Former Křimov station
As Radio Prague reports, last year this passenger railway operator even launched a special internet portal with a database of advertisements for 140 properties. Among them was the building of the former station in Plešnice, Plzeň Region. Interest in the virtual tour portal of real estate was so high in the first days of its operation that the website even crashed.
In addition to the sale of properties, rentals were also offered, with 600 offers in the latter category. A station that had served its purpose was sold for less than 700,000 crowns (about 26,000 euros). As of now, there is no complete statistics by the end of 2015, but in the spring of last year, Czech Railways, even after selling part of the property to the infrastructure administrator, the Railway Infrastructure Administration, still had an excess of 3,700 buildings and about 20 million square meters of land plots, which they sought to get rid of to avoid additional costs for their maintenance or repair. The company plans to invest the proceeds in the development of passenger transport organization.
Milan Sýkora became one of the owners of this type of property, namely the former Křimov station. Here, by the way, some scenes from Czech films were shot – 'Želary' (a drama about the period of Nazi occupation, nominated for an Oscar) or 'Divine Emma', dedicated to the great Czech opera diva who also performed with Enrico Caruso. Milan uses this former haven for trains as a place for family recreation – essentially, as a dacha.
'We have been going there for fourteen years. At first we rented part of the station building from Czech Railways, and later, when the station was abolished as unnecessary, we obtained the right to buy the rented property,' says Milan Sýkora. 'The station layout is such that the station rooms are not functionally connected to the part that was used for private purposes, because it originally had rooms where railway workers lived. Then, when these rooms became vacant, Czech Railways began renting them out to vacationers. The former station is almost in the forest, in the mountains, in a fairly remote place, and we liked being in Křimov. Some trains still stop at this halt, but the station as such has been abolished.'
As emphasized by the director of the property sales department of Czech Railways, Šárka Cidlinská, recently, unlike previous years, such offers from the passenger railway operator are intended more for individuals and not very large buyers – entrepreneurs or potential dacha owners. In 2014, according to data provided by the joint-stock company, it completed 2,000 real estate sales transactions, of which 120 were for amounts less than 100,000 crowns (3,703 euros).