The 32m-złoty project is intended to result in documentation for works that will be carried out between 2022 and 2025, resulting in a line capable of carrying trains that are 750m long travelling at speeds of up to 120km/h (up from current 56-60km/h). Total cost of the works is expected to be around two billion złotys. Another feature of the line's modernisation will be the restoration of passenger services from Skierniewice to Pilawa, taking in long-closed stations such as the ones as Mszczonów (below, photo taken May 2016), Tarczyn and Prażmów.
Existing passenger stations at Czachówek Wschodni and Góra Kalwaria will be brought up to modern standards, while Warszówka and Osieck will once again see passenger services after a brief reintroduction (between June 2009 and June 2010). This is good news - any new cross-country rail service is to be welcomed. In total, 13 passenger stations will be reopened or upgraded.
Below: timetable from the penultimate year of passenger operations along the entire Skierniewice-Łuków line, 1999-2000. By 2002 passenger services were cut back to Pilawa-Luków. Click to enlarge - a wealth of detail here!
However, sadly Czachówek Śródkowy isn't one of them; a station with low-level and high-level (Czachówek Górny) platforms allowing passengers to change from the Warsaw-Radom line to the Skierniewice-Łuków line is not to be. It's a 2km walk from Czachówek Górny to Czachówek Wschodni (from Czachówek Górny to the old, now demolished Czachówek Śródkowy station was a mere 160m). Below: Czachówek Środkowy ('middle') station, photo taken in July 2008 from Warsaw-Radom line viaduct. Note poor condition of left-hand track.
The line bisects Mazowsze and links Skierniewice's population of 50,000, located in north-east Łodzkie province with Łuków, a town of 30,000 in north-west Lubelskie. It crosses the Vistula at Góra Kalwaria - the project envisages the bridge there (below) being double-tracked. Photo taken in July 2015.
From a strictly passenger point of view, there's little sense of investing 2 billion złotys in this line. However, I suspect that its importance is more to do with China. By rail, freight takes 12 to 14 days to get from Chongqing Logistics City to Duisberg in Germany, compared to 35 days by sea from Shenzhen to Hamburg. (Prices are dramatically different though; transporting a 40-ft container by sea to Hamburg costs $1,050; by train to Duisberg it costs $3,000. Interestingly, the fact that the trade is so one-way the cost of taking a container back to China from Duisberg is a mere $1,500). Last year, around 6,000 Chinese freight trains made the 10,000km journey to Europe, an increase of over 70% compared to 2017. Of those, around a quarter (30 a week) went to Duisberg, over the Skierniewice-Łuków line. Below: one such train, photographed last month heading west under the Warsaw-Radom line viaduct at Czachówek Górny.
If the demand for transcontinental rail freight continues to grow at this pace, the line will need an urgent upgrade - good to see that this will happen. Within six years?
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4 comments:
The cost of a basic station - platforms, footbridge and shelters - is surely rather a small part of the whole. I wonder whether the difference in average speed between stopping passenger and through freight trains is an issue? It is in the UK, where a stopping passenger train might average 30-40mph, rather slower than a 60-75mph freight which will soon catch it up. This is noticeable on the Relief Lines between Acton and Reading, for example, where this is a capacity constraint.
@WHP
There's some interesting traffic speed data for passenger and freight trains currently using this line here: https://pl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linia_kolejowa_nr_12 (Google translate)
It's a valid question as to how to set up new timetables post-2025 that would interleave passenger services with much faster (and presumably more frequent) container trains.
Have you heard of any Chinese funding for this?
And if not, how would this be a gain for Poland (having Chinese trains traversing Poland faster)? Higher Track Access Charges?
I suspect that this is part of Rail Baltica (Helsinki to Berlin) and so EU funded.
Interesting that this is not well known/an obvious possibility to informed people like you in Poland.
Reminds me of the corrupt mogul-funded anti-EU press prevalent in the UK for the last few decades.
@ Anonymous
No, I've not heard of Chinese funding for this. EU funding indeed, but not from China. I must say at this juncture that googling is far harder in Polish because of the very structure of the Polish language: the case-endings for nouns and adjectives makes it many times less likely that you'd get a precise hit with a search string. There may be articles out there (in Rynek Kolejowy), but you'd need to use phrases like 'Chiny', 'Chinom', 'chinski', 'chinskim', 'chinskimi', 'chinskie', 'chinskiemu' etc etc to get the same results as simply googling 'China' or 'Chinese'.
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