Odolany – Warsaw's railway reserve

I have posted a few times about the tangle of tracks to the north-east of Warsaw West (W-wa Zachodnia) station; much of this area has been cleaned up. [See here from 2013, and  here from 2014]

But north-west of W-wa Zachodnia, in the neighbourhood of Odolany, part of the district of Wola, there's an enormous network of railway sidings, of which over 30 hectares are entirely disused. This area is not closed off; footpaths criss-cross the area, which lies nearer to the centre of Warsaw than neighbourhoods like Stegny or Sadyba – one would think prime development land for residential estates.

The klimat reminds me of that which permeates Andrei Tarkovsky's magnificently atmospheric 1979 film Stalker; post-industrial abandonment, secrets, decay. Below: a typical scene within the Zone; a multiplicity of abandoned tracks, on rotting wooden sleepers, often with trees growing between them. 

Left: trees and bushes growing ever denser through and around the abandoned track. One has to ask why PKP PLK S.A., the railway infrastructure operator, hasn't lifted the rails for recycling and turned the area over into parkland, or to rewild it as a nature sanctuary. Below: an abandoned signal box or points-keeper's hut. In the distance, further rows of disused track.

Left: three or more pairs of parallel rows of abandoned tracks, trees growing between the rails. In the distance, some blue buildings are just about visible between the branches and leaves... 

Below: pushing through the undergrowth, I emerge onto what are live tracks; rails polished silver through use, with overhead gantries providing power to electric engines that use this line. This turns out to be the maintenance depot for freight locomotives.

I turn around and head back into the undergrowth, this time moving northwestward, across several disused tracks. Emerging from the bushes on the other side, I catch the following astonishing sight. It looks like some sort of grain elevator... 

I get up closer. This (I later learn) is the former coaling station for steam engines. The 42m-high coal tower itself is one of four such surviving structures in Poland (the UK has only one left).

Below: in its shadow to its east stands a building that I cannot figure out; why the canopy? Why the low and short platform? Why here? Looks like a waiting room at a passenger station from the 1960s. Odd.

The coaling tower itself was built between 1948 and 1951 – and here's a surprise – from precast concrete elements donated to Poland by the US government, delivered by sea as part of the technical assistance post-WW2. This, at the height of Stalinism.

Left: the coaling tower seen from the west. The conveyors that raised coal to the top of the tower were removed when it was decommissioned in the early 1990s. It stood abandoned, until a group of preservationists persuaded the voivodship heritage administrator of its historical significance, earning it listed-building status in February 2024.

On either side of the lines on which the coaling tower stands are aggregate storage facilities (Budokrusz to the north, Warbud to the south). Both are served by trains, delivering construction materials to the busy sites. Walking along the line towards to the coaling tower, I could hear the non-stop sound of diggers loading and unloading aggregate.

As I proceeded in a westerly direction, the disused tracks started to converge with live tracks leading from the aggregate sites and the freight-loco maintenance sheds. Below: the rails are no longer covered with rust; signals show that the track is indeed live (there was a Freightliner PL Class 66 locomotive manoeuvring slowly off to my left). Time to return to the urban hubbub of rush-hour Warsaw. 

Below: a series of bridges carry the freight lines over ulica Dżwigowa (lit. 'Crane Street' – crane as in machine to move materials). To my right are the busy sidings of Warszawa Główna Towarowa, Warsaw's main freight station. At this stage, I leave the rails and return to the street for a short walk to W-wa Włochy station and my train to Ożarów Mazowiecki, for an evening business event.

I must point out that nowhere along my journey did I pass any 'entry prohibited' sign, or cross any fence. Around Warsaw West station, the sidings are properly enclosed behind wire fences; not so further east.

If you want to watch Stalker, for free, with English subtitles, it's here. Set aside three hours. If you've not seen it, do. It's worth it.

This time last year:

The Thought Inside: get it out!

This time three years ago:
Spring magic 

This time seven years ago:
Building work almost done on the działka

This time eight year:
Karczunkowska's closed again

This time nine years ago:
Little suitcase in the attic
[It's still at Schindler's Factory in Kraków for the year-long Children of War exhibition there]

This time ten years ago:
What I read each week.

This time 12 years ago:
Defending Poland, contributing to NATO

This time 14 years ago:
Balloon over Warsaw 

This time 16 years ago:
Happiness, Polish-style

This time 19 years ago:
London (to which I'm not planning to return)

North-east of Warsaw West

Cross the tracks from the passenger platforms at Warszawa Zachodnia (the Clapham Junction of the East, no longer Poland's Worst Railway Station since proper signage was installed last year), and enter another world. Away from the hurly-burly, the mad rush to catch the 17:08 to Łódź Kaliska, you can step into an abandoned space that resonates with the atmosphere of the Zone in Tarkovsky's magical film Stalker. Below: if you've seen the film, all that's needed is a loudspeaker blaring out Beethoven or the Marseillaise.

Below: further on down the track, a rake of wooden-bodied wagons for railway workers to sleep in, complete with chimneys and TV aerials.

Moving forward, towards the city centre. Beyond the trees to the left, the main railway lines between W-wa Zachodnia station and Dworzec Centralny (or 'Shentroo Wailway Shtation' as its called in English on Warsaw's buses and trams). But here, around where I'm standing, empty tracks unused real estate all the way to ul. Towarowa.

As Eddie points out, looking at the 1935 map of Warsaw on Google Earth, based on aerial photos taken by the Polish military, this area is all blacked out for security reasons. This is proof that there's no 'previous title' to this land as there is in much of the capital. Bierut's Decree (dekret Bieruta, the appropriation of private land in Warsaw by the communist state in 1946) ensures that to this day developers can never be sure that there may be a claim against their ownership of the land. According to Wikipedia, Warsaw paid out over 415 million złotys in 2011 and 2012 to recompense the heirs of the former owners who had their property seized, and 8,000 court cases are currently underway in this regard.

So PKP PLK S.A., the administrator of this land, is sitting on one huge parcel of real estate just to the west of the very centre of Warsaw, land that if sold, could make a colossal difference to the financial standing of Poland's railways as they try to shape up for privatisation. But then again, there's so much EU money sloshing around, which PKP is also failing to use, that even if this land were to be sold and put to better use, the money wouldn't be utilised effectively.

Left: on the horizon, the Palace of Culture, flanked by Daniel Liebeskind's Złota 44 to its left, and further off to the right, the Marriott Hotel. This wasteland would once have been the sidings that led up to Warszawa Głowna Towarowa, the goods station. All that's left of it today is the Post Office's siding, accessible from the main line via another track. Warszawa Główna Osobowa, closed as a station in 1997, now serves as Poland's rather forlorn national railway museum. Even if this is left in situ, there is still land a-plenty that can be redeveloped.

I'm sure there are readers who can give some more details as to the current status of the railway museum and this whole area. It is very unusual to see so much neglected land in a capital city lying idle for so long; the atmosphere is unique - an part of Warsaw worth visiting if you're into this klimat of abandonment.

Below: clubhouse of Steel Roses MC, Bar Motocyklowy on ul. Kolejowa. On a quiet Sunday evening, only one bike (a lovely '60s retro-styled cafe racer) parked outside.

This time last year:
Draining Jeziorki - the beginning of major local works

This time two years ago:
Late summer/early autumn moods

This time three years ago:
Battle of Britain, 70 years on

This time four years ago:
Why I don't watch Polish television

This time five years ago:
Warsaw - a city of car crashes
[five years on - little's changed]

This time six years ago:
My favourite tree

A post about a book about a film about a journey to a room

My brother, who saw Tarkovsky's Stalker when it first came out back in the 1980s, recommended that after I watched the film myself (finally!) I should read Geoff Dyer's book about the film, Zona. So when in London last month, I bought the book, and read it - twice.

If a book grabs me particularly, if it be so replete with insight and memorable quotes, I'll read it a second time as soon as I finished it, pencil in hand. The last time I re-read a book this way was Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly Everything.

The trouble with reading Zona like this was that my pencil finds itself underlining about half of the text.

Some of my copious underlinings are there because Geoff Dyer's observations about the film are so dazzlingly perceptive, some because his world view (born like me in late 1950s England, bright boy, liberal arts education) squares with mine, and some because his appreciation of film and literature rings so true that I find myself learning some essential truths about cinema and art itself.

The book is a scene-by-scene dissection of the film, interspersed by a continual flow of witty asides, personal memories, details of the film's troubled production and historical digressions. The informal, chatty format draws you in. Were there more books in this style about the films I love!

Dyer is well-versed and has done his homework; he understands the Soviet Union that spawned Tarkovsky and Stalker, he understands the Gulag and the Bolshaya Zona outside it.

Essentially, Dyer is interested in why the film resonates with him the way it does. What is the Room? Is it Cinema itself? Does it even exist? What are our most innermost wishes, that the Room may - or may not - fulfil? We run into philosophy and ontology - Dyer is convinced that through Stalker,  Tarkovsky poses mankind's most eternal questions.

Ars longa, vita brevis est. There are so many great books, great films, great works of art - and only so much time in which we have to appreciate them. Should we try to cover as much ground as we can, in the time we have left, or should we concentrate, as Geoff Dyer has, on watching and re-watching (or reading and re-reading) that which we hold to be the very best?

Stalker deals with a powerful meme or trope - the zone - a forbidden area, abandoned post-industrial space left to nature, within which the human spirit finds something - freedom, expression, detail, aesthetic wonder. It is a meme that clearly resonates with me; it is a reason why I find so much delight living in Jeziorki, in Warsaw, in post-communist Poland.

Dyer makes one glaring mistake - he calls the Coen Brothers 'witless' - suggesting that he's only seen Raising Arizona or Ladykillers and both with a bad hangover and overfull bladder. A couple of viewings of The Big Lebowski, O Brother, Where Art Thou or A Serious Man should convince him otherwise.

If you are a regular visitor to this blog, I would heartily recommend watching Tarkovsky's Stalker; if it holds your soul, if you can relate to it - watch it again - and then read Geoff Dyer's book. You shall join the Enlightened.

This time last two years ago:
Mr Pheasant trumpets his presence

This time three years ago:
Balancing on the Edge of Chaos

This time four years ago:
Zamienie and the encroaching tide of Development