Not much?
To a person uninterested in the topic of Polish railways, this picture might not mean much. Artistically it's not on a very top notch level, however it shows something really extraordinary.
In Poland in general it is really hard to spot any cargo traffic on unelectrified lines in general. The country is almost devoid of any small scale cargo shipments by rail and the entire network is now almost exclusively serving bulk traffic, which often avoids local unelectrified lines. The only exception are aggregate trains, which start in quarries on the lineside of local stretches of track and terminate on stations closest to the construction site.
This was the case with this train, which ran from Lower Silesia to Gdańsk Osowa via Gdynia Port. It however wasn't the only thing making it special. The other one was the fact, that it was hauled by two locomotives from the SM31 class - one which is almost extinct from the Polish railway network. With just under 10 remaining in service, the picture shows 1/5th of all the available SM31 locomotives in the entire country, numbers 145 and 081 thrashing up the heavy grade from Gdynia Główna to Gdańsk Osowa with the first half of a loaded aggregate train. Having left Gdynia Główna 20 minutes ago, the train is passing the old signal box Krykulec at a snail's pace, with the last rays of sunlight being visible on the trees in the background. The load of the train will soon serve as the construction material during the modernisation works on the old coal line number 201.
An interesting fact is both of the SM31 locomotives used to serve in PKP Cargo which is reflected by the paint scheme. The lime-green parts were painted over, though their familiar shapes still pop out from under the blue colour.
Photo by Piotrek/Toprus
Not much?
To a person uninterested in the topic of Polish railways, this picture might not mean much. Artistically it's not on a very top notch level, however it shows something really extraordinary.
In Poland in general it is really hard to spot any cargo traffic on unelectrified lines in general. The country is almost devoid of any small scale cargo shipments by rail and the entire network is now almost exclusively serving bulk traffic, which often avoids local unelectrified lines. The only exception are aggregate trains, which start in quarries on the lineside of local stretches of track and terminate on stations closest to the construction site.
This was the case with this train, which ran from Lower Silesia to Gdańsk Osowa via Gdynia Port. It however wasn't the only thing making it special. The other one was the fact, that it was hauled by two locomotives from the SM31 class - one which is almost extinct from the Polish railway network. With just under 10 remaining in service, the picture shows 1/5th of all the available SM31 locomotives in the entire country, numbers 145 and 081 thrashing up the heavy grade from Gdynia Główna to Gdańsk Osowa with the first half of a loaded aggregate train. Having left Gdynia Główna 20 minutes ago, the train is passing the old signal box Krykulec at a snail's pace, with the last rays of sunlight being visible on the trees in the background. The load of the train will soon serve as the construction material during the modernisation works on the old coal line number 201.
An interesting fact is both of the SM31 locomotives used to serve in PKP Cargo which is reflected by the paint scheme. The lime-green parts were painted over, though their familiar shapes still pop out from under the blue colour.
Photo by Piotrek/Toprus