And now for something completely different... [analogue]

The topic of the railway line 201, or the old Coal Mainline of Poland seems to strike us back like a boomerang, as we dig into the family picture archives.

 

It is summer, 1957 (possibly August), and we are in the village of Sławki, which had already made a few appearances on our photo page. This time the perspective is changed and we move to the nearby crop fields. At the time, bushes didn't obstruct the side view yet, and even a forest, which now grows in the background, wasn't present, allowing for this photo.

 

Ok1 departs from the passenger stop in Sławki hauling the workday afternoon passenger train no. 924 from Gdynia Osobowa (nowadays Gdynia Główna) to Kościerzyna. The next stop - Wieżyca. Funnily enough, the entire journey time of the train of 1h and 57 minutes (14:35 - 16:32) has barely changed throughout the years, despite a full-blown modernisation, which happened here just a few years before. The trains from Gdynia to Kościerzyna now roughly need 1h50min-2h to make the trip.

 

Back to the photo, for there is a lot to discuss. We can start with the workhorse hauling the train - a Ok1, or as others might know it - the Prussian P8 (later called the German class 38). Nearly 4000 such machines were produced in many German factories since the beginning of the 20th century until the 1920s. The first batch of them had come into service on the Polish railways directly after WW1 as war reparations, later more locomotives were ordered in 1922. Before the start of WW2 - 257 such locomotives were in service on the PKP. After the second world war, the number increased to over 400 as a result of more reparations and claims. This very successful and reliable class of engines served in active duty on the PKP all the way to the 1970s and was one of the most popular and numerous series of steam locomotives to ever serve on the PKP.

 

The first coach directly after the locomotive appears to be a luggage van of the type B-III (PKP designation Dhxt), produced in the late 1930s in the Lilpop, Rau & Löwenstein works in Warsaw. The LRL company was the biggest industrial enterprise in the capital city of Poland aswell as being one of the biggest in the coutnry. Apart from producing modern passenger coaches, the company also worked on all sorts of products out of steel, like mechanical parts, boilers, engines, machines and others.

 

The second coach appears to be even more interesting. On first sight we see that it's not a standard passenger wagon, but a compartment coach instead, moreover a 4-axle one! My knowledge of old passenger wagons is very limited but I have been able to conclude that it most likely originates from the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, from Prussia (maybe Saxony, to be more precise). This Vierachsiger Abteilwagen is in my humble opinion the most interesting part of the entire picture.

 

Scanned photo copy

Author unknown, taken from the family archives.

Done