On this trip I tried to travel by train whenever possible. The longest journey was about 3000 km from Warsaw to Split and back (1000 km x2 as the crow flies). Some trips I could not do by train because it would take too long, so I took the bus (Ljubljana - Koper train took twice as long as the bus if I remember correctly). Some trips took very long by train and I still took them, but I probably would not do it again (Zagreb - Split, average speed 40 km/h).
I travelled in Poland, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and Croatia. All track gauges were the standard gauge of 1435 mm, although the loading gauges were probably different, and the electrification standards were definitely different: 3 kV DC current in Poland and Slovenia, 25 kV 50 Hz current in Czechia, Slovakia, Hungary, Croatia and 15 kV 16.7 Hz in Austria. The train control systems were different too (there are 14 in Europe), and unlike pilots, bus drivers and truck drivers, the train drivers must be certified in each country and must speak the local language. It's a miracle there are any cross-border trains at all, which reminds me: in 2025 a seasonal direct train from Warsaw to Rijeka (Croatia) was introduced, and it looks like it will run again in summer 2026.
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| Line electrification - just one part of the mess that is the European rail network. New high speed lines should be 25 kV 50 Hz and have some level of ETCS in every country. Map: OpenRailwayMap. |
Austrian trains and train stations were the best: newest, cleanest. Croatia's train stations were in the worst condition. Hungarian train stations look grand, but the trains and locos, except the new Stadler trains, looked bad - our Hungarian (or Croatian) carriage broke down on the way from Zagreb to Budapest and we had to take another train. Some Slovenian carriages also looked old and not cared for. One general observation: Stadler FLIRT are almost everywhere - there were about 2800 made since 2004, and perhaps almost 1000 of them in the Siedlce factory in Poland.
Poland
There used to be one train operator in Poland: Polskie Koleje Państwowe (PKP) - Polish State Railways, running a few types of rolling stock made in Poland, East Germany, or the Soviet Union. Now there's a big variety of trains, operators, and manufacturers. There are city, voivodship, regional and country wide train operators. Alstom, Stadler, PESA, Newag and Cegielski (FPS) manufacture and repair EMUs, locos, and carriages. Some train stations look great, some are falling apart, some are being renovated. Some trains are modern, some are old, but maintained or modernised. The oldest EMU in operation is an EN57 made in 1963, so it will have been running for 63 years in 2026, if it still is. Btw, which bus could do it? Most of EN57 still running have been modernised, but their time is up. I rode one two years ago and it was loud, shaky, and the A/C was not working very well.
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| I used to ride EN57 like this one to school, 40 years ago. We called them "żółtek" - "the yellow one". |
EN57 started running 8 years after this photo was taken:
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1955 photo showing Warszawa Śródmieście station, currently Warszawa Centralna. Śródmieście was re-built east as a small underground station, exactly where Warszawa Główna used to be, not to be confused with the current Warszawa Główna, which is next to the old cargo terminal. The whole thing is a mess now and Hitler and Stalin are to be blamed for it. Seriously. Warsaw was supposed to have one big modern station for long distance and local trains (and metro, if I remember correctly), plus long distance buses. It was partially opened in 1938, then a fire partially destroyed it in June 1939, and then it was bombed in September 1939. It was never finished, although operating till 1945. In January 1945 it was blown up by Germans, whatever was still standing was demolished in 1947 and then the area was cleaned up in 1952 in preparation for the building of Stalin's gift: the Palace of Culture. In 1955 the underground platforms became the basis for the Warszawa Śródmieście suburban station. What we have now is a series of four disjointed underground train stations: metro Centrum (opened 1998), W-wa Śródmieście (1955), W-wa Centralna (1975), and W-wa Śródmieście WKD (1963), and the long distance bus station is a couple kilometres west, next to the W-wa Zachodnia train station.
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The peculiarity of the Polish train market is that old EMUs, locos, carriages often get refurbished, sometimes multiple times. The operators often do not have money to buy new. This is very different to what I see in Australia, where introduction of a new generation of trains usually triggers scrapping of the oldest generation. This means that in Poland there are businesses like
Remtrak specialising in bringing old trains to life.
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| Old PKP Intercity carriages awaiting refurbishment by Remtrak in Warsaw. |
The areas of operation of different companies are not exclusive, so in Warsaw you may find trains of 6 operators:
PKP Intercity,
KM (Masovian Railways),
SKM (Warsaw city trains),
WKD (lines to Grodzisk and Milanówek),
Polregio and
ŁKA (Łódź).
The
POLREGIO operator was the biggest one in 2023 in terms of carried passengers (26% of the
market in 2023, 90 million passengers). They reach 1900 train stops or stations. POLREGIO is weird. It seems to run any route PKP Intercity or any other operator did not want, using rolling stock PKP Intercity did not want: about 320 old EN57 variants and 200 newer EMUs, 130 rail buses, 5 electric locos, 23 diesel locos and 42 carriages. In 2007 they had 3211 carriages (they gave 1830 to PKP Intercity in 2008 when PKP Intercity took over faster services) and 874 EMUs on average 25 years old. Their
website is only in Polish.
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| Solid black - permanent lines. Solid blue - seasonal lines. Dashed red - voivodship boundaries. |
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POLREGIO K3 43320 from Katowice to Kraków, PESA Acatus Plus
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The second biggest operator is
PKP Intercity (18.2% of the
market in 2023). They service long distance routes, using mainly modern EMUs (86 sets), and modernised carriages (about 1200 pieces in use, 600 waiting to be refurbished). They still have a lot of old locos (only 130 out of 270 are modern). Their flagship train is Alstom New Pendolino, designated as
ED250 in Poland, with max speed of 250 km/h. There are 20 of these in service:
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In Malbork. Currently the route Warsaw to Gdańsk is the only one in Poland with max speed 200 km/h. The route south to Kraków (CMK) used to be like that, but it is being upgraded to ETCS Level 2, to allow for speeds up to 250 km/h (to be completed in 2027?). Meanwhile, there is no working ETCS at all on that route, which means max speed is 160 km/h.
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| I wish the platform heights were standardised and all trains were required to have level boarding. |
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ED250 cab. Gemini was stubbornly telling me it was not. It is.
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They also have 20 of the
PESA Dart intercity EMUs, which incredibly were designed and built in one year:
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PKP Intercity PESA Dart (ED161) in Katowice
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The bulk of work is done by classic loco hauled carriages, some of which are certified to run up to 200 km/h:
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| Typical PKP Intercity carriage in Wrocław. |
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PKP Intercity in Vienna
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SKM (4.1% of the
market in 2023) is an operator owned by the government of the city of Warsaw. It is a new operator, that did not inherit any old trains, so they mostly use modern Newag Impuls and PESA Elf rolling stock. The livery contains the yellow-red of the flag of Warsaw. The nice thing about SKM is that you can buy tickets on the train from a machine, just like in Warsaw trams and buses.
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| Newag Impuls servicing line S3 at Warszawa Rakowiec. |
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| Newag Impuls line S2 at Chopin Airport. |
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| PESA Elf servicing line S3 at Chopin Airport. |
Koleje Mazowieckie (
KM, 16.4% of the
market in 2023) - Masovian Railways operates in the Masovian Voivodship of which Warsaw is the capital. It is the 3rd biggest operator (16.4% of the market in 2023) in Poland. 146 out of their 247 EMUs are old EN57 variants or similar.
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| Koleje Mazowieckie (KM) PESA Elf in Warsaw |
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| Stadler FLIRT |
WKD (1.7% of the
market in 2023)
is the third operator in Warsaw. They have just one suburban line to Grodzisk Mazowiecki with a spur to Milanówek, but they have a long history and even their own museum.
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| WKD EN97 in Grodzisk Mazowiecki. |
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| One of the most iconic Polish designs: WKD Newag EN100 "transformer" next to PESA EN97. |
Koleje Śląskie (
KŚ, 5.9% of the
market in 2023) - Silesian Railways operates in Upper Silesia (Katowice):
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| PESA Elf in Katowice |
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| PESA Elf in Katowice |
.1% of the
market in 2023)
- Lower Silesian Railways
operates in Lower Silesia (Wrocław): |
| Newag Impuls of KD and a modernised EN57 of Polregio in Wrocław. |
Koleje Małopolskie (KMŁ, only 2.5% of the
market in 2023 - might be the reason why the car traffic is so bad in Kraków - everyone drives)
- Lesser Poland Railways
operates in Lesser Poland (Kraków):
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Koleje Małopolskie Newag in Kraków
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Koleje Małopolskie Newag in Kraków
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Czechia
Czechoslovakia gave us some iconic locos. Czechia also has the second densest railway network in the world, after Switzerland.
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The iconic "diver" loco of Czech KDS operator in Ostrava.
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RegioJet carriages
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| Ostrava |
Břeclav is an important railway hub in Czechia, right on the border with Slovakia and Austria. All photos below are from that one place:
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| German DB locos in Břeclav. |
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| Austrian railways |
Slovakia
Železničná spoločnosť Slovensko (
ZSSK) - The Railway Company Slovakia. I was only passing through Slovakia.
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| Slovak Stadler KISS double-deck EMU. |
Hungary
Magyar Államvasutak (
MAV) - Hungarian State Railways. Adam Something has
a lot to say about them.
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| My train from Zagreb to Budapest was going suspiciously slow and finally we were told to get off in Balatonszentgyörgy. Either the Hungarian or the Croatian carriage broke down - they can be seen in this photo. Fortunately, we didn't have to wait long for the next train to Budapest. |
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| Supported by the EU. |
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Split train station.
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| Made in Sweden 45 years ago, the abused Croatian Y1 in Knin. |
Austria
Austria is possibly the 3rd or 4th country in the world in train trips per capita, after Switzerland, Japan and perhaps Luxembourg. The national operator is
ÖBB and Vienna is a hub for central Europe rail travel, and the city with most international rail connections (to 14 countries) in the world.
Warsaw used to have trains to 11-15 countries (hard to count consistently since the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, East Germany, West Germany, and Czechoslovakia no longer exist), now only 7 (8 in summer) -
no more direct trains to Russia, Belarus, France, Belgium, The Netherlands, Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia. I actually went by train from Warsaw to London on one special ticket: direct train to Hoek van Holland, then a ferry to Dover and another train to London. My mom was a train dispatcher for
PKP and she had the right to one free family ticket per year to almost anywhere the trains went - I used it once to travel to Moscow in 1989 and once to London in 1990. This was because PKP was (and still is) a member of both
UIC (FIP Group) and
OSJD. You could go on an epic free trip to as far as Vietnam. The system still exists, in the form of
FIP Coupons and
OSJD free single-use tickets, but is more complicated to use - see
this info about Poland, including this gem: "Via Cesky Tesin, regional trains run to Polish Cieszyn, which are operated on the Czech side by ČD; who operates these in Poland is currently unknown to us.".
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| České dráhy loco with PKP Intercity carriages in Vienna |
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| Wien Hauptbahnhof |
The national operator is
Slovenske železnice (SŽ). The main train station in Ljubljana was being
upgraded during my visit. There are relatively frequent and cheap connections from Ljubljana to Zagreb.
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| Slovenian Stadler FLIRT in Ljubljana. |
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The trip to Koper takes 1 hr 14 min by bus on a new motorway vs 2 hr 30 min by train on the old winding tracks, and it won't change until the equivalent of a motorway, with bridges and tunnels is built for the train too. Then, the travel time by train could be reduced to 30 minutes, as it is only 82 km in a straight line. |
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| D 211 "Sava" from Villach (Austria) through Ljubljana (Slovenia) to Vinkovci (Croatia). ÖBB loco, Croatian carriage, in Ljubljana. |
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| Stadler KISS in Lesce |
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