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Railway
From 1886 Myloi was a railway junction between the plain and the mountains.
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1882
A branch line to Myloi in the first railway contract
In 1882 the government of Charilaos Trikoupis signed the contract for the Peloponnese railway. Besides the main line it included two branches: Corinth–Argos–Nafplio and Argos–Myloi.
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1884
A locomotive called ΜΥΛΟΙ
In 1884 Krauss in Munich built five small tank engines for the Peloponnese railway. Each got a name, and one of them was called ΜΥΛΟΙ. Engines of this series later worked the short branch Nafplio–Argos–Myloi.
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31 July 1886
A French engineer plans a line from Myloi to Kalamata
Even before the train reached Myloi, the French chief engineer Gotteland handed the ministry a study for a railway from Myloi via Tripoli to Kalamata. The line would be 185 km long and cost 21 million drachmas.
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7 August 1886
State commission accepts the line Argos–Myloi
On Saturday 7 August 1886 a state commission inspected and accepted the new 10 km section from Myloi to Argos. The line ran dead straight through currant vineyards and tobacco fields, with an iron bridge of 15 m over the…
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9 August 1886
A big station: Myloi meant to be the port of the Peloponnese
A reporter wrote that Myloi station was built 'very spacious, with matching warehouses', because this harbour was to become the port of the whole Peloponnese. The station stood right opposite a 'very high ancient…
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11 August 1886
The first timetable: local trains Nafplio–Argos–Myloi
The new timetable linked Myloi to the Corinth–Argos trains by a special train, plus four local trains between Nafplio, Argos and Myloi. Return tickets from Piraeus or Athens to Myloi were valid for four days, and freight…
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16 August 1886
The train reaches Myloi
On Monday 16 August 1886 (4 August by the old calendar) the new line from Argos to Myloi was opened to the public, together with the line from Kiato. Myloi now had a station on the metre-gauge Peloponnese railway.
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22 September 1886
'Myloi station has excellent staff'
A month after the opening, the Argos newspaper denied a rumour that the station master of Myloi, K. Koupassaris, was to leave. It called him capable, honest and very friendly, and also praised the telegraphist and the…
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1887
Myloi of Nafplio or Myloi of Argos?
In 1887 the Argos newspaper discovered that the railway company called the station 'Μύλος Ναυπλίου' in its books, Myloi of Nafplio. Argos protested: the village was 'Μύλοι Άργους'. The old rivalry between Argos and…
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April 1887
Trikoupis proposes a line from Myloi into the mountains
In April 1887 Prime Minister Charilaos Trikoupis proposed building a railway from Myloi via Tripoli to Kalamata at state expense. Myloi was chosen as the starting point because it lay at the end of the existing line,…
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2 December 1887
Parliament gets the bill: 'The line leaves from Myloi'
Minister Lomvardos sent parliament a bill to build a metre-gauge line 'from Myloi of Nafplia via Tripoli to Kalamata' at state expense. The attached survey said the line would leave Myloi, climb along the stream valley…
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18 December 1887
The first station master leaves for Eleusis
The Argos newspaper reported that 'our friend the station master' K. Koupassaris had been transferred from Myloi to Eleusis. He left 'the best memories' behind.
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15 April 1888
Myloi gets its own post office
A 'Post Office of Myloi' was set up in the village. The mail for Tripoli now came by train as far as Myloi, and the paper expected Myloi to become the centre of 'numerous engineers, contractors and workers' once building…
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12 May 1888
Contract signed: a railway from Myloi, with a pier and a workshop
Trikoupis and Lomvardos signed the contract with the Belgian consul Louis Rosseels, acting for Ernest Rolin of the Société Internationale de Constructions et d'Entreprises de Travaux Publics. The line was to start at…
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10 July 1888
The pier is planned as a pier on piles
The company's budget set aside 290,000 francs for 'a pier (estacade) and workshops at Myloi and Kalamata'. An estacade is a pier standing on piles, not a solid stone harbour wall. The whole line was budgeted at 21.6…
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1889–1890
Ten Belgian locomotives for the line from Myloi
Ten tank engines with large 1.20 m driving wheels were built in Belgium in 1889 for the Myloi–Kalamata railway: three arrived in 1889, seven in 1890. A catalogue plate calls them 'Locomotive-Tender pour le chemin de fer…
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26 January 1889
A Spanish steamer brings the first building materials
On a Saturday in January 1889 a Spanish steamer sailed into Myloi with materials for the new Myloi–Kalamata railway. The works began at both ends of the line, Myloi and Kalamata, because materials could arrive there by…
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24 February 1889
A slow start: first a big bridge over the Lerna marsh
The paper Kairoi found that the works starting from Myloi were 'not going very briskly'. Right at the start, where the line left the end of the Peloponnese railway, it needed major structures, above all a big bridge over…
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23 March 1889
Ten extra gendarmes for Myloi
At the request of the mayor of Argos, the gendarmerie of Argolis reinforced its post at Myloi with ten men. With hundreds of railway workers arriving, the paper called it 'an excellent measure for public order'.
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24 March 1889
Workers of every nation, and 'famous cutlets'
'Workers of various nationalities pour in there every day,' wrote a correspondent about the building site of the Myloi–Kalamata line. A good restaurant had been built: 'In Myloi-Lerna you can taste famous cutlets.' He…
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May 1889
A German traveller sails from Myloi to Nauplia
In May 1889 Georg Behrmann found someone on the beach at Myloi who understood German and helped him hire a sailing boat, steered by 'two cheerful, talkative Myliots', to Nauplia. He noted that he could also have taken…
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17 June 1889
Railway workers without work and in debt
The big contractors kept re-letting sections to small sub-contractors, and workers offered themselves for 80 lepta a day. Many sat without work and without a penny, in debt to every shop on the site. Grocers and…
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30 July 1889
Boomtown Myloi: holidays, wine and brawls
'It is a fine sight,' wrote the Nafplio paper: from Myloi to Tripoli crowds of workers of every nationality and language, and carts bringing rails and sleepers. But on holidays and days off this whole crowd gathered in…
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31 July 1889
A French engineer checks the rolling stock built in Belgium
The government appointed the French engineer Macaigne, from Cambrai, to supervise the locomotives and wagons being built in Belgium for the Myloi–Kalamata line.
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1 October 1889
Storm in the harbour: two iron lighters capsize
A heavy storm in the Argolic Gulf capsized two large iron lighters of the railway company in the harbour of Myloi–Lerna. The workers on board, who were unloading the English steamer Pleiad anchored there, were saved 'as…
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6 November 1889
1,945 workers, men and women, on the section from Myloi
A report to the minister counted 96 engineers and overseers, 106 assistants and guards, and 1,945 navvies, miners and labourers, 'men and women', on the section starting at Myloi. Seven kilometres of track had been laid,…
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December 1889
Armenian specialists for the Lerna bridge foundations
According to a 2015 thesis on the station, specialised Armenian workers were brought in during December 1889 to lay the foundations of the railway bridge over the Lerna marsh.
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26 December 1889
Rolin takes on a second line
A new contract gave Ernest Rolin, contractor of the Myloi–Kalamata line, the branch Karytaina–Megalopoli–Leontari as well. His agent Louis Rosseels had to found a Greek company within 30 months, and the rolling stock of…
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22 February 1890
Bridge piers 14 metres deep, and a wooden stopgap bridge
Two piers of the iron bridge over the lake of Lerna now stood on foundations 14 m deep; the other two were being set at 8 m. Meanwhile a temporary wooden bridge was built across the lake so that goods trains could pass.
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7 April 1890
A locomotive already runs from Myloi to kilometre 12
The correspondent in Myloi reported that a locomotive was already running from Myloi to kilometre 12.2. The great bridge of Lerna was still not finished because of the difficult ground; the opening as far as…
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June 1890
The Southern Greece Railways (ΣΜΕ) are founded
A new company was set up to run the line from Myloi: the Company of the Southern Railways of Greece, with the banker Andreas Syngros as chairman. Rolin transferred his rights to it.
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1891
MPs want to inspect the works for abuses
A group of MPs proposed sending a parliamentary committee to inspect the works on the Myloi–Kalamata line and to investigate abuses reported by the engineer and MP N. Schinas, including whether the carriages were fit for…
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13 January 1891
The Belgian engineer Couzin goes home; Rolin takes charge
Victor Couzin, who had directed the works on the Myloi–Kalamata line for two years for the firm Couzin–Génis, had gone back to Belgium with his wife. The original contractor, Ernest Rolin, now took over the direction of…
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13 February 1891
Myloi–Tripoli almost ready: only an iron bridge to go
Answering a question in parliament, the government said that the section from Myloi towards Tripoli had been built and was 'almost completely finished'; only the assembly of one iron bridge remained.
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March 1891 – May 1891
'The railway only went as far as Myli'
A Bavarian teacher who toured Greece in the spring of 1891 wrote that 'the railway then only went as far as Myli'. From there his group continued in an open carriage along the excellent road towards Tripoli, resting at…
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6 July 1891
Holy water at the station, in 34 degrees
From the landing stage the king rode by train to the flag-decked station of Myloi, where Archbishop Nikandros of Argolis performed the blessing of the waters and blessed the railway carriages. It was 34 °C in the shade…
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6 July 1891
A derailed royal carriage nearly stops the opening
Two days before, heavy rain had damaged the line near Tripoli and the royal carriage had derailed on a test run, partly because carriages with unequal buffers had been coupled together. The prefect of Arcadia telegraphed…
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6 July 1891
King George I lands at Myloi to open the line to Tripoli
At 6 in the morning the royal yacht Sfaktiria sailed into Myloi with King George I, the princes Nikolaos and Andreas and Prime Minister Deligiannis, greeted by cannon fire as she passed Nafplio. At 8 the king stepped…
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6 July 1891
Back at Myloi in the evening, the king sails home
At half past six in the evening the trains were back at Myloi. The king said goodbye and was rowed out to the Sfaktiria, which lay at anchor off Myloi; the prime minister followed in another boat. The guests left Myloi…
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6 July 1891
Soldiers along the line, because of stolen materials
On the opening day soldiers of the engineers stood at intervals along the line to prevent any attack on the railway by some local people. According to the paper, materials worth about 200,000 drachmas had been stolen…
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6 July 1891
Stowaways on the royal train, and a flask of wine for the king
First the train with the invited guests left Myloi and was the first to run the whole line to Tripoli. When the royal train followed, uninvited locals climbed onto the wagons and into the luggage van to ride along; the…
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8 July 1891
An illustrated report: portraits of the builders, and Myloi as km 0
The Athens daily To Asty printed engraved portraits of Ernest Rolin and Louis Rosseels, 'the founders of the Myloi–Kalamata company', and a large engraving of a bridge near Achladokampos. Its description of the line…
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8 July 1891
Opened, but no trains yet
Two days after the opening the paper Akropolis wrote that services would not start at once, probably in about 15 days, because the staff was not yet complete. On the opening day an agreement had been signed handing the…
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10 July 1891
Newspapers abroad report the opening
A telegram from Athens of 7 July appeared in the Lodzer Tageblatt in Poland: the section Myli–Tripolis of the Myli–Kalamata railway had been opened 'yesterday in the presence of the King, the ministers and numerous…
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17 August 1891
Regular trains from Myloi to Tripoli
From 17 August 1891 (5 August old style) the line was open to the public. The Southern Greece Railways' timetable had a train leaving Myloi at 5.05 pm, arriving in Tripoli at 7.55, with stops at Andritsa, Achladokampos,…
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September 1891 – October 1891
Works halted: hundreds of unpaid, hungry workers
In the autumn of 1891 the works on the line beyond Tripoli came to a halt. Hundreds of workers, most of them Italians and some French, were owed their daily wages; the papers spoke of 900 to 2,000 men, and of workers…
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6 November 1891
The state pays to feed the railway workers
The government opened a credit of 5,000 drachmas 'for the care and feeding of the workers of the Myloi–Kalamata railway'. Most of the stranded men were found work on the Corinth Canal and on the line to Larissa.
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17 November 1891
Nafplio wants the line extended from Myloi to its own pier
The town council of Nafplio asked for the Myloi–Kalamata line to be extended 'from Myloi to the pier in front of the customs house of Nafplio'. It was an early sign of the rivalry between the two harbours.
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22 November 1891
Foreign powers protest about the unpaid railway workers
The Belgian company building the Myloi–Kalamata railway had collapsed and its foreign workers had lost their wages. On a Sunday in November 1891 the envoys of several powers handed the Greek government a joint note…
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29 December 1891
The Belgian company is dropped; the Peloponnese railway takes over
In December 1891 the Belgian company was declared to have forfeited its rights. A new contract gave the Piraeus–Athens–Peloponnese Railways (ΣΠΑΠ) the completion of Tripoli–Diavolitsi and the operation of the whole line…
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1892
Italian workers and suppliers register their claims
In 1892 the Italian legation in Athens called on Italian 'piece-workers, labourers and food suppliers of the Myli–Calamata line' to register what they were still owed. An Athens paper wrote that Rolin's bankrupt company…
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1892
Nineteen locomotives change hands; seven go far from Myloi
The ΣΠΑΠ 'inherited' 19 locomotives bought for the line Myloi–Kalamata, 18 of them from Belgian factories. The ten Belgian tank engines became series Ι, numbers Ι651–Ι660, without names. According to the 1892 annual…
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27 January 1892
A law gives the line from Myloi to the Peloponnese railway
A law confirmed the December contract and obliged the ΣΠΑΠ to open the whole line Myloi–Kalamata to the public within one year.
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February 1892
The Peloponnese railway runs the trains from Myloi
In February 1892 the government of Theodoros Deligiannis handed the completion and operation of the line to the ΣΠΑΠ, probably from 1 February. From then on one company ran both the line from Argos and the line into the…
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27 February 1892
The train from Myloi stops before a damaged bridge
The train from Myloi stopped in front of the damaged bridge of Maskena: the driver did not dare to cross. The 'much-plagued' line had a difficult start.
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1893
A bathing train from Argos to the sea at Myloi
In the summer of 1893 the people of Argos asked for a special bathing train. They wanted to swim at 'Almyro', 'only five minutes from Myloi station'. The train to Myloi was also becoming a train to the sea.
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1894
Baedeker: Myli, landing place for boats from Nauplia
The 1894 Baedeker guide told travellers that Myli 'is the landing-place for boats from Nauplia', with three or four trains a day to Myli and one or two on to Tripolitza.
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16 April 1894
The royal family lands at Myloi on the way to Mycenae
The royal yacht Sfaktiria sailed into Myloi with the royal family. They went ashore by boat and boarded a special train that was waiting for them, to visit the antiquities of Mycenae. The yacht waited at anchor off Myloi…
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1895
'Not suitable for the Myloi–Kalamata line'
In the 1895 annual report Apostolos Agathoklis, head of traction and rolling stock of the ΣΠΑΠ, judged the Belgian series Ι engines fit for fast passenger trains but not for the steep climbs of the Myloi–Kalamata line,…
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1 September 1896
1,650 tons of rails unloaded at Myloi
The ΣΠΑΠ put out to tender the unloading 'in the harbour of Myloi (Nafplio)' of a steamer bringing about 1,650 tons of rails and track parts for the company, for the extension of the line beyond Tripoli. The harbour of…
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23 February 1898
The pier is too shallow: the railway must extend it
A contract of 1898 for the last section of the line obliged the ΣΠΑΠ (article 9) 'to extend the pier of the harbour of Myloi of Nafplio to a depth of three metres'. So there was a pier, but it did not reach deep enough…
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November 1899
The line from Myloi finally reaches Kalamata
After Tripoli–Kourtaga (1897) and Kourtaga–Fragkoi (1898), the last gap to Diavolitsi was closed in 1899. According to the railway society ΣΦΣ the ΣΠΑΠ put the whole line from Myloi to Kalamata into service in November…
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16 December 1899
A new deal: money for Nafplio instead of a longer pier at Myloi
Prime Minister Theotokis and Pavlos Skouzes, chairman of the ΣΠΑΠ, signed a contract that replaced the pier extension at Myloi. The company would pay 100,000 drachmas to Nafplio's harbour fund and lay track along the…
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1900s
Myloi, one of the eleven locomotive depots
Once their network was complete, the ΣΠΑΠ had eleven locomotive depots, among them Tripoli and Myloi. Engines of several types were based at Myloi, ready for the climb into Arcadia.
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4 April 1900
'Silting made the pier useless': the extension is dropped
Introducing the bill, Prime Minister Theotokis told parliament that the bottom of the bay and the silting at Myloi made a longer pier useless. He added that the place was so unhealthy that, although the railway had come…
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10 April 1900
'Every attempt to build a pier at Myloi came to nothing'
N. Triantafyllakos, MP for Tripoli, protested that Myloi lay at the start of the line and a good pier there would make goods for Tripoli cheaper. Theotokis answered: 'Every attempt to build a pier at Myloi came to…
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28 August 1900
Smuggled cigarette paper found in the station's goods shed
Police officers from Argos seized smuggled cigarette paper in the railway goods shed of the station 'Myloi of Argos'. Cigarette paper was a state monopoly product, and the railway was an easy way to move it.
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13 January 1927
'Skala': Myloi as the landing place of Tripoli
An Athens paper described Myloi as a village on the railway to Tripoli, 'well-watered, full of trees and pleasant', with tall eucalyptus trees along the beach where the boats lay. Besides its name from the many water…
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1936
New rails from Piraeus to Myloi
The railway journal reported the replacement of the rails on the line from Piraeus to 'Myloi of Nafplia'.
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August 1937
An honest track gang returns a lost sack of silk cocoons
The director-general of the ΣΠΑΠ publicly praised the track gang of the Myloi–Kalamata line, a foreman and four workers, who had found a sack of silk cocoons fallen from a train, worth 2,500 drachmas, and handed it in.
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20 February 1938
A new station master at Myloi
The railway journal announced that station master D. Dimou was transferred from Myloi to Lechaina, and K. Katsoulos from Lechaina to Myloi.
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31 July 1938
Train collision between Argos and Myloi
At km 274.6 between Argos and Myloi, train E from Corinth to Myloi collided with a light engine that was running back from Myloi to Argos. The railway journal blamed the assistant station master on duty at Argos, who had…
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20 May 1941
The telephone cable from Myloi to the Argos airfield is cut
In May 1941 a German telephone line ran from Myloi along the railway, under the Xerias bridge and past the Aspida to the airfield of Argos; it served the airfield's anti-aircraft defence. A small group of young men from…
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13 July 1941
Aerial photo: the long pier, the likely boarding place of April 1941
Frame 112 of 13 July 1941 shows the long railway pier with fields running down to the coast. Eleven weeks earlier this was the most likely place where Wilson's party went aboard; a smaller jetty further north is the…
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13 July 1941
Aerial photo: a goods train of about 25 wagons on the pier siding
The photographs of 13 July 1941 show the station yard in use under the occupation: the two-hall locomotive shed, a turntable, two round water tanks, the station buildings and the goods shed with wagons. A goods train of…
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30 November 1943
ELAS attacks the German post at Andritsa station
On 30 November 1943 a small ELAS group attacked the German guard of Andritsa railway station, on the line from Myloi to Tripoli, and killed about ten German soldiers.
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5 December 1943
Germans hang about fifty prisoners at Andritsa station
In reprisal for the attack, on 5 December 1943 German forces hanged about fifty men from the beams of the station shelter at Andritsa and from nearby trees. Most sources say they were prisoners brought from the prison of…
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1947
New railcars for the Peloponnese are landed at the pier
In 1947, with the bridge over the Corinth Canal still destroyed, new railcars for the Peloponnese lines were landed at the pier of Myloi directly from a Navy landing craft. A photograph shows one railcar rolling off the…
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June 1948
Partisans blow up a railway bridge between Myloi and Tripoli
The army communiqué of 19 June 1948 reported that partisans of the Democratic Army had blown up a railway bridge on the line between Myloi and Tripoli. In the fighting one government soldier and nine partisans were…
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November 1948
The Corinth–Tripoli passenger train hits a mine near Myloi
In November 1948 the passenger train from Corinth to Tripoli struck a mine in the area of Myloi and was damaged. The army communiqué, printed on 25 November, reported no casualties.
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14 December 1948
Operation 'Peristera': Myloi as a boundary point in the Peloponnese
In the army's plan for operation 'Peristera' against the Democratic Army in the Peloponnese (14 December 1948), the IX Division was to secure road and rail traffic in its zone and the works on the road…
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1950–1969
Souvlaki passed up to the train windows
Because so many trains stopped at the junction of Myloi, the village became known for souvlaki. Sellers walked along the carriages with trays of skewers and passed them up to passengers at the open windows; a magazine…
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1953
A trench right beside the railway
In 1953 the diggers opened Area D right next to the Argos–Myloi railway, so trains passed only a few metres from the trench. The plates in Hesperia show both the ancient walls and the tracks.
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20 July 1979
Souvlaki sellers at the train, photographed
On 20 July 1979 the Danish railway photographer Ole Holbech travelled the line through Myloi and photographed a souvlaki seller holding up his tray to passengers at the windows of a railcar.
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March 1986 – April 1986
A graveyard of steam locomotives
In the spring of 1986 a visitor photographed rows of withdrawn metre-gauge steam locomotives standing at Myloi station. The station, once a busy junction, had become a resting place for engines the railway no longer…
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23 February 1995
"Metre gauge graveyard" at the Myloi depot
On 23 February 1995 the British photographer Adrian Nicholls captured what he called the "metre gauge graveyard" at Mili Nafpliou depot: the stone engine shed with its arched doors, two water towers and dumped…
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2010
The last passenger trains pass Myloi
Although the line had just been renovated, regular services on the Peloponnese metre-gauge network were suspended in 2010, and no more trains stopped at Myloi. The souvlaki sellers left the platform, but the grill houses…