Sivas high speed line is planned to open tomorrow with a ceremony after a couple of delays in recent years.
Ankara-Sivas high speed line project, which was started in 2009, has come to an end. Test runs are being done for a while and it’s announced that opening ceremony will be done on 26th of April.
Sivas to Ankara in 2 hours
High speed trains will at last reach to Sivas, which is an important rail junction for trains towards east. The project was started in 2009. After a couple of delays, the Ankara-Sivas high speed line project will be commissioned. Unlike before, the whole strech is completed this time, no temporary conventional line usage. The 406-km-long line with 49 tunnels (longest of which is 5 km) costs about € 3bn. The travel time will be 2 hours. Opening ceremony is announced to be done at Kirikkale on 26th of April.
3 cities, 9 stops
Ankara-Sivas HST will connect 3 cities, Kirikkale, Yozgat and Sivas to HST network of Turkey. The train departing from Ankara will call at Elmadağ, Kırıkkale, Yerköy, Yozgat, Sorgun, Akdağmadeni, Yıldızeli and Sivas respectively.
Only Ankara-Sivas service is expected to start in the beginning, but Istanbul-Sivas and Konya-Sivas services are also expected in following years.
New train sets to run
It’s announced that trains will run upto 300 km/h on the route, thus Siemens sets are expected to be used on this strech. In recent years, 12 new Siemens sets were added to TCDD Tasimacilik fleet, thus fleet will be sufficient for new services to Sivas.
Sivas will be new hub
Many train services to east, including Dogu Express to Erzincan-Erzurum-Kars, 4 Eylul Mavi to Malatya, Kurtalan Express to Diyarbakır-Batman and Vangolu Express to Elazig-Mus-Tatvan. currently depart from Ankara and pass through Sivas. Ankara-Sivas HST will decrease travel time from 12 to 2 hours, thus some of these trains can be reorganized to depart from Sivas in the future. It’s already announced that there’ll be connections from Sivas to Erzincan, Tokat and Malatya either by bus or train. The hard competition between train and bus currently on Ankara-İstanbul-Eskişehir-Konya streches will now be also on eastern routes.
Mosts and firsts in project
Sivas high speed line project containes some firsts for Turkey. The rails of the project was supplied by Kardemir, a Turkish steel company, for the first time in a HST project in Turkey. Through tunnels, concrete lines ara built instead of using ballast, again for the first time in Turkey. The Ankara-Sivas HST line consists of 49 viaducts and 49 tunnels, where records for highest viaduct and widest span between pillars of Turkey are in this project.
Cover photo: TCDD ©
Categories: Railway Infrastructure
Rail Turkey En 
Good morning Onur,
When will they start with the project in direction Erzurum ?
Any ideas ?
I guess however the election results, the government will focus on completing the already-started HST projects, Izmir, Bursa, Adana, Gaziantep. I don’t expect extension to Erzurum will progress in near future.
Hi Onur,
Thanks for the details of the opening.
I am keen to see the timetable which will apply, and the fares. I can’t find any information published by TCDD yet. Do you have any news on this?
The idea of Sivas becoming a hub for other services is an interesting one, because you could reduce the journey time by 8+ hours by changing trains at Sivas, but all the intermediate stations on the classic route via Kayseri still need to be served too.
Cheers
Jeff
No info neither at TCDDT website nor anywhere else. I’m not %100 sure if Ankara-Sivas regular train service will start tomorrow, thus I tried to be careful on the article. An early ceremony due to elections is a possibility as well. Let’s see how things go tomorrow. TCDDT needs locos, and will need passengers for new HST service. A faster access by train is also a need. Thus making Sivas a hub is perfect for everyone. But I’ve never heard such a plan yet, it’s only my guess.