For a whole year, the copper mafia pieced together diesel cars, wagons and rolling stock. In 2011 members Railroad Friends Association – not his employees operating environment– found that they had covered six Mitsubishi diesel cars weighing 60-70 tons each, ten freight cars and many cars.

These valuable – rare in international markets – assets were left to OSE on the Kavasila – Kyllini section of the Peloponnese railway line, which was suspended (by Law 3891/2010 on unification of railways).

OSE planned to sell them, but due to a large number of scandals related to fraudulent scrap metal sales contracts by rail, the opening of the workshop was delayed. This cinematic theft, which was recorded as the largest in the history of Greek railways, perhaps shows that the state has over time had the most reliable means of fixed track internationally “in automatic mode”, which, however, in Greece hardly corresponds to 3 % of total passenger traffic.

An integral part of the rejection of Greek trains visionary projects aimed at building infrastructure and installing electrification and signaling.

“The frequency of accidents should have been yesterday, with the funding of the 2nd and 3rd CSF, to make the modernization of existing infrastructures a reality,” said TEE/TKM President Sakis Tsakopoulos in a speech back in 2006. Since then, the image has remained almost static.

Her case is typical. contract 717 in order to reduce and modernize alarms – remote control systems on the axle Athens – Thessaloniki – Promachonas.

It was signed in 2014 with TOMI’s contractor Alstom and an initial budget of 41.5 million euros, but after a very large number of renewals, has not yet been completed. Completion of a specific project is key to the commissioning of objects dependent on the alarm and remote control system, such as security system (ETCS).

Progress on Contract 717, which was due to be completed in 2016, was also under the microscope in 2017 with a train derailment at Adendros that killed four people. The project, which was accompanied by an additional contract worth 13.3 million euros, is expected to be completed this year.

The history of OSE is full of material theft. They are lost from cables to… whole trains!

Appeals and legal objections from companies that did not win tenders and technical difficulties not foreseen by contractors who, after signing, requested additional contracts, result in the railway project not being completed on time.

This is understandable if one considers that there has been no lack of internal competition between OSE and its subsidiary ERGOSE in the past, for example the parent company has committed to carry out research that was the subject of the subsidiary.

25 years for 106 km.

Therefore, it is no coincidence that even for implemented projects, several decades had to pass. The construction of the new double high-speed railway line Tiforea – Lianoklady – Domokos, with a length of 106 km, began in 1997 and, despite announcements (during the visit of the then Minister of Infrastructure Chr. Spircis to the construction site in November 2017) for the completion of the project in stages from June 2017, put into operation in May 2022

Another project that took several decades to stop being pursued is the dual electrified railway line on the Piraeus Railway Station – Athens Railway Station exit section. The original OSE contract (994/2005) was terminated in February 2011. Scheme technical companies took over the completion of the remaining works (part of the project was completed) in 2015, the contract should be completed in early 2017.