This magical and unique technical monument is located about 100 km beyond our border between the villages of Čadca and Kysucké Nové Mesto. It is a so-called forest railway used to haul wood from the picturesque and inaccessible hills of Orava. It was not the only one in Slovakia, but it was probably used for the longest time and, above all, part of it has been preserved as part of the Kysuce Museum.
The Kysuce-Orava Forest Railway (KOLŽ) was established in 1926 by merging two independent forest railways – the Kysuce Forest Railway, leading from Oščadnice to Chmúra, and the Orava Forest Railway, leading from Lokec to Erdútka (now Oravská Lesná). Both railways were built in 1915-1918 with a gauge of 760 mm. KOLŽ was created by the construction of a 10.5 km long connecting section from Gontkula in Oravská Lesná to Chmúra. The construction of a part of the connecting line from Chmúra to the Beskyd saddle was technically demanding, where it was necessary to overcome an elevation gain of 217 m on a section of 1500 m (as the crow flies), which was solved by building 3 spike headlands and at the same time the Chnúra and Beskyd-sedlo stations were built as headlands.
The main line was almost 61 km long and led from Oščadnice in Kysuce to Lokec in Orava, from which a large number of branches led. These were established and cancelled according to the current need for logging. The longest length was reached by KOLŽ in the 1920s – almost 110 km.
The locomotive fleet consisted mainly of steam locomotives MÁV, Henschel, Krauss, Orenstein und Koppel and ČKD. Of the wagons, the most commonly used were webbed bogies for the transport of logs.