Communist Period
At the beginning of 1945, the Ministry of Transport was created, as well as the Regional Directorate of National Railways. Many pre-war locomotives were sent to the Soviet Union. Poland received many German locomotives as a compensation for war losses. In June, the rail connection with Warsaw was opened, using a temporary railway station made of warehouses. On 15 September 1945, PKP took over management of all railway lines on new Polish territory from the Soviet Union. Most of these lines were either destroyed or inaccessible. The railways in the country were divided into 10 districts.
In 1946, the Fablok and Cegielski factories started the production of PKP class Pt47 (pre-war PKP class Pt31) and PKP class Ty45 (pre-war PKP class Ty37) locomotives. Meanwhile, the production of PKP class Ty42 (German BR52) was in process and Poznań prepared to start the production of PKP class Ty43 (German BR42) which had been produced in Szczecin previously. The situation in the Polish railways was disastrous, so the government decided to buy 75 USATC S160 (Polish PKP class Tr201) American locomotives (on UNRRA basis), 30 British 9F (Polish PKP class Tr202) locomotives, and 500 S160 Polish PKP class Tr203) locomotives, what was left from American army in Europe. Another 100 locomotives ordered from USA (Decapol – Polish PKP class Ty246) were sent to service Śląsk–Gdynia line. In the same year, electric trains started an operating line from Warszawa to Otwock.
Polish railways regained pre-war locomotives from Hungary, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia (in 1947), yet units from the eastern parts of Poland were taken over by USSR and rebuilt to operate on a wide gauge. Two years after the war's end, the first passenger cars are built in Cegielski (Poznań) and PaFaWag (Wrocław), while freight cars were being built in Chrzanów and Zielona Góra. At the same time, Warsaw railway lines were rebuilt together with the tunnel under the country's capital. As a part of the Ministry of Communication, the Bureau for Railway Electrification was founded. The first projects were to rebuild all lines that had been electrified before the war, and then the Warsaw–Żyrardów–Skierniewice–Koluszki and the Warszawa–Sochaczew lines would have been electrified. The electrification was planned to bring 3000V AC into Polish railways.
The modernised version of PKP class Pt31 locomotive started in 1948, the locomotive gaining a new name, Pt47. Reconstruction of German S-Bahn EMUs started the same year, which required building overhead lines in the Tricity area. Those EMUs were renamed EW90, 91 and 92 and soon after (in 1951) started operating on SKM lines. In 1949 the construction of Tomaszów Mazowiecki–Radom line was completed.
The 50s in Polish railways were a time of serious development and improvements. In 1950, construction of TKt48 locomotives started and two years later a prototype of the Ol49 steam locomotive was built. 1953 brought several new types of electric rolling stock into PKP. Ten units of EP03 electric locomotives and 40 units of EW54 EMUs were ordered from Sweden. EW54 EMUs were sent to operate on lines connecting Warsaw with Mińsk Mazowiecki, Żyrardów and Sochaczew. Meanwhile EP04 and EU20 locomotives were ordered from the DDR, alongside with EN56 and ED70 EMUs.
Polish production in that period included PKP class EW53 EMU and PKP class EP02 locomotive. In 1954 the prototype of the last heavy freight steam engine – PKP class Ty51 – was built. New lines opened that year are Skierniewice–Łuków line and Sitkówka–Busko Zdrój line.
Read more about this topic: History Of Rail Transport In Poland
Famous quotes containing the words communist and/or period:
“In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Not only do our wives need support, but our children need our deep involvement in their lives. If this period [the early years] of primitive needs and primitive caretaking passes without us, it is lost forever. We can be involved in other ways, but never again on this profoundly intimate level.”
—Augustus Y. Napier (20th century)