YESTERDAY'S 10 o'clock train from Sarajevo to the Adriatic coast left four years, three months and three minutes late, but the passengers and the crowd who had come to see them off did not mind in the slightest.
When the whistle finally blew, the city's still derelict central station erupted in cheers. The last train out of the city had left on May 2nd, 1992, carrying bewildered refugees to safety from falling shells, as the Serb bombardment began in earnest. Soon after, direct hits stopped the station's two giant clocks at 8.20 and 2.40.
The clocks were providing the same contradictory information yesterday, and the station exterior is still sooty and perforated with shell holes.
But £5.5 million of European Union aid has helped repair the line, while Bosnia and Herzegovina Railways had managed to salvage a locomotive and five carriages for an inaugural post war trip to the Croatian port of Ploce.
Three hundred Sarajevans - mostly elderly railway workers - squeezed onto the platform to watch. Taking the Ploce train was once commonplace, but yesterday, after a four years of siege, it was almost a sacred act.
The old men queued to touch the hand of the driver, Mr Munir Spahic, warning him not to drink too much or to fall asleep in his cabin.
Flowers had been taped to the handrails on either side of the locomotive, newly repainted in a green and yellow livery. Retired railway men, who never thought they would live to see the sight, wept openly.
One of them, Mr Fikret Orle (71), unfurled a hand written poster acclaiming Bosnia's railway workers for "keeping their promise".
That promise, Mr Orle said, was to open Sarajevo up once more to the outside world. "For us the railwaymen, this train is the true end of the siege," he said.
The five carriages were filled with railway management, dignitaries and politicians, including President Alija Izetbegovic, facing elections in September and sufficiently well versed in campaign politics to know on which bandwagon to jump.
Stops had been scheduled in Bosnian towns all the way along the Neretva valley leading south to the Adriatic, where Mr Izetbegovic was due to underline the same triumphal message.
"Today Bosnia reaches the coast and the wide world," he told the crowd on the station steps before boarding.
For Mr Mufit Drkenda, a 35 year old warehouse guard, who had watched his workplace become a train graveyard over the 43 months of siege and bombardment, yesterday was a day of rebirth.
"Two thousand people used to work here," Mr Drkenda said. "Now they can start to live again."
Scheduled trains to Ploce via Mostar are due to start running in just over two weeks. Freight trains will start a fortnight later, relieving some of the pressure from the winding single lane roads which lead into Sarajevo over the surrounding mountains.
It will take longer to restore services to the river port of Breko in the north. The line to Breko runs through Serb held territory, and Serb separatist leaders have so far not offered security guarantees.
But at this time of the year, most Sarajevans' minds are turned to the coast, where they used to spend each summer holiday. The crowd on platform one yesterday was thin and impoverished. Most still have no real source of income.
But when the whistle blew at 10.03a.m., and the cheering broke out, the train to Ploce offered at least the illusion of a return to an age of innocence.