My own Polish Adlestrop

Or - where my Krakow-bound express train stopped Unwontedly. This is Włoszczowa Północna, like Adlestrop, in the middle of nowhere. But while Adlestrop is famous for the eponymously-named station in Edward Thomas's quintessentially English poem, Włoszczowa Płn is famous for being the station opened at a cost of 1.2 million zlotys by Polish politician Przemysław Edgar "Gosiu" Gosiewski to serve his constituency. It is the only passenger station on the CMK main line from Warsaw to the south.

It usually serves a handful of Włoszczowites headed for Kraków and an even smaller number of Varsovians eager for an early morning taste of small-town Poland. The cost to the rest of us is that this train, the Ernest Malinowski, which back in 2005 used to take 2 hrs 40 mins to get from Warszawa Centralna to Kraków Głowny, now takes 2hrs and 55 mins. Train-loads of people have had 15 minutes of their lives stolen for the sake of pork-barrel politics. I'm glad to report that Mr Gosiu is no longer in power (having enjoyed his few minutes in the sun as Deputy Prime Minister of the Republic of Poland).

Our train this morning broke down at Włoszczowa, and while it was being fixed, we waited here, in the fog, for it to be mended. It was, but we arrived 45 minutes late in Krakow.

Above: The conductor waits for the signal to depart. The platform is empty. As ever.

This time last year:
Here come the planes