Most significantly, the main Warsaw to Kraków service today goes along the Centralna Magistrala Kolejowa (Central Trunk Line), from south of Grodzisk Maz. to Psary, bypassing Radom and Kielce. From Psary, the CMK continues to Katowice via Zawiercie, while another goes south-east to Kraków via Tunel. But if you did want to take a train from W-wa Zachodnia to Kraks via Radom and Kielce, the journey today would take 5h 01m, just 32 minutes less than in 1939, which of course would have been steam-hauled.W-wa Jeziorki did not exist in those days, neither did any other station between Okęcie and Piaseczno. There were, you will notice, stations called Lotnisko and Wyczółki. My guess is that Lotnisko ('airport') is roughly where today's W-wa Żwirki i Wigury station is, though Wyczółki...
Notice too, the lack of a station at Czachówek. That station was built when the Skierniewice-Łuków line was built after the war.
W-wa Zachodnia to Radom by express train (pospieszny)used to take one hour and 29 minutes non-stop. Today's pospieszny takes anywhere between 1h 46m and 1h 55m, although it does stop at W-wa Służewiec, Piaseczno and Warka along the way.
UPDATE: A big thanks to Michał Jankowski for this link to an excellent pre-war map of Warsaw and its southern suburbs, found here, usefully overlaid with modern roads and rails here. As he points out, the tracks ran further south than they do today, which is apparent on the maps. He also says that the fastest pre-war trains between Warsaw and Radom could do the journey in 1h 14m with a stop at Warka. More than half an hour faster than today!
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3 comments:
worth reading the history of the line on Kolejowe Mazowsze. The site is great and to boot a rail freak who runs it good six years younger than me!
trunk line? I thought main line is English equivalent of magistrala kolejowa.
The CMK is like a backbone; it was built not to have stations on it. I used the word 'trunk' to differentiate it from run-of-the-mill main lines, which, let's face it, the Warsaw to Radom line is.
See my update for more pre-war history of the line, linked to maps.
The first map is excellent. It's only a great pity that people keep so many old photos or maps in their family archives and don't want to share it with the world (most people don't care actually). It's very hard to find such documents (I couldn't find any photos of Nowa Iwiczna from before 2000 to satisfy my curiosity how my neighbourhood looked before - not a comfort the residents of Ursynów have, thanks to the Ursynow.org site).
I strolled today between the graves of German settlers who came to SI, NI and Mysiadło 200 years ago. Probably most of their descendants moved to Germany after WW2, those who stayed here are fully polonised and totally unaware of their parentage.
And about the map - look at the layout of roads in our neighbourhood. Today's ul. Karczunkowska, ul. Sarabandy and even ul. Trombity are on the map. It seems my street also existed at that time. Quite puzzling is how the today's siding to Siekierki (then a siding to a paper factory in Mirków) swings off the Radom line. The rail line along ul. Puławska was scrapped in the early 1970, more or less at the same time the tracks between Piaseczno and Konstancin were removed in the same decade. The line from Warsaw branched off into the centre of Piaseczno. The last sign of the line which reminded of its existence was a shelter of a train stop next to ul. Wojska Polskiego in Piaseczno (BTW, next to the plane which can be found in one of the latest posts on Piaseczno fotoblog). The stop shelter was pulled down and probably sold for scrap because inhabitants of local buildings needed a makeshift car park. I remember the plane - it used to be on that playground until around 1995. Then it also disappeared.
I'll have to root out for some photos in my family photo albums, take them and the camera and snap exactly the same places to see how the suburban landscape changes.
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