Murfatlar Railway Station (Basarabi)
During the period when Dobrogea was under Ottoman occupation, the Constanta Port-Cernavodă Port railway was the first railroad of the Ottoman empire. It was inaugurated on October 4, 1860 and was made according to norms and with English resources. The route followed the edge of the city of Constanta, zigzagging up to its western station, passing Murfatlar and Medgidia, then the Carasu valley and reaching Cernavoda (total length 64.6 km). Its technical performances referred to the 30 degree slope from the entrance to the port and to the annex lines that reached to the present Mamaia resort.
The permission to build the railway and to operate the ports and stations, especially for commercial activities, was based on an agreement dating from September 1, 1857, between a London group of investors (represented by Sir John Trevor Barkley) and the Ottoman government. The document was signed by Sultan Abdul Mejdid himself. The act stipulated the 99-year concession for administration by the builder, the English part defending under the name "Compagnie du chemin de ferre Imperial Ottoman du Danbe et de la Mer Noire", subsequently replaced by the name "Danube and Black Sea Railway Kustendje Harbor Company Limited" In the same year, a small station was erected, which subsequently disappeared during the floods of 1924.
This railway line gained full use for the region after the completion of the Russian-Turkish war (1877-1878) and after the construction of Anghel Saligny's bridge from Cernavoda. The current assembly consists of the station building and the water tower that fed the steam locomotives (each of these objectives is individually classified), being built after 1900. Near the tower there are two constructions that housed the pumps necessary for the tower's operation, which did not have have been classified in LMI, although they have similar architectural features.
The English company that built the railway made in 1860 and the Murfatlar station in a form of "small building and hardly room for staff" (M.D. Ionescu). She was also serving goods and passengers and had no stores and outbuildings. It also seems that the original station was at a distance of about 500 m from the present one, its disappearance being a consequence of the catastrophic floods of 1924.
The year of construction / inauguration of the monument-railway station in Basarabi / Murfatlar is not exactly accurate, but it is obvious that this type of railway station belongs to the "CFR-style" railway program (according to the type-morphological classification made by Arch Toader Popescu in the work "The Romanian Railway Project (1842-1916)" published in 2014). In the context of the mentioned work, the visual analysis of the Basarabi / Murfatlar station is included in "Family 5") Tipu] 5.C.), "the last reinterpretation of the CFR style before the national style fully encapsulates this architecture program (stations), as it will with most public programs by the end of the 3rd decade of the 20th century. " These are "medium, symmetrical stations, with a main body and two side wings, one level, with brick facades; the type is used for intermediate stations".
Currently, the exterior image of the station expresses a relatively good state of maintenance. However, the railway traffic was considerably reduced, so that the station is not used to its capacity, which leads to the risk of physical degradation of the building. In addition, the lack of a properly sized, regulated and eested protection area favored the parasitization of the monument's environment.
