning to set up some sort of ecological green farm - but they were very disappointed as they found the bureaucracy in HR overwhelming. As investors in a poor area (they were less than 10 km from the Bosnian border) they were also supposed to get some special aid/tax breaks - which they never got. I lost contact with them, I suspect they quit - as indeed have almost all the ex-patriates I know of in the country.

The Slovenes had no "historical" Serbs living on their territory, so they didn't have the absurd situation as in Knin, where the Serbs (understandably) refused to live under the Croats as second class citizens after living there for 500? years.

I think it was a Serb who once told me: "In Yugoslav times, Slovenes were foreigners in their own country [of Yugoslavia]."
Macedonia and Montenegro did get peaceful independence too, of course, but that was later. And the Serbs got equal status, AFAIK.

Not so peaceful in Macedonia and Montenegro.
(North) Macedonia came close to civil war and there is still ethnic tension. At least they have solved their name dispute with Greece.
Montenegro sadly worked with the Serbs to bombard Dubrovnik and raze the Croatian littoral down towards Kotor, and then helped them clear eastern BiH.
Things are better now they all want to join the EU (or take its money), and have reasonably democratic leaders.
Serbia is busy upgrading its railway with Russian money, ditto Croatia with EU money.
One of the impacts of Brexit (good or bad) is that UK money will not be heading that way any more.

 

[Dunfanaghy Rd]

I guess Slovenia was always different, then? In August 1973 I spent a day at Prevalje, between Bleiburg and Maribor, to watch and photo the steam. On arrival I showed my camera to the stationmaster and he just shrugged, so I got on with it. I remember my mother telling me that a trip into on of the other republics was a frostier experience.
Pat

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

I guess Slovenia was always different, then? In August 1973 I spent a day at Prevalje, between Bleiburg and Maribor, to watch and photo the steam. On arrival I showed my camera to the stationmaster and he just shrugged, so I got on with it. I remember my mother telling me that a trip into on of the other republics was a frostier experience.
Pat

It seems to reflect the origin of the various states in the two empires.
Slovenia was part of Austria, Croatia was part of Hungary, and the rest were largely developed under the Ottomans before achieving varying degrees of independence.
The areas we were looking at (Sisak/Karlovac) were part of the Krajina military frontier with the Ottomans, and Serb refugees were invited to settle there by the Austrians (over the heads of the local Croats), to provide a fighting force to defend the area.
There was a history of raiding over the Ottoman border (both ways) for centuries.
The Serbs, as the senior independent state, complete with royal family and army, then dominated the unified YU.
Misha Glenny's books tell the full story.

 

[oldman]

Thanks. As they say up north, "owt's better'n nowt". (There must be a Serbo-Croat equivalent.)

Bolje išta nego ništa (in Croatian - Serbian is another language )

One gets the picture that in those horrific years, "the 'tribes' were all at it"

They weren't really 'tribes' - they were nations in a multinational state. Given the choice in the late 1980s they voted for nationalist parties and nationalism led to bloodshed, as it often does - see 20th century European history.

(I remember being in Sarajevo during the 1990 World Cup - Yugoslavia won a game and the streets were full of people shoutin Ju-go-slavija. But the newspaper headlines had Milosevic saying that if there was to be independence, boundaries would need changed. As he tried to do.)

 

[hexagon789]

I being aged and an obscurantist -- pacers and stuff, mean rather little to me: Yugoslav sinobuses recalled and recall to me, British Railways' 1950s / 60s four-wheel diesel railbuses (which I gather had in that era, numerous close "cousins" in both Germanies: weren't some BR railbuses, German-made?). JZ's way seemed to be, to have lots of these four-wheel diesel jobs. They were used in abundance, on branch-line and local services; tended to run in multiple -- often, "very-multiple": for public consumption, this business always referred to just as "sinobus". In my small experience of JZ, I never encountered one of these vehicles running singly: smallest "multiple" number thereof which ever came my way, was two.

I'd actually forgotten about the BR Railbuses, probably I'm more familiar with Pacers, but look nigh on identical to German ones. Basically just a BR version, as in adjusted to British requirements but the powertrain is very similar; even the top speed 55mph against 90km/h (56mph).

It's a shame that even these don't seem to have been able to keep a limited service on some of the minor branches throughout the former Yugoslavia, seems to be quite a lot of abandoned or freight only lines across the area from what I understand.

 

[hexagon789]

I guess Slovenia was always different, then? In August 1973 I spent a day at Prevalje, between Bleiburg and Maribor, to watch and photo the steam. On arrival I showed my camera to the stationmaster and he just shrugged, so I got on with it. I remember my mother telling me that a trip into on of the other republics was a frostier experience.
Pat

I remember reading Michael Palin's New Europe and I think he found Slovenia to be the friendliest of the ex-Yugoslav republics, perhaps a similar story when it was part of Yugoslavia?

 

[Cloud Strife]

It seems to reflect the origin of the various states in the two empires.

Not only origin, but also wealth. In Yugoslavia, Slovenia was the wealthiest republic by a long way, and Croatia was only close by virtue of the huge tourism industry. Slovenians were also used to travelling abroad frequently, something that wasn't the case for others in Yugoslavia.

I suspect they quit - as indeed have almost all the ex-patriates I know of in the country.

A lot of people underestimate just how tribal the Balkans are. For instance, I know someone who had a similar situation. He was promised a significant amount of government support, and invested rather a lot of money into a project that went nowhere. After about two years, someone finally sat him down and explained that he did things in completely the wrong way. He didn't make friends with the powerful town mayor, he didn't cultivate contacts among the dominant political party in the town, and most of all, people simply didn't know him. He was bewildered, because it was illogical: a guy coming in creating several hundred new jobs should have been welcomed with open arms, but he just didn't understand how things were done in Croatia.

What shocked him was when he was told that his project wasn't necessarily in the best interests of the mayor and the town council. He couldn't make sense of why, until it was explained that by becoming a major employer in a poor area, he represented a potential threat to the politicians. As a result, they were blocking his project by simply not doing anything. What he should have done from the beginning was to talk to the mayor directly so that the mayor could present it as his initiative, as well as making sure to hire the right people on the project (i.e. those connected to the mayor and the town council).

except perhaps the Slovenes; who got their country out of Yugoslavia with minimal bloodshed -- and who are generally reckoned as a rather "different breed of cat": even their language differs significantly from Serbo-Croat

Yes, Slovenia and Macedonia were never part of the "core" Yugoslavia. It's clear from historical evidence that Milosevic had no real interest in keeping Slovenia in Yugoslavia, indeed, you can see from the events of the Ten Day War that the real plan was to relocate JNA forces from Slovenia into Croatia and that the Ten Day War was nothing but a convenient distraction. Of course, Slovenians will claim otherwise, but it's very obvious that the federal Army commanders had no intention of actually winning the war there.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Slovenia (and Croatia) has had its problems in the past with Italy over the sovereignty of Gorizia and Istria (were Austrian) and the Adriatic littoral further south (which was once Venetian).
There were battles after WW2 over Trieste which only just managed to become part of IT rather than YU which started up the hill outside town.
The inter-war period was particularly harsh in Italian-controlled western Slovenia and the coast because we (UK, France) had promised these areas to Italy in return for joining WW1 on our side.
That then conflicted with Woodrow Wilson's 14 points and self-determination.
In railway terms it's why Slovenia has 3kV DC electrification and runs on the left (like Italy's FS and Austria's Südbahn), unlike the rest of ex-YU.

Things seem peaceful these days, but Slovenia and Croatia actually have a border dispute with each other about control of shipping off Istria, and coastal rights.
Croatia is also planning to build a new railway to reach Pula from Rijeka without crossing into Slovenian territory.
There are multiple issues in the Balkans wherever you look, many dating back 150-odd years ago, well before the formation of Yugoslavia, when many borders were re-drawn with the Ottoman retreat from Bosnia and elsewhere.

 

[70014IronDuke]

Not so peaceful in Macedonia and Montenegro.
(North) Macedonia came close to civil war and there is still ethnic tension. At least they have solved their name dispute with Greece.
Montenegro sadly worked with the Serbs to bombard Dubrovnik and raze the Croatian littoral down towards Kotor, and then helped them clear eastern BiH.
Things are better now they all want to join the EU (or take its money), and have reasonably democratic leaders.
Serbia is busy upgrading its railway with Russian money, ditto Croatia with EU money.
One of the impacts of Brexit (good or bad) is that UK money will not be heading that way any more.

Surely the trouble in(N) Macedonia was largely between the Albanian speakers and the Slavs, not between Macedonians and Serbians. (But it was a long time ago, and I might have got it wrong.)

The actual split between Montenegro and Serbia was also largely peaceful.

You are correct, IMO, that they all want the EU for the money - bar Slovenia, because it knows that any upheaval will mean an end to independence.

 

[oldman]

Surely the trouble in(N) Macedonia was largely between the Albanian speakers and the Slavs, not between Macedonians and Serbians.

In recent years that has been the case. The tensions remain.

Before WW2 the official Serbian/Yugoslav line was that Macedonia was Southern Serbia and the people were 'really' Serbs, who had somehow forgotten their Serbian-ness. There was some Macedonian terrorism/freedom fighting and Serbian repression - a bit like Kosovo in the 1990s.

After the war in the FRJ Macedonian identity and language were recognised for the first time, and this was one of Serbia's many grievances about the federal system.

 

[LNW-GW Joint]

Surely the trouble in(N) Macedonia was largely between the Albanian speakers and the Slavs, not between Macedonians and Serbians. (But it was a long time ago, and I might have got it wrong.)

Before WW2 the official Serbian/Yugoslav line was that Macedonia was Southern Serbia and the people were 'really' Serbs, who had somehow forgotten their Serbian-ness. There was some Macedonian terrorism/freedom fighting and Serbian repression - a bit like Kosovo in the 1990s.
After the war in the FRJ Macedonian identity and language were recognised for the first time, and this was one of Serbia's many grievances about the federal system.

It's probably off-topic now, but Macedonia (all of it) has been disputed between Greece, Serbia, Albania and Bulgaria for over a century since the Ottomans withdrew.
Bulgaria has long had claims on the eastern part, Albania on the west, Greece the south and Serbia the north; Macedonian is closer to Bulgarian than to Serbian.
Thessaloniki could easily have fallen to Bulgaria rather than Greece (whose army beat them to it by a day!).

The railway from Thessaloniki via Skopje up to Mitrovica in Kosovo was actually built by the Ottomans (so was the first line in Bosnia, linking Zagreb to Banja Luka), before the borders were redrawn in 1878.
These lines were part of the Ottoman plans for a Vienna-Istanbul railway, avoiding Serbia.
They never built the Mitrovica-Sarajevo-Banja Luka section, or the link into Bulgaria to connect with Istanbul.
The Vienna-Istanbul railway was instead completed via Budapest, Novi Sad, Belgrade and Sofia.

 

[Calthrop]

A book -- from long ago now, but reckonably still illuminating and full of interest -- in my opinion, worth recommending: Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, by Rebecca West -- a pretty lengthy tome, being the author's findings from extensive travels which she made in Yugoslavia in the late 1930s. I'd reckon it highly readable, and covering numerous topics and aspects re the country (plainly then as ever, politically and ethnically a dysfunctional one). I read it long ago; am not politically-minded, and a lot of the finer points of the political stuff therein, went over my lead and / or are long forgotten -- but I'd reckon the book fascinating on many levels. ("It came to pass" that of the region's varied peoples, the author found herself most in sympathy with the Serbs -- though by no means considering them to be invariably in the right in all things.)