Katterat NLT
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We are now heading toward Katterat Station, where we’ll have our main stop for the evening. Katterat is a popular starting point for hiking the famuous Rallar road, witch the navvies used under the construction of the railway. From here you can also embark on longer hikes into the Narvik Mountains. The Rallar road is a popular trail that can take you down to Rombaksbotn, once a small town with two farmsteads that developed into a lively and urban community for the rallar people under the construction period. Around the year 1900 this was a very busy town with 70 to 80 buildings and nearly 500 residents that were a part of creating one of Norway’s most important railway lines. The town even had its own hotel, shops, bakery and even entertainment. But unfortunately, a fire on 5th of November 1902 burned many of the houses to the ground. Another fire, and no more job opportunities, made Romaksbotn not as an attractive place to live in as it was before. Most of the remaining houses were later taken apart and moved to Narvik or other locations with job opportunities. The rest of the town were swept away during a flood in 1959, when a dam burst in the mountains above. Katterat is quite special, it is surrounded by several residential buildings from the time when Katterat was a small station town for railway employees and their families. When the Ofoten line was run on steam there was a manned water tower here, but that was replaced with a transformer station in 1923. This transformation station can be found behind the Lavvo where we are going today. Katterat station is a protected station, the station building that was built in 1922 is actually the only one along the Ofoten line that is in the original design. The electrical installations in the station area which gave the power to the railway are also preserved in their original form. Even though there were not so many inhabitants, the small community was nevertheless well organised. But the modernisation of the railway led to a surplus of workers and the last permanent resident moved from the village in 1963.