In September 2009, the International Railway History Association (IRHA-AIHC) which is dedicated to the history and heritage of transport by rail and its networks and is supported by UIC among other partners, organised the 3rd International Conference on Railway History in Bratislava at the kind invitation of Slovak railways ZSR, ZSSK and ZSSK Cargo. The conference was entitled “Railways in Transition – Eastern European Railways, their Past, Present and Future in the 20th and 21st Centuries” and sparked much interest in the international scientific community.
The conference was attended by an international audience of researchers in railway history, academicians and railway representatives, welcomed speakers from Belarus, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine, the United Kingdom as well as UIC.
All papers presented at the Bratislava conference were extensively rewritten and enlarged for inclusion in the book “Eastern European Railways in Transition – Nineteenth to Twenty-First Centuries” that has been just published by Ashgate Publishing Limited (Modern Economy and Social History) in the UK.
The book is edited by Ralf Roth, Professor at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe University of Frankfurt, Germany and Henry Jacolin, Former Ambassador of France, Chairman of the International Railway History Association (IRHA).
The book has the following structure:
- Part 1: general suggestions and historical overviews of railways in Eastern European countries
- Part 2: under Russian protection
- Part 3: after the fall of the “Iron Curtain”: Changes – Problems – Modernisation
The International Railway History Association (IRHA-AIHC), established in 2002, is dedicated to the history and heritage of rail transport and brings together members from 20 countries. Among them historians, curators of railway archives and railway foundations, academics, delegates from railway companies, railway history societies.
The IRHA Chairman is Mr Henry Jacolin, diplomat, Former Ambassador of France. The Vice Chairmen are Paul Véron, Director of Communications and Coordinator for the Middle-East at UIC, together with Professor Javier Vidal Olivares from the University of Alicante, Spain and the Secretary General, Prof. Ralf Roth, Historisches Seminar, Johann Wolfgang Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany.
One of the main activities consists in organising international conferences on railway history, and publishing the proceedings (in the form of books), for example:
- in 2004, Semmering (Austria): “Across the Borders: Financing the World’s Railways in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries”
- in 2006, Lisbon, Portugal: “Railway Modernization, the 19th and 20th centuries – an historical perspective”
- in 2009, Bratislava, Slovakia: “Eastern European Railways in Transition”
- in 2010, Mechelen, Belgium: “Cities, Users and their Railways”
- in 2011 in Lviv, Ukraine: “The great longing for railways. How the periphery became connected with the centers of industrialization”
- 11-13 September 2013, Santiago de Chile (Chile): “Los ferrocarriles en América Latina – Historia y legado (siglos XIX-XX)”
To order the book please visit the following website: www.ashgate.com
For further information please visit the IRHA association’s website: www.aihc-irha-aihf.com or contact: Paul Véron, IRHA-AIHC Vice Chairman, veron@uic.org
