The first railway in Bulgaria
The first railway in the Bulgarian lands connected the Danube port of Ruse (then called Rustchuk) with Varna on the Black Sea. It opened on 7 November 1866, when the territory was still part of the Ottoman Empire. The line was about 223 kilometres long, and it gave goods from the Danube plain a way to reach the sea without the long journey by river.
It was built and for a time operated by a British company under a concession from the Ottoman government, and its engineers and many of its first locomotives came from Britain. Part of the work was done by local labourers, and the line crossed the Danubian plain and the hills around Shumen.
Why it was built
For travellers from central Europe the line shortened the way to Constantinople: they could take a steamer down the Danube to Ruse, the train to Varna and another steamer along the coast. It was an early link in the chain of routes that would later become the through railway to the Ottoman capital. After the Bulgarian state was restored in 1878 the line became part of its national network.