Kolej grójecka by Bogdan Pokropiński

I could not believe my eyes when I was perusing the used magazine stall on W-wa Śródmieście the other day - a mint copy of Bogdan Pokropiński's reference work, Kolej grójecka ('Grójec railway', WKŁ, 2002). This is the definitive book about the narrow-gauge railway line that once linked Warsaw to Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą via Mogielnica, Grójec, Tarczyn and Piaseczno, (which I've written about here).

For 30zł (there was receipt in the back of the book indicating an original purchase price of 63zł), I picked up a fascinating work full of photos (all b&w with just two colour plates), maps, diagrams, timetables and masses of history.

The book is a treasure trove of minutiae that will delight any Polish-reading anorak. I've learned many new facts about the line:

• Warszawa Południowy, the narrow-gauge terminal which stood on the site of the present-day Metro Wilanowska transport hub, used to be called (W-wa) Szopy, until 1943. Now, Szopy (which means 'stables' or 'sheds') is the name of parts of Ksawery and Stegny north of al. Wilanowska between Puławska to the west and al. Sikorskiego to the east. Until very recently, still an area where people lived in shacks rather than proper houses.

• The line originally ran from Pl. Unii Lubelskiej (then Pl. Keksholmski) to Piaseczno, opening in 1898. This being the Russian Empire at the time, Puławska, along which the railway ran, was called ul. Nowoaleksandryjska, as the Russians had renamed Puławy Nowa Aleksandria.Under German occupation in WW1, Puławska was renamed again Feldherrallee.

• Jasieniec used to be the southern terminal of the line between 1914 and 1915, when the line was extended by the Russian military from Grójec to Mogielnica. Under German occupation, passenger traffic was introduced onto the entire line (Warsaw-Mogielnica) after the Germans rebuilt it (the Russians destroyed everything as they fled in 1915).

• The line was further extended to Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą in 1924. This was the 'golden age' of the Grójec railway. In 1937, you could board the train at Warszawa Szopy at 07:34 and be at Nowe Miasto at 10:30, calling at Grójec (08:56) and Mogielnica (09:51) along the way. (You can still trace the line on Google Earth if you check Layers->More->Transportation->Rail in the sidebar.)

• As well as narrow-gauge steam engines, the line was served by diesel railcars before WW2, after initial proposals to electrify (!) the line were rejected. Several different types were in use to 1986, all but the very first (which served between 1924 and 1934) were Polish designed. After 1986, the 1,000mm-gauge line was equipped with Romanian built diesel locos, coaches and railcars.

• There used to be a 4.5km branch line off the main Nowe Miasto-Piaseczno section that ran from Grójec to Jasieniec. It was closed to traffic in 1966 and the tracks were lifted in February 1970. The trained eye can easily spot stretches of the track bed in the fields between the south-eastern corner of Grójec, Krobów and Jasieniec.

• The line probably would have been closed much earlier than was the case had it not been for the intervention of the Polish military. With the opening of a jet-fighter training base at Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą in 1954, a spur was built from the line to the airfield, and a Ministry of Defence siding built at Piaseczno for transferring aviation fuel into cisterns to be taken down to Nowe Miasto.

As my father told me over the summer, this railway line played an important in his family's survival through the German occupation of Warsaw after his father died. His mother, who hailed from Mogielnica originally, would travel out by train to buy meat from local farmers; she'd sell half and feed herself and her three boys with the other half.

Bogdan Pokropiński's book is essential reference for anyone interested in Warsaw's railway history. It's available online from the WKŁ website for 45zł. And if you're interested in the line, it's worth popping down next summer for a weekend trip from Piaseczno to Tarczyn and back - or to cycle alongside the track on a bike, when you're sure there's no train due.

This time two years ago:
PIS, thinking wishfully about the village

This time four years ago:
An unseasonably warm autumn in Warsaw

This time five years ago:
Shedding light on an unused road

This time six years ago:
S2-S79 Elka from the air 

This time seven years ago:
Fish and chips in Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Spirit of place - anomalous familiarity moments 

Genealogy

A huge, huge thanks to Janusz for taking the trouble to find out more about my family, from the side of my father's mother, Stefania Dembińska, nee Witkowska. As I wrote, she originally hailed from Mogielnica; he mother's name was Teodora; and my father recalls meeting her cousin before the war, whose surname was Sepczyński. From these three pieces of information, Janusz has been able to track down my father's family back a further two generations.

Below: grave of my father's mother and grandmother, both buried in Bródno cemetery, Warsaw. Until now, my father had very few clues as to what came before.

Teodora Sepczyńska was born in 1865, the daughter of Piotr Dominik Sepczyński, aged 35, an illiterate cobbler of Mogielnica, and Franciszka, nee Świderska, aged 31. [Moni noticed a fair number of graves bearing the name Świderski in Mogielnica, so they are related to us as well!] Piotr and Franciszka had eight children, Teodora was the fifth.

Piotr and Franciszka were wed in Mogielnica in February 1852, when Piotr was 21 and Franciszka was 18. Piotr's parents, Michał and Rozalia, were by dead by the time he married. Franciszka's father, Andrzej Świderski, was unable to make the wedding for the same reason. Franciszka's mother, also Franciszka, nee Dawicka, was from Budy Biejkowskie, a village on the banks of the Pilica (which I visited, not knowing about a family connection, in May 2015)

My grandmother's birth certificate was in Russian; smotret w knigu widiet figu, so I can't tell you what was going on there. The Russian Empire had not forced itself upon the records of its Polish subjects in 1865 or 1852, but by the time my grandmother was born, Russian had become the official language for birth records.

Janusz also provided me with a link to my paternal grandparents' wedding certificate from 1920. An interesting detail emerges; my grandfather's address is given as ul. Łucka one thousand one hundred and fifty five - an impossibility, given that Łucka then and now only has buildings numbered from one to thirty-something. Curiously, this same address (ul. Łucka 1155) also features on the notarised copy of my father's birth certificate issued after the war. Initially, I assumed this was a mistake made by a sloppy communist-era clerk, but it now seems that the mistake had been made back in 1920.

This is all fascinating stuff, and thanks to the tools that Janusz has used, I will be able to do more genealogical digging. The fact that these records of our ancestors are available, scanned and digitised and available online, is a huge testament to the organisation powers and effort of the Catholic Church, the Polish state and an army of enthusiasts. Without our history, we are no one.

This time last year:
My father revisits his battleground

This time three years ago:
Over the hill at Harrow

This time four years ago:
Behold and See - the Miracle of Lublin - Pt 1.

This time six years ago:
Quiet afternoon in the bazaar

This time seven years ago:
The politics of the symbol

Going back to the roots - journey to Mogielnica

My father's mother, Stefania Dembińska née Witkowska, came from Mogielnica, a small town 70km south-west from Warsaw. She met my grandfather Tomasz Dembiński after the First World War. My father has never been to Mogielnica, so I thought it would be a good idea to take him there, along with Moni, to trace our family's rural roots. Below: the neo-Gothic church of St. Florian.

Mogielnica I've visited a few times, a small country town of 2,500 inhabitants. My father's mother, Stefania (1893-1975) came from around here, but he has few details. He said that until the end of WW1, they had a farm which they had to sell at a low price on account of the economy. We came to the cemetery to look for traces of family history.

We find three graves bearing the surname 'Witkowski'. My father recollects having family across the river in Warsaw, visiting them in Grochów. Although his mother was an only child, she had cousins, also originally from Mogielnica, with the surname Sepczyński. It is highly likely that Stefania Witkowska's mother Teodora, who died in 1943 and is buried along with Stefania in Warsaw's Bródno cemetery, was from the Sepczyński family [indeed this was later confirmed, see comments below]. Moni scouts on ahead and finds a grave of the Sepczyński family, below.

Below: we find a few more graves of the Witkowski and Sepczyński families. The oldest contains the body of Ignacy Sepczyński, born 1805, died 1885. His wife Florentyna, 22 years his junior, died in 1917. Both reached the age of 80.

If these are indeed my father's grandmother's grandparents, it would mean that I can trace my roots back to 1805. Some genealogical digging is required!

The trip answered another question for my father. After his father's death in 1941, his mother would make trips back to Mogielnica to buy food, which she'd smuggle back into occupied Warsaw. Some she'd sell on, the rest would feed the family. How did she manage to do that, wondered my father, given the distance between Warsaw and Mogielnica? A horse-drawn wagon would take forever...

The answer was - narrow-gauge railway. Moni found the station that served Mogielnica, to the north of the town, from 1917 to 1988. The line, which ran through Grójec and Tarczyn, terminated at what is now Metro Wilanowska bus terminal, then Dworzec Południowy.

After our visit to the cemetery, we had lunch at Mogielanka, the town's only restaurant, where I paid 52 złotys (£11.17) for: cold beer, half-litre, two sparkling mineral waters, two soups and three massive main courses. My father's portion was so large, half of it served as his supper back home!

This time last year:
My father's walk around Jeziorki

This time three years ago:
What's the Polish for 'sustainability'?

This time five years ago:
Last chance to see Amber Gold's billboards in Warsaw

This time six years ago:
The Twilight Rambler

Apple time down south of Warsaw

When the sun shines like this in October, one must leave town and take a look at the orchards that stretch in a wide, deep, belt centred on the town of Grójec. Of all apples grown in Poland (and that's a lot), 35% come from around Grójec. They are red, large, sweet, acidic, high in antioxidants and very tasty. The combination of warm summers and early frosts (this morning it was -1C) creates an apple that is far superior in taste to those from further south in Europe.

As you travel around the region, you see orchards everywhere. The dwarf trees are grown to ensure easy pickings; farmers use special narrow tractors that can work their way up and down the rows.

These photos were taken many kilometres apart, yet the landscape is the same; so many orchards, so many trees, so many apples. (Meanwhile our own apple tree at home in Jeziorki has borne no fruit - not a single apple - this year, after a bumper summer in 2014).

All over southern Mazowsze there are posters for labour agencies advertising Ukrainian workers for hire for seasonal fruit-picking. These are crucial days - the weather will turn nasty in coming days. Sleet is forecast for Tuesday.

Below: Leżne, picking is under way, an apple train awaits the freshly picked fruit. These apple trains, built narrow to the width of the space between the rows of trees, are everywhere.

Below: Łychów, punkt skupu ('purchase point'). These are dotted around the region, attracting trains of containers full of apples. There are weighbridges, fork-lift trucks, and heavy-goods trailers that will take the apples to food-processing factories.

Below: Mogielnica, some 20km south-west of Grójec. An empty apple train heading back from the punkt skupu. Current prices are surprisingly strong despite the Russian embargo, with 'industrial apples' (jabłko przemysłowe) fetching around 50 grosze (9p) per kilo, and top-quality eating apples, sorted and properly handled, at 90 grosze (16p) per kilo. Then there's the wholesaler's and retailer's mark-up, and we consumers end up paying around 1.50 złotys - 2.50 złotys a kilo of eating apples in the shops. Wonderful juice-in-a-box (five kilo of industrial apple makes three litres of juice) costs around 12 złotys retail for a three-litre box.

Below: Mogielnica. A once-a-year payday has its costs.

This time last year:
Poland gets anglicised as Britain gets polonised

This time two years ago:
Ale, architecture and city politics

This time three years ago:
The pros and cons of roadside acoustic screens

This time four years ago:
Moaning about trains again

This time five years ago:
Warsaw streets - Dolna, Polna, Rolna, Smolna, Wolna. Lost?

This time seven years ago:
Ditches, landscapes, autumn

This time eight years ago:
Golden autumn in Łazienki park

A ride across rural Poland

May Day Bank Holiday. The Feast of the Working Man. P'yervomaysk. My plan for the day was ambitious; to get as far as I could to Kraks by bicycle and local train, arriving in time for the Polandian blogmeet. Lots of preparation and planning, and a conscious decision not to take an SLR camera; all photos below taken on my Nokia N95 mobile phone.

I left home at daybreak just before five. The route was planned as follows - home - Piaseczno - Grójec - Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą - Końskie - Jędrzejów. At Jędrzejów, I would pick up the all-stations to Kraków service, getting me in to Kraks by quarter to six in the evening.

The air smells quite different at 5am on a spring or summer day; a beautiful fresh smell that's all but gone by 7am. There's no one about other than the occasional bakery van, the bird song pervades one's consciousness. This is the beauty of cycling. On foot, you're covering ground slowly. In a car you are insulated from the outside world by laminated glass and the sound of the engine, and the landscape is flashing by to fast for you to acquire a more reflective relationship with it. On a bike you are moving three times faster than walking pace, three times slower than by car.

Once clear of Piaseczno and the southern edge of the Warsaw agglomeration, the landscape along the 722 to Grójec is dominated by orchards. If Kent is the Garden of England, then Grójec and the surrounding district is Poland's equivalent. At this time of year, the apple and cherry trees are all in bloom. Beyond Grójec, I pick up the 728, which leads all the way down to Jędrzejów. Here there's still orchard and blossom, but the landscape becomes more undulating. I pass Mogielnica, where my paternal grandmother was born. There is a familiarity of klimat; slight hilliness, orchards, masses of blossom against a darkening sky.

Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą: Holdsworth Triath Elan and Lim-5

Above: 8:30 am. Three and half hours/75km into the journey, Nowe Miasto nad Pilicą, which used to be home to an airbase during the Cold War. [There's still lots of this kind of post-Soviet empire stuff all over Poland. The Lim-5 and Lim-6 were Polish licence-built versions of the MiG-17 fighter / fighter-bomber. Here's a list of all existing Lim-5s, -6s and MiG-17s gracing Poland's public spaces.]

Crossing the Pilica river, the landscape changes, it's flatter, the orchards give way to arable farms, the klimat is 1950s America. I'm in my stride. The road surface is good, slight tailwind, bike working perfectly in harmony with my legs, nicely run in. A while more and I have a break at a petrol station and a light breakfast. As I rested and ate, I observed across the road, a mother (in her 60s) and her son (mid-30s) planting potatoes. He was seated on a tractor and yelling furiously at her. She was bent double over the soil, patiently putting up with it all, as she'd done for a lifetime. This scene went on for several minutes before he finally roared off on his tractor.

Soon after setting off, some five hours after leaving home, it starts to rain. Just spotting at first, it gets more and more intense. There is no alternative but to carry on; there was still 50km to Końskie. When the rain got really heavy, I would shelter for a while. One such stop was in the village of Gowarczów. Below: the hardware store, where you can buy building materials, plumbing and electrical supplies, carpet beaters, artificial roses and bicycle parts.

11:45 am. A guy at the bus shelter is breakfasting on garlicky sausage meat. He reeks of alcohol fumes after a hard night's drinking. Across the street, a group of four men are working out how to buy the alcohol they needed to get them through the day. A tetchy discussion; hands diving into pockets in search of loose change and some tough negotiations ended with their leader announcing in a firm tone: Jest wódka. ('There is vodka').

By the time I'd reached Końskie (pop. 20,000 and falling) just after midday, I'd had enough of the weather; soaked to the skin, my shoes full of water that had wicked down through my sodden socks. Worst of all, the pot-holes in the road were brim-full of rain so as to become invisible. After a couple of metabolism-jarring jolts, I decided it was not worth carrying on, and so I put Plan B into operation.

Rather than heading south for Jędrzejów (another 67km), I turned off towards Końskie's PKS bus station. Making my way there across the town's park, I observed in an archway, three extremely inebriated men manhandling a fourth whose legs were giving way beneath him and who was on the point of passing out despite their aggressive language and actions.

Rural and Small Town Poland is so unlike the Big City Poland so well known to us urban sophisticates as to be quite another country. Different people, different mind-sets and values and life-goals. I shall pursue this thread tomorrow, Poland's National Day.

Above: Końskie's former rail and bus station, now just a bus station. The last train ran from here to Radom on 1 October 2009. You may think the above photo is dull, lacking in interest or spirit of place, in which case my intention to faithfully replicate my emotional response to being here was successful.

Outside this building I picked up a bus for Kielce and the same train I would have caught at Jędrzejów. [Tip for cyclists: Take both wheels off bike, secure them to frame, and there's no problem with getting it into a bus's baggage hold.] 11 zlotys got me to Kielce. From there I bought a ticket to Kraków, which, with the bike, came to a shocking 36.70 zlotys. It was only when I was on the train did the conductor explain to me that the woman in the booking office had mistakenly sold me two singles (one full price, one with excursion discount) to Kraków plus bicycle. The conductor then found a ticketless traveller who boarded the train at a rural halt along the line; rather than sell him a new full-price ticket, he introduced us to one another and passed on his fare (14.70 zlotys, with excursion discount) directly to me! Now there's client-focused thinking - something I completely didn't expect.

And so between home and Końskie I covered 135km, around half the distance between Warsaw and Kraków. I felt no unpleasant side effects (maybe I'd have had aching legs and sore knees had I pressed on to Jędrzejów). On the train I had a half-litre of Coke; on reaching my destination, (the restaurant Nostalgia on ul. Karmelicka 10, Kraków), I downed four large peevoes. Only then, after drinking two and half litres - nearly five pints - of fluid - did I need to go to the toilet - which shows how dehydrated the body becomes as a result of long-distance cycling.

Below: a screenshot showing the route from Warsaw's southern edge to Końskie. Roughly halfway to Kraków. Click to enlarge.