Based on the book of Ivan ŽILinČÍk: The Kysuce–Orava Logging Railway, NADATUR Prague, 1996

The industrial boom at the end of the 19th century caused a steady growing demand for wood of quality. Since long ago, the region of Kysuce and Orava has been a source of this raw material and the timber production was the predominant form of gaining livelihood for the population. Alas, for a long time the region´s remoteness and the bad infrastructure of transport prevented the intensive development of the timber industry, so that on the beginning of the 20th century the vast and up to that time only scarcely exploited forest stands on the border of Orava and Kysuce were very attractive for the wood-processing firms. The hitherto form of transporting timber by rafting or by vehicles no longer satisfied the growing demand for timber raw material and new ways of transportation were investigated which would be independent of weather conditions and would enable to transport other materials, too. The logical outcome of this deliberations was the option of transporting timber by a logging railway. The Slovak mountains characterized by long valleys were the ideal terrain for an economical use of this means of transport. The choice of a narrow gauge (760 mm) reduced the price of the construction by as much as 40 % and enabled to build the track in more exacting conditions as for route and slope. The system of extensions to other valleys was realized in accordance with the needs of timber production costing in some cases even less than the main line. The Kysuce – Orava logging railway emerged through the fusion of two originally independent railways – the Kysuce Logging Railway (KLR) and the Orava Logging Railway (OLR). The construction of the connection line across the Beskyd Pass by a system of dead-ends was a remarkable solution with no analogy in Europe. After the traffic ceased in 1972 a great part of the track and of the rolling stock was liquidated. The division Chmúra – Beskyd Pass – Tanečník has been proclaimed national technical heritage and it is operated as the Historic Logging Dead-end Railway (HLDR) under the management of the Kysuce Museum in Čadca in the frame of the skanzen of the Museum of the Kysuce Village (MKV)