Johann Marsbar

After the Easter Monday session at the loco depot, the rest of the day was spent riding around on the trams....... The last day of the trip consisted of using the railrover for a morning run (EN57's again) to Trzebnia and back to see what freight traffic was moving on the Krakow to Katowice main line, Trzebnia also being the junction for another couple of lines........ Then it was back to Krakow and another visit to that footbridge....... ...before going out on the trams again.......... One thing I did discover whilst riding around on the trams was a model railway shop, so I got off at the next stop and went to have a look inside. I'd previously found a model shop selling plastic kits in the City centre and bought some things there, but this model rail shop also sold books and I was able to pick up a couple of rather useful publications that came in handy on future visits to Poland.... At that time they had only recently been published (2004) and retailed for the equivalent of about £5 each. There was a steam loco one as well, but I didn't bother with that one. From a look on the internet, the tramway one only seems to have been updated once since then, but the railway versions have been updated several times. TBH I've found the best one for information (without many photos) on the current scene - particularly the multiple private operators - is the ST Publications one, published in that well known Polish town of Wigan ! Back at Krakow Gl for a final look, I saw this freshly painted EP05........... ....and that one is now preserved as the remaining operational member of the class, being used occasionally on regular services, as I saw it in use as such in Warsaw in 2018. A final shot of one of the recent Bombardier built NGT6 cars....... ...and it was time to head back to the Airport for the flight back to Stansted. As the trip had all gone to plan and I'd survived with the lack of language knowledge, I decided to do another of those PKP Railrover tickets later in the year based in another City, but the next holiday I'd booked was back to Berlin for the ILA show in May 2006.........

Muni have got one in their collection but that is #3287. #3182 is apparently a privately owned one which made an appearance on the Saturday of the 2019 Muni Heritage Festival, which was when I took that photo. There is another one in that livery preseved at the Pacific Bus Museum in Fremont, CA, as well.

"Large" Marmon-Herrington - 48 seaters - delivered from 1950. One is preserved in the Muni "Heritage Fleet"......

Surprised that Monkseaton actually seems to be a bit tidier today (albeit with more foliage) than it was in 1981.... Took that photo this time last year when I had a short break in the area to photograph the old Metro units. The "Left Luggage Room" pub in the station building itself is well worth a visit.....

A wet Easter Monday morning in Krakow with construction work underway on a new tram route as part of a major redevelopment of the station and surrounding area....... Given that I was in Krakow for 7 days, I must have actually bought a 7-day tram ticket as well as the 7 day rail one as I actually had to use the tram every day to get to/from the main station. All I did on the Easter Monday on PKP was to take a trip to Rzeszów and back, mainly due to the weather being pretty awful, particularly as the ran got heavier the further east I went! I know it was a loco hauled service on the outward journey, the only thing en-route of note being seeing where Krakow loco depot was situated and spotting that there appeared to be a public footbridge from the adjacent station which crossed over the depot throat and the marshaling yards. It was still chucking it down at Rzeszów, so I ended up catching a stopping (EN57....) service back towards Krakow, the only thing of note at Rzeszów being this SA103 railcar (Pesa, 2005).... Luckilly the rain stopped on the journey back and as the train I was on stopped at Kraków Bieżanów, I decided to get off there and investigate the views from the footbridge........ There didn't seem to be any signs of life around the depot area, but one thing I did notice was a number of families with children seemingly walking through the site, some of whom were looking at the locomotives there. As there was a set of steps down into the depot from the bridge with no signage of any sort, I thought I'd wander down and have a stroll on the same roadway as they were. Most of the English Electric built EU06 locos appeared to be in storage there at that time, so I did a bit of exploring...... There were also a couple of preserved locos there as well, one of the Skoda built EU05's of 1961....... ...and a Pafawag built EP02 of 1957...... Both those locos are no longer present there according to Google Earth. Having dug out my 2004 copy of Atlas Lokomotyw , the green liveried ET21 that worked my train from Chabowka on Easter Sunday is listed as preserved at Krakow Depot and there should have been a 1951 ASEA built EP03 preserved there somewhere as well . I carried on walking along the roadway, seeing nobody, and arrived at a gatehouse/barrier with an open pedestrian gate which I walked through to get onto a public road. If there was anybody in the gatehouse, they never said anything!! I actually looped back to the station and back onto the footbridge to get some more photos as the sun had broken through by then..... ..and there was even some freight traffic moving........

I don't recall seeing that railcar there in 2006 and it doesn't feature in my 2004 copy of Atlas Lokomotyw. Appears from their website to be an SBx type railcar used on the Warsaw to Lodz service in from 1935 onwards. .

Been done before....... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straussee_Ferry There used to be a maritime equivalent of Dodgem Cars (Think they are called Bumper Cars in the USA) in a fairground on Lowestoft seafront in which lasted well into the 1970's. The boats took their electric power from an overhead wire mesh arrangement, just like Dodgems, and I assume the voltage was low enough for the current return to be via the water. Bet elf & safety wouldn't allow that now........!

1 and 2 were certainly operating the Wieliczka branch in 2006 as I did ride on both of them to/from Kraków Bieżanów on the last 2 days of this trip. I've never come across the others anywhere on subsequent trips, so from your 2022 book, it looks like they have ended up as being rather unwanted! 001 at Kraków Bieżanów on a rather gloomy Tuesday after Easter 2006....... You will see why I ended up at Kraków Bieżanów on two consecutive days starting with tomorrow mornings posting......

Those railcars are all allocated to Krakow or Skarzysko Kamienna according to my 2016 stockbook so I'm assuming they are all used on services provided by particular regions and may even have been purchased by those regions. The one I saw was working the Krakow to Wieliczka branch service, which had been a full EN57 EMU set a couple of years earlier on one of the ADL Polish trips.

Continuing our look around the Chabowka museum collection...... Having checked the date, it was actually Easter Sunday in 2006, which could explain why there weren't many other visitors there that morning, so I didn't have any problems with getting photos with people wandering into the shot! It was then time for my train back to Krakow and I was rather pleased to see this duly rolling into the station........ As it was Easter, I wonder if that loco had been specifically diagrammed to be out in service that day as ET21's on passenger services were fairly rare, even by that time. I got off at Krakow Plaszow station, where this EU07 came in with a train..... .....and one of the new generation of units - this one built by PESA in 2005 - passed through......... The new stuff was very much in the minority at that time though and tended to be a variety of small diesel railcars. Only 8 of those EN81 electric railcars appear to have been built - 4 in 2005 and another 4 in 2007. That was my last photo of the day and I think I spent the rest of the time riding on the Krakow tramway, something I also did a lot of over the next couple of days, the trips using the railrover for its last 2 days of validity being somewhat limited - the weather the following morning not helping, though my wanderings in Krakow on Easter Monday afternoon were quite profitable, railway wise......

Chabowka is one of the larger collections of preserved stock in Poland and also acts as a base for steam special workings over some of the local lines in the area. As well as locos there are therefore a number of restored carriages used on these trips and also some preserved goods stock. A selection of the items on display....... There was also an operational PKP depot in amongst it all - certainly in 2006........ Back to the preserved stuff...... There were some non-steam exhibits there as well, though mostly in an unrestored state..... EU07 001 was the first of the Polish built (Pafawag) locos, constructed from 1965 onwards, which were based on the English Electric built EU06 locos of 1962, which explains the general resemblance to BR AC electric locos of that era. The EU07's also used EE 541 Traction motors, the same as those on the EU06's.

I hadn't come across the red/grey livery until a trip to Warszawa in 2018 as most of the ones I'd seen before that had ended up in the "Local Authority" colour schemes, such as the Koleje Masowieckie green/cream. Red/grey ( with a bit of yellow) seemed to be a Lodz area speciality....

I actually walked along the tram route from Myslowice back as far as Szopienice - some parts having a rather desolate look with scattered tenement blocks from presumably a former mine in the area and fairly rough ground inbetween. At one point it runs alongside the PKP main line from Katowice to Myslowice....... .....and near Szopienice the line uses a rather restricted clearance "tunnel" under the Katowice-Sosnowiec PKP line...... The whole track and junction layout in Szopienice has changed now, but this 102N is seen at the junction point in its original format....... This is the same set of buildings behind the tram, looking the other way, during the minor track rebuilding works (!) in 2014 ...... The "main line" there to Sosnowiec is now double track, though the Myslowice line is still single due to the "tunnel" under the rail line, the branch going off to the right about where the JCB is. Back at Katowice, a scruffy EU07 is seen in one of the platforms along with a view of the rather decayed platform canopies, long swept away by the rebuilding of the station at track level with new platforms and an overall roof........ Back at Krakow this Skoda built (1961) EP05 was stabled in the station - yet another recipient of the new PKP Cargo livery that seemed to be being used solely on passenger trains! The next day was a Sunday so I had a fairly leisurely day planned, catching a service from the local station nearest the hotel out to cover the line to Zakopane and back. This was another EN57 worked endurance test which seemed to call at most of the stations on the way, though whilst waiting for my train, EN57-001, the first of the type, dating from 1961 appeared on a Krakow bound service...... A quick grab-shot of an ET21 (Built 1960/61) in the sidings at Chabowka en route to Zakopane...... ...which was rather trumped on arrival at Zakopane by discovering this sitting in the platforms there........ I wasn't aware they had restored one to original PKP livery, complete with the cast PKP eagle emblems, but here it was, working a regular service train! It may have been allocated to Krakow depot at that time, as they had some interesting stuff parked up there as you will see later. Unfortunately, this loco wasn't the next train out, though I would ride behind it later on that day, so I got back on the same EN57 for the run back to Chabowka, where I had a Museum to visit.......

Out of the 15 systems currently operating in Poland I've seen and photographed 12 of them and ridden on 9 of those, the three I didn't sample from that lot being Lodz, Gdansk and Torun, mainly due to a lack of spare time when I was there. The "missing" three are Czestochowa and Gorzow Wlkp. - neither of which are particularly large operations, plus the new system in Olsztyn.

From Gliwice I headed back to Zabrze and then took the line to Chebzie, about 50% of that route being single track roadside running, as seen in this view out of the back window of the car....... Chebzie Petla (loop) was a significant interchange point with four single-track routes all converging there. Not far from the terminal loop area was this underpass used by cars on the Zabrze route where it passed under an industrial branch line............ That's what it looked like in April 2006, but to show how things have changed following the injection of large amounts of EU money to refurbish the system, this was the same view as taken in July 2014........ I had a look at Chebzie station and this SM31 was in the yard there...... Back at Katowice for the train to Krakow, an EP09 at the station...... ...and a Czech built S200, possibly owned by ZPNT Tabor according to a much later (2015) ST Publications fleetbook.... As my hotel in Krakow was close to a tram depot, a quick look there the next morning produced this works car...... ...and this running into the depot....... My hotel was the one in the background of that photo. Then it was off to Katowice again on the train for the last day of the 3-day tram ticket. This time I headed east on the line to Myslowice, where this car is seen in the "main street", such that it is...... Gutter running single track with the Communist style concrete slab infil between the tracks and alongside the rails, which was becoming rather uneven to say the least. The whole of that line is currently shut for rebuilding, so it will be interesting to see what it looks like when they have finished! I did spot this building as a suitable photo-prop in 2006 where the rendering had started to fall off showing the original German inscription underneath for the former pub and the "Myslowitz" Germanicised name of the town....... When I next went there, in 2014, it had a large advertising panel over that area so you couldn't see if it was still there, but by 2015 that had gone and even more of the rendering had fallen off revealing more of the lettering!

That was the Sealink Ostend to Dover Jetfoil service. I travelled on that once in 1985 on the way back from a trip to Poland. Somewhere in the loft I've got a large Sealink advertising poster promoting that service!

Back at Katowice Gl. whilst waiting for the train back to Krakow late that afternoon, this pair of ex-CSD/ZSSK 1960 built Skoda electrics, now owned by CTL passed through....... ...along with an early numbered EU07 on an InterCity service...... Back at Katowice the following morning, some bus activity is seen in the then open-air bus station outside the rather "brutalist" design station building. All that area has now been completely redeveloped and the bus station is under a large shopping complex. The station building has been preserved - even if lots of the locals apparently don't like the architecture! One of the Polish built Jelcz single deckers with its Renault styling...... Ikarus artic...... ...and an ex-Berlin double decker used on one of the local interurban routes..... I headed off westwards first thing that day, with a 102N seen outside Chorzow Batory station (formerly Bismarckhütte)...... ....and then on to Zabrze (formerly Hindenburg).......... Luckilly, I then decided to explore the extreme west of the system at that time around the town of Gliwice which covered a main east-west route into the centre and a couple of short local branches. Within a couple of years an anti-tram Mayor had taken office there and after a short campaign, the Gliwice routes were shut in August 2009, the former trunk toute to Zabrze and eastwards being truncated at the town boundary where a TS Depot is located. A couple of photos in Gliwice...... I have been back there in subsequent years, though didn't venture into the main street (as shown above) as I wanted to have a look at the radio station (now preserved) that was at the heart of the "Gleiwitz Incident" in 1939 which is to the north of the central area. I believe the tracks have all gone from the centre, but a lot of the reserved tracks leading into the town from the Zabrze direction are still there and abandoned......

There a plenty more photos of Katowice to come in this thread and I even had a couple of holidays based there in 2014 & 2015 for (mainly) photographing the tram system in its various urban locations. There are an awful lot of interesting examples of late 19th/early 20th Century buildings - both commercial & residential - which have survived there to provide a backdrop to the tramway.....

Three consecutive days of the seven that the ticket was valid actually ended up being used for return journeys from Krakow to Katowice, transport in each direction being one of the EN57 electric units, a mode of transport that seemed to predominate on all the journeys I made on this holiday, though a couple of loco hauled runs were taken, one using a particularly interesting example of motive power, but we'll come to that later! The three days in Katowice were spent exploring the Tramwaje Slaskie Interurban network, having had a taster of what this was like on the earler ADL trip to the area. The next morning I arrived at Krakow Gl. to find yet another livery variation on an EMU........ ...before embarking on the seemingly all-stations EN57 trundle to Katowice, the same service being taken for the next three days. On arrival in Katowice, a tram ticket machine was duly found and used to issue a three day ticket. The machine was rather basic and only took coins, so I had to rustle up something just over 15 Zlotys worth for the ticket (i.e. about £3) that would cover me for the next 72 hours from validation on the first car I boarded. Starting off in central Katowice - an unrebuilt Konstal 105N is seen...... This, of course was 2006 and Poland had only joined the EU in 2004 so the large amounts of money that have been poured into the TS tram network over the past 15 years were still some way off. The trams were still their basic Communist era selves, although one batch of articulated low floor cars had entered service a few years earlier. The operational infrastructure was getting fairly worn out as well. There were still a number of (fairly ropey) Konstal 102N's hanging on at that time, though the corrosion had to be seen to be believed in places! Lt Pigeon decided to make a guest appearance on this shot of one by the Silesian uprising memorial in Katowice........ ...before I headed off eastwards on the long Route 14 to Myslowice, somewhere I would become rather familiar with on future trips, with a couple of 105N's at the terminus outside the Station & Post Office there........ I caught that 26 as far as Sosnowiec Gl., where this ex De Lijn Van Hool bus is seen. There were lots of secondhand "Western" buses around in Poland at this time....... From Sosnowiec I headed back into Katowice and then took a tram via the "mainline" route through Chorzow to Bytom to have a ride on the fabled Route 38 (all one miles worth of it) which retained N class cars working it - and did so until fairly recently....... Note the wooden construction to the left to stop bits of disintegrating building frontage falling on passers by! That is something you don't see over there now, but was common in the early 2000's. The 38 terminated at the Post Office in Bytom and didn't run to the main town stop at Plac Sikorskiego where these 105N's are seen....... East of Plac Sikorskiego the line was single track gutter running for a section. Yet more wooden footpath protection is seen in this shot....... ...and this is one of the newish low-floor cars in the same street....... It was obvious that double track had been present in the street there at some time as it could be seen in places due to the dire road surface, but that presumably dated from pre 1945 when the place went by the name of Beuthen and was part of Germany. The LRTA have published a softback book in the last year or so on "The Tramways of Upper Silesia" - by Mike Russell and all in English, but the definitive history of the tramways in the area is a very substantial in size Polish language 2-volume hardback, profusely illustrated, treatise published 10-15 years ago by Eurosprinter, which I was lucky enough to get copies (direct from the publisher in Poland) of before they sold out.

According to my old IRS East Anglia Handbook...... The Peckett 0-4-0ST was "Beta", new in 1924 and sold off in 1930. They also had another fireless, "Delta", Andrew Barclay 0-4-0F, new in 1929 and sold off in 1949. "Gamma" was the last loco in use there, beng sold in 1952 when tractors took over wagon haulage duties. Rail traffic ended at the site in the early 1970's.

There used to be buildings either side of the line once you went over Ranelagh Road crossing - Reavells factory on the left and a shop/houses on the right - which would have made a suitable scenic break. I took this photo there in 1978, but by the timeframe your layout is set, I'm sure the shop had been demolished, just leaving the houses which remain to this day. You can see the odd shape footprint of the shop if you look at Google Earth. That was the only photo I ever took at that location....

That 1938 built Pilot boat "Bembridge" - the bow of which is featured in J5930, is now restored and is moored in Poland, of all places! (Szczecin) https://www.nationalhistoricships.org.uk/register/2395/bembridge

The April 2006 holiday in Poland was a bit of a voyage into the (relatively) unknown, being my first solo visit to the Country, made all the more "fun" by having zero knowledge of the language and, at that time, English wasn't particularly widely spoken/understood. As a Todays Railways (Europe) subscriber at that time, their Annual reveiew of Railrover tickets came in rather handy and I'd worked out that it was possible to buy a domestic PKP 7-day rover ticket, valid on all Regional services across the whole Country for something like the equivalent of £24 at the prevailing exchange rates. Inter City trains were not available with this ticket, but everything else was, a situation that became much more complex in coming years with the TLK trains and the local services being taken over by the Regions, which effectively killed off this rather useful ticket as far as I was concerned. Krakow was chosen as the base for this holiday, mainly due to it being the only Polish destination on Ryanair then with an early morning flight out and a late evening flight back, so I booked the flight & hotel online and then attempted to come up with some idea of what to do on the 7 days from the online PKP timetables, although, on this trip, I wasn't particularly adventurous, unlike another one later in the year. Given the zero language skills, I wrote things like the name of the ticket, dates of validity and price down on a piece of paper in Polish and set forth on the trip.... Taking the early morning flight from Stansted to Krakow on the first day and catching the bus into the City centre, I headed for the station clutching my piece of paper and after a false start of firstly going to the wrong ticket window to buy one, I was soon out on the platforms, with this EP09 in PKP Cargo colours on an Intercity being the first train seen...... Everything else was an EMU, and it was one of those I boarded to head off to the scenic delights of Czechowice Dziedzice via Oświęcim, being rather limited in what I could do that day to a circular tour during the afternoon. Actually, Czechowice Dziedzice turned out to be a good place to spend an hour or so between trains as there was quite a lot of activity and a wide varity of types (and colours) seen whilst I was there...... The last unit pictured was my onward service to Katowice, from where I headed back on the direct line to Krakow to check in at the Hotel and spend the evening.

Three of ours out in the daylight today during a shunt around..... Willys Overland Crossley Manchester lorry - Ipswich registered (DX) and originally owned by Thompson & Morgan seeds...... We do have more of the cab in store (!) but it will be seriously expensive to restore this vehicle. Former Suffolk County Council Karrier Bantam...... Green & Skinner Commer 2-stroke lorry.......

Another flying visit with Ryanair, this time with my Father, was made to Krakow in mid-March 2006, mainly to visit the Aviation Museum, though there was also some limited time for tram riding as well whilst we were there. From memory, the airport was fairly well fogged in when we arrived in the area and after much circling we were eventually able to land. By the time we had caught the bus into the City centre, there wasn't a cloud in the sky! Ex Vienna car 101 in the sunshine. Krakow had deliberately left an example of their secondhand purchases in the former operators colour scheme, with the originating City coat of Arms/Shield on the dash panel along with that of Krakow. We saw the Nürnberg example later in the day. The air museum has a very significant collection of airframes thar they "inherited" from the Berlin Technical Museum circa 1945. The Berlin exhibits had been evacuated due to Allied bombing and were discovered in Silesia - an area ceeded to Poland post-war - packed in railway wagons. The wings were never found, but the Poles gained some very historic WW1 and earlier airframes together with a collection of vintage aero engines. Some of the aircraft are still (or were in 2006) in "as found" condition..... ...whilst others have been restored - particularly the WW1 types......... I understand that the Berlin museum have been involved with the Krakow museum in this restoration programme. There is a good selection of Polish constructed airframes, including some pre-war examples...... ...whilst outside is a very large collection of Soviet cold-war types..... Certainly a place that is well worth a visit. The only rail photos taken on this trip were of EU07's and you'll see enough of them in forthcoming installments, so back to the trams, with this Konstal example out at the extensive turning circle arrangement at Kopiec Wandy, close to the Nowa Huta steelworks...... An ex Nürnberg car is seen in advertising livery at Pleszow terminus, again near to the steelworks. The Nürnberg liveried car also appeared there......... We did seek out Lagiewniki Depot whilst we were there and found some preserved cars in residence...... Car 87 dates from just pre-war (1938/9) whilst 20 is a post-war N class car, several operators in Poland now seemingly having a preserved one of these somewhere. These cars now appear to be kept in the Transport Museum rather than at an operational depot. Lagiewniki Depot was actually very close to the hotel I would be staying at a few weeks later when I did my forst solo trip to Poland, armed with a railrover ticket (albeit one bought in Poland), and the first photos from that trip will appear later this week.........