Martin HoffmannWe’re a little late,* but we’re already Toruń.**
* We got stuck on the previous stop of Solec Kujawski for fifteen minutes or so.
** I’m sorry.
Toruń is as far as I will go today. The main station is on the wrong side of the river, though, so would involve a twenty minute walk. Or, if you are lazy and/or booked yourself a room right behind Toruń Miasto station, you could take this suspiciously familiar looking thing for two minutes.
Toruń strikes me as worth spending a bit more time at then arriving after night fall and leaving after breakfast. Very pretty old town with lots and lots of churches.
It is also the birthplace of one Nicolaus Copernicus, inventor of the quantity theory of money (and maybe some other things).
Good morning! Before we continue our journey east, here’s the crossing of the river Wisła which was hidden in the dark last night.
One thing that is cool about eastern Europe is that everyone used the same basic signalling system. So I can tell you that we will be leaving with 40 then line speed without knowing Polish rules.
Quick transfer in Olsztyn where they have a shiny new (if a bit sterile) station building.
The aforementioned Copernicus worked as an administrator here, so they named the new station for him.
My impression of PKP Intercity is that either everything is fine or a complete disaster with little in between.
Korsze. It’s a mere twenty kilometres up line 353 to the Russian border and onwards to Chernyakhovsk, which should be called Wystruć or Įsrutis, from where, in a better world I could continue to Klaipėda. Instead we turn southeast towards Ełk and Białystok along a newly renovated line that The Map still shows as not having passenger service. Some corrections are, apparently, required.
That was a fun journey. Until about Ełk the landscape is unexpectedly varied – very hilly with forests and many little and one big lake and things. After that it calms down substantially and becomes more flat and open.
I definitely can recommend going to Białystok this way.
I believe the centre of Białystok is fifteen minutes that way, but the map is inconclusive whether there really is one.
Let’s try something else instead. There is a local service heading northeast departing pretty much right now.
This train has Wifi but no suspension.
Sokółka. The train continues to Kuźnica Białostocka right by the Belorussian border. I would have time to go there and come back for my actual train, but I am not sure how relaxed Polish officials are these days. Better to spend an hour here.
The line continues straight to Vilnius as part of the old Petersburg Warsaw Railway, but as it has to cut through a corner of Belarus to achieve this, we have to do a detour to what is known as the Suwałki Gap, a 65 km stretch of border between Poland and Lithuania a bit to the west, named after the town of Suwałki where incidentally my next train ought to run to.
Is this a broad gauge track? This should be a broad gauge track. Does someone have a tape measure?
(There is a broad gauge line parallel to the standard gauge line to about 25 kilometres from the border with various transshipment facilities along the way. Revitalised in 2014, is there even any traffic now?)
I think the Polregio guard just now claimed that Interrail is only valid on the Intercity but then let me stay without further discussion because language barrier.
Although after ninety minutes on this thing I might wish to have waited for the Intercity.
Is this the stuff? It was the only bottle I could find in the somewhat disappointing (and certainly missplaced) Carrefour.
(Edit to add: If so, I get the hype.)
Start of the line on a new day.
You know you are way east in a time zone when the sun is well up already at half six.
The morning train to Mockava, just past the border about a half hour away. It starts here in Suwałki at 07:00 and subsequently has barely more passengers than staff. My assumption is that it only exists so train and crew don’t have to overnight in Lithuania. Kudos to PKP Intercity for not running it empty.
Mockava station. It clearly was never built as a border station and the village of Mockava is five kilometres away. But this is how far south the broad gauge network reaches, so we – all three of us – have to change.
In theory, standard gauge continues all the way to Kaunas but the Polish trains aren’t certified and I think signalling is missing or something.
Passenger service between Suwałki and Mockava and onward to Vilnius and Warsaw – Krakow was only re-established in December 2022. It proved successful beyond expectations, so since last December there are now three daily connections.
Reportedly, the trains can indeed get quite busy, so I figured taking the morning connection that requires an overnight stay in Suwałki would be the calmer option. And indeed, so far the train is neatly quiet. Let’s see whether that changes in Kaunas.
Having found out that if you run trains people actually will use them, Lithuanian Railways started a Vilnius to Riga service in December 2023 – there previously had been a gap at the Lithuania/Latvia border.
That service became very popular, too, so last year they extended the service to the Estonian border and coordinated an onwards connection with the Estonians.
And, lo and behold, early this year they had to add another through service between Riga and Tallinn plus one more transfer connection Fridays to Sundays to cope with demand.
Vilnius. The railway has kindly thrown in access to the lounge, but I only have half an hour and that’s not enough time to see even this modest station.
Peter Brown@partim “build it and they will come”
Recumbent Traveller@partim still not enough, though. We need a PKP IC running Warszawa - Kaunas, using 1435mm gauge track Mockava - Kaunas, twice a day, plus a EN service Berlin - Kaunas at least twice a week.
Wrzlbrnft@partim Polish DMUs used to run to Kaunas until December 2022 (see also https://troet.cafe/@wrzlbrnft/115153343560635434 ). Don't know if they'd be still allowed to run there.
Braid in trains 
- solidarity with 
@wrzlbrnft @partim I thought PKP and LTG aim to actually run the EC up to Kaunas as soon as they have locomotives at hand ?
@wrzlbrnft Probably for the better. Those Polish DMUs are … not great.
波鉄 (Hatetsu)@wrzlbrnft @partim "KAUMAS", seriously, Polregio?
@partim Hmmmm, for me the later connections were all fairly relaxed too. A hand full of passengers.
@lewd Maybe depends on the season. The videos I saw all had rather busy trains at least for the Lithuanian portion.
desperado@partim Polish DMUs ran through to Kaunas in 2022 on the standard gauge. I caught the 0910 departure from Kaunas to Bialystok. It was very full. I think the problem now is that there are no standard gauge locomotives passed for passenger trains in Lithuania.
@railtraveller42 Was that established for when Kaunas was European capital of culture?
Jon Worth@partim Sestokai is the proper border station. And it’s nicer than Mockava. But it’d mean the Polish train having to go further into Lithuania. And it’s more congested with freight.
@partim anyhow the station building is nice.
zugreiseblog_eu@partim I took a direct train from Kaunas to Bialystok im July 2022. It only run on weekends, it was one of the first trains when I took it. I made a picture of the timetable at the station back then. I think with the timetable change in December it became a daily train, with the change in Mockava
@zugreiseblog_eu I think that was a hasty scramble after realising that railway connections to the European capital of culture that year were a bit embarrassing.
But I guess it worked well enough for it to become permanent.
The Tiller 🌈@partim
No "sto gram" for you tonight?
No "sto gram" for you tonight?
@swoonie I may also have bought a bottle of beer for a nightcap … (The beer selection in Poland is insane!)
Bjørn Nordbø
Patrick Dersjant RCX@partim Insert gap here.
@partim I love the semaphore signals in the background, and the old concrete posts for the overhead wires. This is Sokółka station, right? The broad gauge track looks well used, doesn’t it?
@partim It's quite ironic how important it is these days, considering it was originally built as a kind of half-circle connecting the towns of Suwalszczyzna/Suvalkija to the Warsaw-Petersburg railway. It ran Grodno/Hrodna-Augustów-Suwałki-Šeštokai-Alytus-Varėna (the present-day Sokółka-Dąbrowa Białostocka section was added after the area was divided by a border, unsurprisingly)
@HaTetsu The borders in this area are really not railway friendly. In Lithuania, Kazlų Rūda – Šeštokai had to be built after 1918 as well.
@HaTetsu @partim
Big lightbulb moment for me. *That’s* why Alytus has this weird westward railway connection, instead of heading straight north to Kaunas!
Love the upper left corner where we can just about see Eydtkuhnen and Wirballen, the gauge-change transfer points for passengers travelling from Berlin and Königsberg to Wilna and St. Petersburg.
In the thirties my grandad was a customs officer at Eydtkuhnen. I remember him telling stories about his work there. An era so long gone.
Phil Dennis-Jordan@partim Visiting Białowieża National Park has been on my bucket list for a long time… one of these years! Good to know getting close to it by train is entirely feasible.
@HaTetsu I remember and thought I had processed those already. I think the plan was after finishing Denmark but that keeps dragging, so I will reconsider.
@partim To complete the tour, you'd need to visit Frombork, but that hasn't been served by rail in a while, sadly