Grovane is a village in

Vennesla Vennesla is a List of municipalities of Norway, municipality in Agder county, Norway. It is located in the Traditional districts of Norway, traditional district of Sørlandet. The administrative centre of the municipality is the village of Venn ...

municipality in

Agder Agder is a counties of Norway, county () and districts of Norway, traditional region in the southern part of Norway and is coextensive with the Southern Norway region. The county was established on 1 January 2020, when the old Vest-Agder and Au ...

county,

Norway Norway, officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. The remote Arctic island of Jan Mayen and the archipelago of Svalbard also form part of the Kingdom of ...

. The village is located along the shores of the river

Otra The Otra is the largest river in the Sørlandet region of Norway. It begins in Setesdalsheiene mountains at the lake Breidvatnet in Bykle municipality in Agder county, just south of the border with Vinje municipality in Telemark county. The r ...

, about north of the large village of

Railway

The Sørlandsbanen railway line runs through the village not stopping at

Grovane Station The Setesdal Line () was a railway between Kristiansand and Byglandsfjord in southern Norway, long. It was built with a narrow Track gauge, gauge of , and opened to Hægeland 26 November 1895, and to Byglandsfjord 27 November 1896. Stations alon ...

. The station was historically a stop along the

Setesdal Line The Setesdal Line () was a railway between Kristiansand and Byglandsfjord in southern Norway, long. It was built with a narrow gauge of , and opened to Hægeland 26 November 1895, and to Byglandsfjord 27 November 1896. Stations along the line ...

. While the original Setesdal Line was a

narrow-gauge railway A narrow-gauge railway (narrow-gauge railroad in the US) is a railway with a track gauge (distance between the rails) narrower than . Most narrow-gauge railways are between and . Since narrow-gauge railways are usually built with tighter cur ...

, Sørlandsbanen was (and still is) a

standard gauge A standard-gauge railway is a railway with a track gauge of . The standard gauge is also called Stephenson gauge (after George Stephenson), international gauge, UIC gauge, uniform gauge, normal gauge in Europe, and SGR in East Africa. It is the ...

railway. After the Sørlandsbanen was completed to

Kristiansand Kristiansand is a city and Municipalities of Norway, municipality in Agder county, Norway. The city is the fifth-largest and the municipality is the sixth-largest in Norway, with a population of around 116,000 as of January 2020, following th ...

in 1938, Grovane station became the terminus station for the Setesdal Line due to the track southward not being double gauge. Freight and passengers had to change trains for onward transport by Sørlandsbanen. Today, the Setesdal Line (first opened 1885, closed 1962) is a

heritage railway A heritage railway or heritage railroad (U.S. usage) is a railway operated as living history to re-create or preserve railway scenes of the past. Heritage railways are often old railway lines preserved in a state depicting a period (or periods) ...

and a railway museum with steam trains serving the line between Grovane and

Røyknes Røyknes is a village in Vennesla municipality in Agder county, Norway. The village is located along the west side of the river Otra, about northeast of the village of Skarpengland. The municipal border between Vennesla and Iveland is the river ...

. Four steam locomotives from 1894-1902 are preserved, along with a number of passenger and freight cars.

References

Villages in Agder Vennesla {{Agder-geo-stub