Yesterday's post focused on the Air Force Museum in Dęblin; today's will be a reflection on my railway journey there and back via Radom.
Now, until five years ago, Radom had but one railway station, named simply Radom. Since then, the city has been sprouting stations, jak grzyby po deszczu. Coming into Radom from Warsaw, the Koleje Mazowieckie local service now stops at Radom Stara Wola, Radom Północny, Radom Gołębiów and Radom Wschodni before finally arriving at Radom's main station, which had to be renamed Radom Główny in 2021.
The newest of the new stations, Radom Wschodni, opened in June 2025. And this (below) is my first visit. More about this station later.
Dęblin railway station owes its existence and historical importance to the intersection of two major railways built under the Russian imperial administration in the late 19th century. Dęblin was known in Tsarist times as Ivangorod (Ивангород). And here, the Russians built a massive fortress guarding the confluence of the Vistula and Wieprz rivers.
The station became a junction of the Vistula Railway (Kolej Nadwiślańska, opened in 1877); this line ran along the right bank of the Vistula, linking the Prussian border at Mława with Warsaw, Ivangorod, Lublin, and Kovel, in present-day Ukraine. It connected the frontline fortresses of Modlin, Warsaw Citadel and Ivangorod (Dęblin) to the Tsarist heartlands. The first line to reach Dęblin did so a year earlier, in 1876, being a spur off the main Warsaw-Moscow railway. This ran south-west from Brest-Litovsk to Łuków and then onto Dęblin. Joining this line at Dęblin was the Ivangorod–Dąbrowa Railway (Kolej Iwanogrodzko-Dąbrowska, opened in 1885); it was built to get Silesian coal to Russia. Starting at Dęblin, it bridged the Vistula and traversed the Świętokrzyskie hills before reaching the Austro-Hungarian frontier at Dąbrowa.
Today the old Kolej Nadwiślańska is Linia Kolejowa (LK) 7, linking Warsaw to the Ukrainian border at Dorohusk, while the old Kolej Iwanogrodzo-Dąbrowska, connecting Silesia via Dęblin and onto Łuków and the Belarusian border at Terespol is LK 26. So that's that sorted. Now, let's have a little look at the stretch of LK 26 between Radom and Dęblin...
Below: Garbatka Letnisko station, as the name implies, a summer-holiday resort town. Jedlnia Letnisko, closer to Radom is another such town. Both kick-started their resort-status careers in the 1920s, the result of the railway line bringing tourists from nearby Radom and Dęblin to enjoy the Puszcza Kozienicka forest that lay to the north of the tracks.
Below: Zajezierze koło Dęblina station. This pic, snapped from the window of my eastbound train, has the appearance of a vintage hand-coloured black & white photograph. The station has recently been remonted, but, sadly, the clock has already broken (it's really 09:56).
Below: crossing the Vistula. The current steel girder structure is the third railway bridge here, the first being blown up during the First World War and the second during the Second World War. Such is Poland's history.
Below: railway junction south of Dęblin, a freight train, having bypassed the passenger station, makes its way onto the LK 26 before crossing the Vistula.
Below: mounted on a plinth outside Dęblin station, a narrow-gauge Ryś locomotive with tender (class T49). Built between 1946 and 1950, these were a development of the German Henschel Riesa Kriegsdampflok, a standardised narrow-gauge locomotive built in large numbers between 1936 and 1944 for military field railways and construction sites.
Below: around Dęblin's main station building (destroyed during the First World War) stand a number of houses built for the Tsar's railway workers. This one survived.
Below: the south-east water tower, built during the German occupation, and hit by Soviet shells in 1944 (holes visible near the top). In use today as a communications tower for mobile telephony.
Below: Back at Radom Wschodni. Note the escalators, the signs for the airport, and the bus stop on the viaduct from which one can take bus to said airport. In the distance to the left (click to enlarge image), the LK 26 veers off from the LK 8, the main Warsaw-Radom-Kielce-Kraków line. The new station meant that I could change trains here from the one coming from Dęblin to the one heading north to Chynów, rather than going in one stop to Radom Główny to back track via Radom Wschodni again.
It is good that Radom, a city the size of Portsmouth or Newcastle-on-Tyne, has experienced a boom in new stations in the past five years; Radom Południowy and Radom Potkanów (both to the south of the city) complete the set. And finally, a reminder that Radom Główny station, opened as Radom in 1885, was designed by the magnificently named
Adolf Schimmelpfennig.
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1 comment:
The tiny Radom with 5 railway stations is catching up with my hometown of Gold Coast (pop.630k+), which only recently got its 7th station.
Regarding bridges being blown up in Poland during wars: in Brisbane bridges and walkways get similarly periodically destroyed by floods, or to make room for more cars.
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