page_title: Kragerø Line
section_title: Closing
hierarchical_section_title: Kragerø Line / History / Closing
caption_attribution_description: English: Tangen Tunnel on the Kragerø Line in Kragerø, Norway
context_page_description: The Kragerø Line was a 27-kilometer long railway line between Neslandsvatn and Kragerø in Vestfold og Telemark county, Norway. It was opened on 2 December 1927 as part of the Sørlandet Line. From 10 November 1935, the Sørlandet Line was extended from Neslandsvatn to Arendal, and the Kragerø Line became a branch. It was mostly served with feeder trains, although a through train to Oslo was kept until the 1970s. Falling ridership caused the line to become closed from 1 December 1989, along with many other branch lines. Part of the line remains, although other parts have been demolished.
context_section_description: Traffic along the line dropped significantly during the 1960s and 1970. Eventually freight trains were taken out of service on the line, and freight cars were instead hooked to the DMUs. In the last years, only the one car of the DMUs were used except on Fridays and Sundays. A large part of the decrease could be allocated to the line's inferior route; for both passengers heading towards Oslo or to Agder, the line represented both longer distance and longer travel time. Traffic patterns for buses went along the coast, and towards Oslo ran via Grenland rather than inner Telemark.
  On 19 February 1987, NSB's board recommended that the Kragerø Line be closed. They cited that the line needed major renovations, the rolling stock needed replacement and the lack of profitability, with the ticket revenue only covering about a quarter of operating expenses. This was part of a major decision which would also see the closing of the Numedal, Valdres, Hardanger, Flekkefjord and Skreia Lines. However, on 25 March the Railway Council voted against closing the line, stating local opposition against the proposals. On 20 April 1988, Minister of Transport Kjell Borgen presented a plan which would approve the closing of the lines. A majority for the closure was secured in parliament by Borgen's Labour Party with support from the Conservative Party and the Progress Party. The decision was made in parliament on 2 June, however some local parliamentarians from the Labour and Conservative Parties voted to keep the line Service on the line was last run on 31 December, and from 1 January 1989 the line was closed.
  The southernmost part of the line was planned used for the right-of-way for a new road. Nature and Youth had been working against the closing of the line during the 1970s, and in 1988 a local chapter was again established and started working to keep the line. They were met both with support and opposition locally. On 30 October 1989, 70 to 80 demonstrators from Nature and Youth, about half of which were locals, blocked the entrance to Tangeheia Tunnel in civil disobedience to hinder demolish of the track. The second day of the demonstration, the Norwegian Public Roads Administration reported the demonstrators to the police. Sheriff Gisle Johnson arrested five of the demonstrators, all male and from out-of-town, and four with long hair, and were fined NOK 10,000 each. During the evening, a mob of locals started attacking the remaining demonstrators with Molotov cocktails. This caused the demonstration to be moved to Sannidal.
  The demonstrators remained at Sannidal for a week, and had among other things meetings with Minister of Transport Lars Gunnar Lie. The group was successful at creating large media attention around the issue, with it becoming the group's most written about environmental demonstration in Norway during the late 1980s. On 3 November, NSB announced that they would cease demolishing the upper part of the line, although by then on the lower section demolition had already begun. In September 1992, NSB's director-general Kristian Rambjør stated that closing the line had been a mistake.
  In 1997, Osmund Ueland, director-general of the Norwegian National Rail Administration stated that he wanted to demolish the Kragerø Line and other closed branch lines. In 1997, the camping ground at Sannidal started renting out 15 draisines on the line, but the operations stopped in 2005. In the late 2000s, local forest owners started campaigning to remove the remaining tracks. In particular, they wanted to remove the underpass as Merkebekk in Drangedal, which has too low clearing for lumber trucks and causes the forest owners to drive the trucks an extra 3 kilometers (1.9 mi). In a decision from the Land Consolidation Court in September 2008, the land owners were giver permission to remove five underpasses between Sannidal and Neslandsvatn, located at Tveitereidvegen, one 240 meters (790 ft) north of it, at Tveitereidsbukta, at Saga and at Øygardsmyra. The removal would be at the cost of the forest owners. This permanently terminated any possib
caption: Tangeheia Tunnel in 1927, the cite of the civil disobedience in 1989
exif: {}