I do not consider myself as a “rail line collector” who celebrates with sparkling wine when traveling a special railway line the first time. (I have recently learned from a YouTube video that such guys exist.) But I had and still have a few lines which I want to travel on my bucket list. One of them was until 2025 the connection between Östersund in Sweden and Trondheim in Norway. The Norwegian part is called Meråkerbanen, since 2008 only until Hell where it joins the Nordlandsbanen. Before 2008 officially the end of the Meråkerbanen was Trondheim and the Nordlandsbanen branched off in Hell.
My wish to travel this line goes back to my first trip to Scandinavia 1978 with an Interrail pass together with friends. The only type of pass at that time was a 1-month contiguous global pass for under 26 years old. We had come from Finland via Haparanda (which could be reached by broad gauge trains from Finland) and went from Boden to Narvik. Our plan was to take a bus from Narvik to Fauske and continue by night train to Trondheim. Two of our group found this inappropriate for Interrailers, left us and travelled back to Sweden and via Östersund and Storlien. (I do not know if via the Inlandsbanan which had still regular passenger traffic or via Sundsvall.) The rest of our group took the bus and night train as planned. Next day in the evening we wanted to meet our friends in Trondheim Sentral station but they did not arrive. They had stranded somewhere near the Swedish – Norwegian boarder (maybe Storlien, Duved or Åre) and arrived 24 hours later in Trondheim.
In 2025 my wife and me had planned to spend two nights in Östersund and take then the first of the two daily trains to Storlien, a few kilometres before the boarder where both daily trains connect to a Norwegian train. The trains on this route are operated by Vy, the successor of the Norwegian state railway, under the brand Vy Nortåg in Sweden and in Norway by SJ Norge, a subsidiary of the former Swedish state railway, operating under the brand SJ Nord. With only two trains per day, there is, especially in Sweden, a non-negligible risk to have long waiting times or even get stranded. Therefore we changed or plan, stayed only one night in Östersund and decided to stay the next night in Storlien.
As we now were lacking a travel day we bought the tickets for the SJ Nord train Storlien – Trondheim on the Entur app. Entur is the government-owned schedule information and ticketing agency for Norway. On their app and website one finds schedules for all means of public transportation, including ferries and I think also domestic flights. For many of them one can also buy tickets, e.g. for trains, trams, city and long-distance buses. Interrail and Eurail pass users can make seat reservations, if compulsory, on the Entur website or by phone with Entur. The Entur app can only be used to show them and train operating companies refer usually to Entur for pass user seat reservations.
After one night in Östersund we spent the day in the town and on the shore of the lake Storsjön and boarded in the afternoon the second one of the two daily trains to Storlien. During the two-hour train ride the weather changed dramatically and we arrived at heavy rain. Fortunately we had booked a room in the historic hotel located on platform 1 of the Storlien station.
The hotel gives the impression of a station hotel in the American Southwest in the 19th and early 20th century. But not so fancy as the Fred Harvey Houses along the AT&SF railway had been. Inside, the lobby and the bar and restaurant area were a strange mixture of an alpine après-ski barn (Storlien belongs to the municipality of Åre, a skiing area is nearby) and the saloon in Roswell City in Bully Herbig’s movie “Der Schuh des Manitu” (Manitou’s Shoe) with a life-size statue of a Native American wearing his war-bonnet.
We got a trackside room upstairs and as there was no railway traffic during the night, it was calm. Next morning it turned out that it had been a good idea to go to Storlien the day before as the heavy rain during the night had caused some damage to the railway infrastructure and the morning train from Östersund had been cancelled beyond Åre. But the Norwegian train from Trondheim arrived and departed soon back to Trondheim with us and very few more passengers. According to the departure screen arriving passengers from Norway had to wait several hours for a rail replacement bus to continue their journey to Åre and further on by train to Östersund. Electrification of the Meråkerbanen seemed to be completed, but SJ Nord still used class 92 diesel railcars for the Trondheim – Storlien trains.
We stayed to nights in Trondheim and used the one and a half days we had there for sightseeing and a visit to the Trondheim Tramway museum (https://sporveishistoriskforening.no/english-frontpage) in Munkvoll. It can be reached from the city centre by the Gråkallbanen, the only surviving tram line in Trondheim or bus route 4. The Gråkallbanen is not included in Interrail/Eurail. Tickets for the tram and buses in Trondheim can be bought on the Entur app, the app of the local transport agency and in convenience stores, but not aboard trams or buses. 1-hour (3-hours on weekends) and 24-hours tickets bought in stores are valid immediately and do not need to be validated.
As we already had travelled the Dovrebanen, the mainline Trondheim – Oslo two years before we wanted this time to travel the Rørosbanen Trondheim – Røros – Hamar and then continue to Oslo on the mainline. Trains on the Rørosbanen are operated by SJ Nord and despite they were classified as regional trains, seat reservations were compulsory which we had bought on the Entur website. From Hamar we took a Vy regional train (no seat reservations) to Oslo. The train got crowded at Oslo Gardermoen Airport as like in Vienna many air travellers prefer local trains over the overpriced airport express.
After two nights in Oslo we took a local train to Oslo Gardermoen Airport and a flight home to Vienna.