Weeding the tracks / rail photo update

What's this I see coming down the line towards Chynów station? I'm waiting for a train to town (from the other direction); no passenger service is scheduled on the southbound line... I get my camera and zoom in. Interesting. It crosses the points from the 'down' line, across the 'up' line, and finally ends up on the passing loop line by Platform 3.

Below: the train pulls into the side platform. Just five wagons long, three of which are cisterns...

I have ten minutes before my train to town is due; time enough to catch a snap of the entire rake or formation from the footpath east of the station.

Let's take a look at one of the cisterns...

The shunting engine at the head of the train is uncoupled and off it goes on its own...

Time to get back to the platform to catch my train to town. On my return from Warsaw, I look it up and find out what this is... It is a CHOT train (Chemiczna Odchwaszczarka Torów CHOT-50A, or chemical track weeder). The train consists of a diesel locomotive, three cisterns and a crew wagon and a shunter at the other end. By the time I returned from Warsaw four hours later, the weedkiller train had moved on, presumably its job done. 

Meanwhile, into town. Below: the tram/train interchange at W-wa Wola, completed last year. An SKM train from Piaseczno to Zegrze Południowe approach W-wa Wola station overhead. All well and good in terms of connections here and at W-wa Młynów one stop further on – but will trains from the Radom line finally return to the city centre? 

There's something about the yellow-and-red livery of Warsaw trams against a blue sky that appeals to my sense of aesthetics. Below: two trams passing at Plac Zbawiciela.

In that post from April 2024, I asked rhetorically whether it will be eight months or a year and eight months until the tunnel for passengers under W-wa Zachodnia is finally ready. Well, it wasn't the former. Will it be ready in another four months? Touch and go, I think... In the meanwhile, crossing from Platform 1 (WKD) to Platform 9 (for the Radom line) still necessitates walking up and down many flights of steps or taking a 700 metre-long step-free diversion. Watching elderly folk lugging their suitcases up the steps makes me wonder just how bothered are the infrastructure operators, contractors and subcontractors to get the job finished quickly, or how aware they are of the massive inconvenience of their tardiness. Below: view from the top of the steps from the footbridge looking down at one of the bus stops on the north side of the station.

Below: I'm looking down on W-wa Zachodnia, when I should be looking up at it from the glass-ceilinged tunnel

.

Below: taken one evening last week, I poke my lens through the barrier and down towards the unopened tunnel. It will make changing platforms at W-wa Zachodnia far easier. But then I've seen precious little progress here since the last great leap forward in October. Over the intervening ten months, all that's happened is that a) you can now get an escalator up to platform 9 and b) platform 9 has working digital display panels with real-time information.

Below: back to Chynów, and the spectacle of the Kraków-bound InterCity express train overtaking the Radom-bound local Koleje Mazowieckie service on the wrong track. This can happen at quarter to most hours if the express is running a few minutes late.

Below: a coupled-pair of ET41 locos hauls a coal train through Chynów bound for Siekierki power station. The train goes into the sidings south of W-wa Okęcie station; from there it is diesel-hauled to Konstancin-Jeziorna sidings, and from there on to Siekierki.

This time two years ago:
Dave: An Emissary

This time three years ago:
Fifty years with Virginia Plain

This time four years ago:
The Curve (and one's place on it)

This time six years ago:
Fifty years on, my last kolonia

This time 12 years ago:
Grodzisk Mazowiecki's pretty station

This time 13 years ago:
Exorcism outside the President's Palace

This time 14 years ago:
The raging footsoldier - a story about anger

This time 15 years ago:
Graffiti and street art