Crocodiles roaming in white mud
After yesterday's post we return to standard railway topics, however still remaining near the cement plant "Kujawy" and the huge limestone mine. The facility contains one more curiosity, besides the previously mentioned cable car railway.
Me and Jarek have visited the station Wapienno a couple of years back and there was one thing I very vividly remembered from that trip. We were trying to find our way around the place to the station and searching for spots to photograph the limestone shuttle to Inowrocław. In doing so, we passed many places where a deteriorated track cut the street, and it was accompanied by a couple of lonely standing metal pylons. They very much looked like catenary poles, but what could they be doing here? I just thought they were taken from some tram network or used as lighting poles.
I later had gone on to disregard the topic completely, but a new breakthrough happened a few months back, when me and my friends were investigating the history and railway network of the Dębiec mining and metallurgical plant. We found it while browsing Open Railway Map, as it had an extensive railway network and was hidden deep in the forests of central Poland. We dug very deep in the internet and finally, in some remote corner of the plant's web page we found a picture gallery, showing the former glory of the local railways. Our jaws dropped in amazement, as we saw the network... electrified. Not only that, it featured pictures of the locomotives working there. They were the popular "Crocodiles" of the EL2 series from Hennigsdorf. "No way", we thought, "the locomotives only worked in the lignite mines", and quickly rushed to the EL2's Polish wikipedia page. There it was. "Apart from the lignite mine in Konin, the locomotives were delivered to the lignite mine in Adamów, the Dębiec plant and... the cement plant "Kujawy" in Wapienno". That's when I got a flashback from our previous trip and everything clicked. I knew I had to come back here.
I had to spend a couple more days, studying the cement factory's extensive railway network. By digging for a few more hours I found only a few pictures here aswell as one on Facebook which intrigued me even more. There I could read the comments of the former workers, which were very valuable.
The catenary, which covered the entirety of the complex - from Wapienno to Piechcin, used to look very crude. The wires were hanging from supports resembling those used on tram networks and the cables were very loose. Consequently, the pylons were placed frequently - between 25 and 30 meters apart, a third of the standard distance on normal railways. The catenary reached very remote places of the facility and spanned a total length - from my cude calculations - of around 9 kilometers. The remains of the catenary pylons are still there in many places and they fulfill the role of lighting poles nowadays, but wherever you see thin, long shadows, separated 30 meters from eachother. on aerial images, you can be sure that this was a part of the catenary.
This is exactly what we see on this picture. Further back there was a much more beautiful frame to be taken, but I really wanted to capture the remains of the catenary. Another reason for choosing this place is to talk about a now non-existant branch to the station in Piechcin (this picture shows the place where it used to be - the diagonal dirt path heading off into a curve and then later into the plant), which would have constituted a second track (to the right) in this very place. Catenary supports which we found lead me to believe that it also used to be electrified. Therefore PKP had two dropoff/pickup spots for trains to/from the mine and cement plant - in Piechcin and Wapienno. The branch also used to transport forced laborers from the very shortly lived prison camp in Piechcin (1950-1956) to the quarry near Bielawy.
On the picture is SM42-2083, heading to the place I call Masherbrum, which I will talk about tommorow. Congratulations if you managed to read through all this :D, I had no idea the text I had written would be so long. But when there is so much to discover... as far as I know, nobody had taken photographs of this place before me, because everyone always goes to the station Wapienno and chases the limestone shuttle to Inowrocław.
Photo by Piotrek/Toprus
Crocodiles roaming in white mud
After yesterday's post we return to standard railway topics, however still remaining near the cement plant "Kujawy" and the huge limestone mine. The facility contains one more curiosity, besides the previously mentioned cable car railway.
Me and Jarek have visited the station Wapienno a couple of years back and there was one thing I very vividly remembered from that trip. We were trying to find our way around the place to the station and searching for spots to photograph the limestone shuttle to Inowrocław. In doing so, we passed many places where a deteriorated track cut the street, and it was accompanied by a couple of lonely standing metal pylons. They very much looked like catenary poles, but what could they be doing here? I just thought they were taken from some tram network or used as lighting poles.
I later had gone on to disregard the topic completely, but a new breakthrough happened a few months back, when me and my friends were investigating the history and railway network of the Dębiec mining and metallurgical plant. We found it while browsing Open Railway Map, as it had an extensive railway network and was hidden deep in the forests of central Poland. We dug very deep in the internet and finally, in some remote corner of the plant's web page we found a picture gallery, showing the former glory of the local railways. Our jaws dropped in amazement, as we saw the network... electrified. Not only that, it featured pictures of the locomotives working there. They were the popular "Crocodiles" of the EL2 series from Hennigsdorf. "No way", we thought, "the locomotives only worked in the lignite mines", and quickly rushed to the EL2's Polish wikipedia page. There it was. "Apart from the lignite mine in Konin, the locomotives were delivered to the lignite mine in Adamów, the Dębiec plant and... the cement plant "Kujawy" in Wapienno". That's when I got a flashback from our previous trip and everything clicked. I knew I had to come back here.
I had to spend a couple more days, studying the cement factory's extensive railway network. By digging for a few more hours I found only a few pictures here aswell as one on Facebook which intrigued me even more. There I could read the comments of the former workers, which were very valuable.
The catenary, which covered the entirety of the complex - from Wapienno to Piechcin, used to look very crude. The wires were hanging from supports resembling those used on tram networks and the cables were very loose. Consequently, the pylons were placed frequently - between 25 and 30 meters apart, a third of the standard distance on normal railways. The catenary reached very remote places of the facility and spanned a total length - from my cude calculations - of around 9 kilometers. The remains of the catenary pylons are still there in many places and they fulfill the role of lighting poles nowadays, but wherever you see thin, long shadows, separated 30 meters from eachother. on aerial images, you can be sure that this was a part of the catenary.
This is exactly what we see on this picture. Further back there was a much more beautiful frame to be taken, but I really wanted to capture the remains of the catenary. Another reason for choosing this place is to talk about a now non-existant branch to the station in Piechcin (this picture shows the place where it used to be - the diagonal dirt path heading off into a curve and then later into the plant), which would have constituted a second track (to the right) in this very place. Catenary supports which we found lead me to believe that it also used to be electrified. Therefore PKP had two dropoff/pickup spots for trains to/from the mine and cement plant - in Piechcin and Wapienno. The branch also used to transport forced laborers from the very shortly lived prison camp in Piechcin (1950-1956) to the quarry near Bielawy.
On the picture is SM42-2083, heading to the place I call Masherbrum, which I will talk about tommorow. Congratulations if you managed to read through all this :D, I had no idea the text I had written would be so long. But when there is so much to discover... as far as I know, nobody had taken photographs of this place before me, because everyone always goes to the station Wapienno and chases the limestone shuttle to Inowrocław.
Photo by Piotrek/Toprus