Polish State Railways - History

History

Gaining independence on 11 November 1918 allowed Poland to reclaim the former Russian and Austrian sectors from military railways. The Railway Department in the Ministry of Communication was created and the Polish railways were officially named Polskie Koleje Państwowe.

In December 1918, the Great Poland Uprising started. The rebels took over the former Prussian sector of railways. One year later, the fights for Lwów were over and the former Austrian railway directorate was taken over by Poland. Taking over the railways from Prussians lasted until 1921.

After the victory over the Red Army in the Polish-Bolshevik War (1920), a great deal of damage in railway structure was discovered on the route along which the communists were retreating. At the same time, the tense relations with Lithuania led the railways around Wilno and Minsk to a partial disintegration and stagnation. The Libau-Romny railroad was not recovered.

Polish railways administration finally took over the railways in Upper Silesia in 1922. That same year, a decision was made to divide railways in Poland into nine administrative districts.

An economic crisis in 1930s forced the state to cut back its budget for railway investment. Profit decreased by 50% compared to 1929. The next year, over 23,000 PKP employees had been dismissed and protests and strikes causes authorities to try to find a solution. The end of the crisis and an increase of cargo transport and income came in 1937.

On 1 September 1939, the railwaymen of Szymankowo stopped a German armoured train before its arrival on the bridge over the Vistula River and the Polish soldiers reattached the explosive charges diconnected by the German dive bombers and blew up the bridge. The railwaymen and some of their innocent family members were excuted by the Germans the same day, 1SEP1939. After the Soviet invasion of eastern Poland on 17 September 1939, most Polish rolling stock fell into Soviet hands.

The Polish railways in Silesia, Wielkopolska and Pomorze were adopted by German railways Deutsche Reichsbahn on 25 September.

Until the last moment before the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, cargo trains transported goods from the Soviet Union to Germany. The beginning of German attacks on the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941 resulted in the possession of railway and rolling stock by the Ostbahn and the possession of PKP rolling stock with broad gauge track and reconstruction to standard gauge. The beginning of organized sabotage by the Polish resistance movement on railways took place about the same time.

In 1942, production of simple military-use DR Kriegslok BR52 (PKP class Ty2) steam locomotives, began in Poznań and Chrzanów; the steam boilers for these locomotives were produced in Sosnowiec.

The Warsaw Uprising caused widespread damage of Warsaw rolling stock, network and electric traction; both bridges over the Vistula River and the underground tunnel on the Warsaw Cross-City Line were destroyed.

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.

During the mid-to-late communist era, the state of the Polish railways deteriorated to a large extent. Once a large and profitable network, the systemic lack of funding and failure to acquire new rolling stock left PKP far behind the railway operators of Western Europe in terms of technical advances and passenger comfort. In addition to this, the poor state of many rail lines throughout the country led to ever-increasing journey times for passengers, and resultantly left the railways far less able to compete with intercity bus and air services. During the entire communist period only one major infrastructural project relating to the railways was completed. This, the Central Trunk Line, was a prestige project completed in 1976 and intended mainly for the use of passenger services, which for the first time allowed passengers to travel in comfort and at relatively high speed from Kraków, Katowice, and other cities of the Silesian and Lesser Poland conurbations, to Warsaw. However, despite the successful completion of the section from southern to central Poland, the planned extension to Gdańsk and the country's Baltic ports was never realised, and thus significantly curtailed both the usefulness and potential of the line.

Since Poland's return to liberal democracy in the early 1990s, the Polish State Railways have faced ever increasing competition from private automotive transport and the country's rapidly expanding network of motorways and express roads. However, ever decreasing journey times, better schedules which allow for well-coordinated connections, the rise of private operators and large-scale investment in infrastructure as well as new rolling stock is slowly enticing people back onto the railways.