Romanian business attitudes...

After two years of gathering dust with as its only companions two scruffy guard dogs our P8 yesterday made a trip into the fresh air and a sunny sky.
With the help of people from LukOil the loco's dusty veil was rinced clean in a shower of rainbow-colored drops of water, all windows and headlights were clean again, so with a little imagination her clear white eyes could see the tracks in front of her on which she will soon embark on the long journey to her new home...

Yesterday a meeting took place between the TSP people and the Expeditor 'Via Terra Group', the firm which will now handle the paper work surrounding the transport. A proposal was put forward on Romanian business terms which raised quite a few eye brows on our side of the table.
During an evening diner positive and more ambiguous facts of the co-operation were considered by the PFT/TSP-staff and the conclusion is that you can be sure that our P8 will not miss this year's festivities celebrating the Centennial of our heritage line 128!

The departure in its most optimistic time-frame was scheduled at the end of the week but already the final hours of this Friday March 16th are ticking away...tomorrow the last fine-tuning on the contract details will be carried out so the final timetable can be put together...departure is to be expected next Tuesday. Before leaving we will have to pay the Via Terra Group for its services; a good example of differing business attitudes in Romania and Belgium; here we are used to having a job well done and THEN paying the bill but here it's quite the other way around which doesn't help in negotiations about the contract.

Also we still need a few more documents and finally it all seems to be falling into place. Today we received the papers from the Ministry of Culture and Tourism, officially signed and stamped indicating that our locomotive is not part of Romania's Historic Heritage and allowed to leave the country. The technical documents of the railway engineering expert made it to us a few days ago but our professional contacts back in Belgium pointed out that these were on some points incomplete and on others just plain wrong. Let's just nog forget that we are in Romania and things are done along different standards than the ones we are used to back home; following this it is unthinkable and impossible to adjust these documents; to the Romanians this is the one and only way to go about it. To avoid problems at the different border crossings and with the various companies that will provide us with transport, we took the liberty to fill out a standardised SNCB/NMBS (Belgian national railway) document and send it ahead to all the players involved for inspection. At the same time the 'Via Terra Group' will provide us with assistance on administrative and technical questions throughout the journey.

In conclusion, what this means is that starting next week you'll find a travel log here!