Baltic Railway Used by Graham Greene Nears $5 Billion Return
- New tracks to link Estonia, Lithuania and Latvia with Poland
- Three nations’ premiers signed pact in Tallinn with EU’s Tusk
An empty rail track on concrete sleepers sits at the Thriasio freight center in Aspropirgos, Greece, on Thursday, Dec. 17, 2015. Binding offers for Greek rail-services operator Trainose SA and train maintenance company Rosco SA will be made in January and for Thessaloniki port in March with both sales to be completed by mid-2016.
Photographer: YORGOS KARAHALIS/BloombergA railroad traversed by Graham Greene as he conceived one of his best-selling novels is edging closer to a 5 billion-euro ($5.4 billion) revival, decades after war and Soviet central planners crippled it.
The prime ministers of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia signed an agreement Tuesday to build Rail Baltica, a high-speed connection between the three countries and Poland. Donald Tusk, president of the European Union, which is supplying as much as 85 percent of the financing, attended the signing in Tallinn. The Estonian capital helped inspire Greene to write “Our Man in Havana” as he hopped on a train to Berlin in 1934.