History
The Czechoslovak Machines Still Climbing to Bakuriani
GCC Editorial ·
In the Georgian mountains, a machine designed in Plzeň and built in Dubnica nad Váhom in 1966 climbs a narrow-gauge line. It is not a museum piece. It carries passengers — and it is the last of its type running anywhere in the world.
Czechoslovakia's industrial trace in Georgia is little known and often described inaccurately. The most common claim is that Škoda equipped Georgia's hydroelectric plants. It did not. The real story is different, and better: Czechoslovakia did not send Georgia turbines. It sent transport.
A line that climbs twelve hundred metres
The railway from Borjomi to Bakuriani opened in January 1902. It runs 38 kilometres on a 900-millimetre gauge and climbs 1,200 metres along the way — from the spa town of Borjomi to the mountain resort of Bakuriani. In 1966 the line was electrified, and it needed new traction.
Twelve machines of class ČS11
The order went to Škoda Plzeň, which adapted its type 17E9 for Georgia — a design originally intended for mining service. The locomotives themselves were built by SMZ, the engineering and metallurgical works in Dubnica nad Váhom, and twelve were produced in 1966, numbered ČS11-01 to ČS11-12.
They run on 1.5 kV direct current with a top speed of 45 km/h. Two modifications distinguish them from the mining version and were made specifically for the Georgian line: they were built to a non-standard gauge of around 911 millimetres and without the four side pantographs the mining variant used.
The last of their kind
The whole Škoda 17E family amounted to 262 locomotives between 1957 and 1966 — 114 built in Plzeň and 148 in Dubnica. Georgia's twelve are the only ones ever to serve as full passenger locomotives on a public line.
And they are still running. Available sources put between four and eight in operating condition, carrying tourists along the same route they were built for sixty years ago. It is reported to be the only place in the world where the type can still be seen in service.
Tbilisi ran entirely on Czechoslovak trolleybuses
The locomotives were far from the only Czechoslovak vehicles in Georgia. Škoda 9Tr trolleybuses from Ostrov nad Ohří were built in enormous numbers — 7,372 in total, of which more than five thousand went to the Soviet Union. Around 512 reached Georgian cities:
- Tbilisi: 280
- Kutaisi: 121
- Rustavi: 30
- Chiatura: 25
- Gori: 22
- Sukhumi: 18
- Batumi: 16
The numbers are not the whole point. In Tbilisi, Baku and Yerevan the 9Tr was the only trolleybus type in service — the capitals of the entire South Caucasus ran exclusively on Czechoslovak vehicles. The Tbilisi trolleybus network opened on 21 April 1937 and closed in 2006.
The Škoda 14Tr followed, with total production of 3,265 units. Around 243 came to Georgia, of which 226 went to Tbilisi alone between 1983 and 1990. That made Tbilisi the second-largest customer for the type in the entire Soviet Union, after Kyiv.
Where the story is often told wrong — and why the truth is better
The Czech trace in Georgia is sometimes described as Škoda or ČKD supplying equipment for Georgian hydroelectric plants. The sources do not bear that out. The Zemo-Avchala plant near Tbilisi, commissioned in 1927, was equipped by the German firm Fritz Neumeyer with three turbines, with a fourth from the Leningrad Metal Plant. The second stage in 1938 was supplied by Kristinehamn of Sweden together with the same Leningrad works. No Czechoslovak involvement appears at the Enguri or Rioni plants either.
A similar claim occasionally surfaces about ČKD Tatra trams in Tbilisi. That is also untrue: the Tbilisi trams, whose service ended on 4 December 2006 as the last tram network in the South Caucasus, were RVZ-6 cars from Riga and KTM-5 from Ust-Katav.
The real Czechoslovak legacy is more tangible than turbines. It is the vehicles Georgians rode to work, to school and into the mountains every day — and on the Borjomi line, still ride today.
A return eighty years later
There is a Czech trace in Georgian energy after all. But it is not from the 1920s, and it is not a technology delivery.
In February 2007, the Czech company ENERGO-PRO, founded in 1994 by the entrepreneur Jaromír Tesař, bought six Georgian hydroelectric plants — Lajanuri, Rioni, Gumati, Shaori, Dzevrula and Ats — with a combined capacity of 361.4 MW, along with two distribution companies. The price was in the region of $197–200 million. The purchase made it Georgia's largest electricity distributor, with 62.5 percent of the market.
In short: Czechoslovakia did not build Georgia's power plants — a Czech company bought them eighty years later. What Czechoslovakia actually sent to Georgia were machines that move people. And twelve of them are still doing it, sixty years on — a quiet daily reminder that the Czech–Georgian bond rests not only on diplomacy, but on craftsmanship that has outlasted the regimes it was built under.