Mocanita

Maramures has it's own Thomas The Tank Engine in the guise of Mocanita, a narrow gauge railway track that winds its way through the valley at the breakneck speed of 15km/h! We spent 6 hours on one of the trains and came across a few customised vans which had been converted to run on the railway, as you can see in the above movie. Health and Safety regulations are non-existent on the train with people jumping from carriage to carriage, gates flying open at any given time, and carriages derailing at every other sharp bend in the tracks. This of course all adds to the fun.

We spoke to some of the passengers who take this train to work up in the forest. They leave there homes on a monday morning, spend the week in the forest, sometimes working alone, only to return on saturday to their family. They have done this every week since they became an adult and are familiar with nothing else. Many have never left their village, let alone been to a town or city.