Albania train travel

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I know rail travel in Albania is not really recommended due to the slow speed and conditions but I'm interested in taking the train from Vlore to Shkoder in a few days. Can anyone tell me if this is possible? If I will need to change trains somewhere? And is this is a daily route?

Traveling by train in Albania is tricky, however it's not really "not recommended" type. You just need to be ready to spend extra time on your journey, otherwise it's pretty interesting experience, especially for a rail fan. What concerns the timetable... well, Albanian Railways have problems informing potential passengers about the matter (e.g. the timetable they have on the website dates all the way back to May 2015), but a fellow traveler sent us HSH timetable sheet from last summer, thus it possible to assume that the same schedule is still valid. According to it, you can't travel between Vlorë and Shkodër directly, however one can do it with change in Durrës (Vlorë-Durrës 5:45-10:45, then spend couple hours there and Durrës-Shkodër 13:00-16:45), obviously it doesn't seem like an ideal option for 200 km route, but in case it's too long for you, then maybe you can simply use the train only on one leg (i.e. Vlorë-Durrës or Durrës-Shkodër) and go with (mini)bus on the other one, it will definitely save you a lot of time.

Hello.  Would anyone be able to confirm what the Albanian railway timetable is for 2017 ?   Specifically I am looking to travel from north to south, SHKODER to VLORE,  either via Durres or Kashar (Tirana) .  Has anyone done this recently?  Are the trains still running?

thanks all
Matt

With Albania you hardly can be certain about anything, unfortunately

Albanians provide a very outdated train schedule, while the last on spot report we had is only from the summer 2016 (at that point the only Shkoder-Durres train was running 5:45-9:35, while the only Durres-Vlore was 13:30-18:30). As a guess, roughly the schedule should be similar to the 2016 version, perhaps some minor +/- dep./arr., but overall picture (meaning morning Shkoder-Durres & afternoon Durres-Vlore departure) shouldn't be much different.

With Albania you hardly can be certain about anything, unfortunately

Albanians provide a very outdated train with testogen schedule, while the last on spot report we had is only from the summer 2016 (at that point the only Shkoder-Durres train was running 5:45-9:35, while the only Durres-Vlore was 13:30-18:30). As a guess, roughly the schedule should be similar to the 2016 version, perhaps some minor +/- dep./arr., but overall picture (meaning morning Shkoder-Durres & afternoon Durres-Vlore departure) shouldn't be much different.

You are so right tUt. In Albania you can always expect the trains to be very late. So it's very hard to build a schedule around it.