From the archives

Rooting around the hard disk of my laptop, I found something I'd suspected had been deleted long ago - photos of the rampa in action, taken on 9 September 2006 on my old Nokia 6300 with its rather poor 1.3 megapixel camera. Above: An SM48 diesel loco first pulls the train from the sidings in the direction of Mysiadło, then reverses up the ramp, pushing a rake of 12 aggregate wagons ahead of it.

Above: The train standing on the ramp. Here, the wagons are emptied, the aggregate falls in heaps on the ground some 12 metres below. Below: The loco on the ramp - picture taken by holding the mobile phone camera onto 20x magnification binoculars with elastic bands for some extreme telephoto effects (extremely bad optics too!). Still, the ironwork is clearly visible.

Below: We were lucky to catch the train, having disgorged its load, making its way back down the ramp. It heads the empty rake of wagons towards the buffers by Mysiadło, stops, then reverses to the sidings near W-wa Jeziorki station. Here, it runs around the train to take it back onto the main line.

Below: The last photo I'd ever get to take of the rampa na kruszywa in action. It would be used (rarely) into the spring of 2007, then traffic would cease for ever. Now the rampa and the sidings are gone.


Right: The points leading from the sidings where wagons would wait to be taken up the ramp. All gone. There'll be a road here soon.

Note the purple hue present in the central area of the photos taken with this first-generation mobile phone camera, replaced last October with a 5 mp Nokia N95 (much, much better).

This time last year:
Red sky at night - what does it mean in Poland?

Rampa again, different perspective

Thanks to Jeziorki local Marcin Daniecki, who managed to get these photographs of the rampa in the final phase of demolition. A sad end to a rare piece of railway infrastructure, an environmentally sound way of getting bulk building materials (sand, gravel, aggregate) into a city without the need for fleets of trucks. These pics from 31 October.


Sic transit gloria mundi. A once-proud investment, serving the community's aggregate needs, reduced to the status of a junkyard.

And given the current financial climate, I wonder whether the developers have the cashflow to put up hundreds of new houses here to housebuyers struggling to get their homeloans approved. Or, having spent big money levelling the rampa with the ground, will the developers be left with a large building site and no money to put anything up on it?

We shall see.

The last of the ironwork disappeared by mid-October, since then, the pillars have had to be demolished. The pics left and above were taken on October 2.

Below: preparing the ground for new construction. This is where the sidings once ran.

This time last year:
Inbound to land, through fog and night
Homeward commute with deszcz ze śniegiem
Thoughts on Dad Rock, genre that will not go away
Christmas, Christ's Mass, Xmas or Yule?
Recycling for fun and profit

Rat run absurdity

As I reached the end of ul. Trombity this morning, I came across this dreadful sight - a half-kilometre jam stretching all the way down Kórnicka from Trombity to ul. Baletowa. I knew that paving over this dirt track would turn an entirely ignored rural byway, once known only to Jeziorki locals, into a rat-run used by those out-of-towners seeking an alternative to ul. Puławska. Never did I imagine it could get this bad. It took five minutes to get from ul. Trombity (from where this photo was taken) to ul. Baletowa (at the top of the picture).

And in their desperate attempts to jump a few cars ahead at this traffic jam, some frustrated drivers race down MY road (at double the speed limit which is 30 km/h or 20 mph), trying to overtake other cars between the speed bumps.

THIS AGGRESSION WILL NOT STAND.

What's the answer? Traffic lights at the end of Kórnicka? They'll change from red to green all day long, despite the fact that this route is only used in the morning rush hour. No sense in installing lights for an hour a day. No room (old houses) to build a roundabout at the junction of ul. Kórnicka and Baletowa. Maybe a manned barrier at the south end of Trombity...

Guard: Where is Sir from?
Me: I live on ul. Trombity.
Guard: Where is Sir heading?
Me: Platan Park, top end of ul. Poloneza. 100% local.
Guard (raising barrier, saluting smartly): Sir may pass.

Guard: Where is Sir from?
Driver: I'm from Piaseczno.
Guard: Where is Sir heading?
Driver: The very centre of Warsaw.
Guard: Sir will have to turn around and go back the way Sir came.

This of course is unfeasible in a democracy. More sensible is for PKP to put on more trains from Piaseczno to Warsaw. The journey (which takes and hour and half by car, two hours by bus) takes a mere 35 minutes by train. But there are only four trains to town during the morning peak. Putting on ten or 15 trains, and building a Park and Ride facility would help diffuse the morning mayhem on the back roads between Piaseczno and Warsaw.

Another solution: The same scene (below), 25 and half hours later. Leave home at 09:30, journey to centre of Warsaw takes 45 mins not hour and half. Leave office at 19:00, journey home also significantly shorter.

Still here, the snow

So it didn't disappear overnight. View from my window, this morning. Temperature hit +1C at lunchtime before plunging away to -0.3C at nightfall. So it should still be here in the morning.

UPDATE: The first snow of winter '08-'09 was all gone by the morning of Thursday 27 November.

This time last year:
Jeziorki sunrise, a neighbour's perspective

First snow, winter 2008-09

It snowed overnight, for the first time this year. As the Polish saying goes, 'first snow is shy snow', so I doubt if this lot will be hanging around for long. Above: view from my bedroom early this morning.

While in London, I acquired the use of an 80-400mm Nikkor lens for evaluation purposes (though something tells me I'll be parting with cash for it!). For the purposes of aviation and wildlife photography. Full test to come, but here are some early snaps. Below: Filling the frame at 400mm (600mm equivalent on my DX format Nikon D80) is LOT's Boeing 767-300ER (SP-LPB) coming in to land at Okęcie through a flurry of snow.

Below: Another shot from the balcony - houses on ul. Sarabandy in the weak late autumn sunlight, snow on the rooftops. Houses I'd not noticed before through shorter lenses! This lens has twice the focal length at maximum telephoto of my usual 18-200mm zoom.

What will this winter be like (mirrors thought: what will the economic downturn be like)? Short and mild? Long and harsh? Short but harsh? Long but mild?

Observations from England

Just back from five days in England. On Sunday I flew in to Liverpool Airport then made my way across the Pennines, then down to London, taking in Haydock Park Racecource and Doncaster Airport along the way. And not once - staying three nights in hotels, taking numerous buses and taxis and eating fast food all the way - did I come across a single Polish barman, chambermaid, driver or waitress. Until I got to London, where the streets seem as full of Polish migrants as they did last summer.

Me [to barman at The Green, Shepherd's Bush, immediately detecting his Polish accent]:
Where is Sir from?
Barman: Toruń
Me: How long has Sir been in London?
Barman: Three years.
Me: Has Sir any plans to go home?
Barman: No. What for?

Toruń, as it happens, has had a dramatic fall in unemployment over the past three years (it's now significantly lower than London's. Toruń: 5.4% and falling. London: 6.8% and rising). But people get stuck in a groove while economic change happens around then.

From Shepherd's Bush Market on the Hammersmith and City Line (top) onwards to St Pancras to catch the train to Luton Airport. A nice shot taken shortly after sunset.

This time last year:
Krakow in early snow
Winterreisen and escapism
Let progress march, though not through my back yard

The last of the Rampa

This is probably the last photo you will see on this blog of what was once the rampa na kruszywa. The steel structure went a couple of weeks ago, since then, Jeziorki has resounded to the distant repetitive knocking of the pneumatic hammers taking down the concrete piers. Six have gone, eight remain. I'm still none the wiser as to what will happen on this site once it's all been levelled with the ground.

Above: A higher resolution photo than that currently on Google Earth is available on the Warsaw city map server, dated summer 2005. I've aligned it north facing left, east facing top, to fit. Ul. Karczunkowska is on the left, the bus loop bottom left, just above W-wa Jeziorki station. This map only stretches as far south as Warsaw's border.

This time last year:
Jeziorki spared high-density development thanks to airport zoning

Roadworks are proceeding

Much roadbuilding activity is going on across the tracks from Jeziorki. Ul. Gogolińska has been tarmacked (at least at the Karczunkowska end, by the station). Below: Gogolińska, W-wa Jeziorki station beyond, ersatz Park and Ride by the side of the road. The remains of the dismantled rampa na kruszywa is just visible across the tracks.

The new asphalt currently reachs a mere half-mile (750m) from the main road. Below: Where the asphalt ends. This would be the southern border of Warsaw. A long way off in the distance (foreshortened by the zoom lens) is the new estate across the tracks from Mysiadło. If the asphalt is to get extended there and beyond to Nowa Iwiczna, then it will bring several more hundred cars down Karczunkowska every morning, forming an alternative route into Warsaw for those car commuters, hemmed in by ul. Puławska's notorious jams.

The tarmacking of ul. Gogolińska has been greeted by the appearance of new-style blue-and-red street names, according to the norms of the MSI system.

What else is new? The almost-complete Polne Maki housing estate in Dawidy Bankowe has been linked to the main road running through the village by brand new asphalt. Beyond, the road from Łady (pron. "Wuddy") to Falenty has been re-surfaced (this time last year it was unspeakably awful).

Most interestingly, work seems to have begun on the S7 (Puławska Bis), with the road linking Zgorzała with Zamienie and Dawidy Bankowe being re-laid. Above: Looking west from Zgorzała towards Zamienie. Traffic had been held up at this red light for over 20 minutes.

Above: Looking east from Zamienie towards Zgorzała. Between the points where the two photos were taken is where the S7 will end up - the road linking Gdansk and Warsaw to the south. This will no doubt take several years, but at least a start is being made.
This time last year:
First snow
Work starts on new road to Okęcie