Ghost Trains & Ghosts on Trains; Expanded Second Edition

Introduction

Since the invention of railroads, legends about ghost trains and phantoms on trains have persistently circulated among the public. We give the readers a book quite unusual, because it discusses ghost trains and ghosts on trains, mysterious disasters and their circumstances that would seem to be out of this world. We were inspired by the prose of the Polish author of short stories and horror novels Stefan Grabinski, who devoted a certain part of his work to uncanny events that took place in the reality of railroad tracks. Signals, Demon of Traffic, Blind Track - are the flagship items in his literary output. They caused him to be called Polish Poë or Polish Lovecraft. And this means that he is highly regarded at home and abroad by amateurs and connoisseurs of the genre. Perceived by contemporaries as: A short, thin, gruff man with a devilish beard, he was a bit uncanny, devoting all his free time to observing railroad traffic. Already it was the boys who spied him well and caught him spending hours on the viaduct, staring at the passing trains, completely detached from life, wrote Felix Mantel about him in Fan of Memories (1980). And that's where his incredible tales of railroad horror came from.

In addition, we still give some idea of the means of mass destruction moved by trains and the madmen who operate them. Here we tell about the mysterious and lethal microorganisms that grew in the metro tunnels in one of the cities of the former USSR.

Most of the material presented here is from the former USSR and Russia and this is because it is a country of people with a peculiar approach to life and making up for the mental losses caused by communist brainwashing. Only now people are not afraid to speak openly about the fact that this world is even stranger than they were instilled with for decades. Of course, there are mentions from Poland, Slovakia and several other countries where ghostly phenomena have been observed on the tracks. And still à propos normalization in Russia, it was stopped brutally on 24/02/2022 with the outbreak of a senseless and cruel in its senselessness war with Ukraine and the West. And once again the CIS nations are being brainwashed according to Putin's doctrine of war - this time passionate...

And all this looks and sounds like the prose of the classics of horror novels except that (unfortunately) it really happened. And this is the difference between horror fantasy and real life in which disasters happen and people die - whose spirits are carried away between dimensions - in this space-time continuum of ours.

Of course, we could not refuse ourselves to present the Reader with a hypothesis on the strange events and interactions of trains with Unknown Flying or Aerial Objects - UFO/UAPs and trains. We also took the liberty of including - as part of this hypothesis - a charming short story by Vladimir Shcherbakov The Green Train, inspiring optimism and faith that someone is watching us from the Cosmos and that one day we will meet Them.

We have also taken the liberty of including some of our railroad-related memoirs from the point of view of historians - who are Stanisław Bednarz and Miloš Jesenský - and an officer of the Border Protection Troops and the Border Guard - Robert Leśniakiewicz, who is also the author of translations from Russian and Slovak.

We wish the Reader a pleasant reading experience!

Jordanów – Krásno n./Kysucou

July 2023

1. The sadness of forgotten trails

Neglect all around. The greens are overgrown with rusted rails; lush field grasses, saltbush, wild chamomile and thistle. On the side falls a half-articulated switch with a broken lantern glass, which at night there is no one to light. Because what's the point? After all, the track is closed; you can't go further than 100 meters. Nearby on the lines steam locomotives are busy, life is bustling, railroad arteries pulsate. Here it is always quiet. Sometimes a shunting engine will get lost in the road, sometimes a reluctant carriage will roll in; sometimes a wagon, destroyed by its ride, will come to a long rest, roll heavily and lazily and stand silent for months or years. In the crumpled roof a bird will make a nest and feed its young, in the cleft of the platform a weed will throw itself, a sprig of wicker will emerge. Above the reddish band of rails leans the dislocated shoulders of the broken railway signal and blesses the sadness of the ruin...

From this poetry, explained the humpbacked, "blows a deep motif of longing - longing for the infinite dales, access to which closed by a boundary mound, nailed by the wood of the ramp. Right next door trains rush by, skipping into the wide, beautiful world of machinery - here the dull border of a grassy hill. A longing of impairment. - Do you understand? - Longing without hope of realization breeds contempt and saturates itself, until it outgrows the power of desire happy reality... of privilege. Latent forces are born here, gathering powers that have not been realized for years. Who knows if they will not explode with the elements? And then they will surpass everyday life and fulfill tasks higher, more beautiful than reality. They will reach beyond it...

Stefan Grabiński – The Siding

But there are also railroad lines - phantoms! Lines that are either dead or no longer exist, which frighten with their appearance during the day and cause a shiver of fear at night. We will tell the Reader about them at the beginning.

1.1. Circumvallation Railroad in Kraków

It only existed for 22 years, showed up in Wyspiański's watercolors and disappeared like a specter.

Driving today along Trzech Wieszców Avenue, Dębnicki Bridge, Konopnicka Street, we don't realize that we're driving on the former ring railroad route connecting Kraków Main with an alternative route to Bonarka station. In 1886-87, an eight-kilometer-long ring railroad (known as the Circumvallation) was built in the place of today's Trzech Wieszczów Avenue, crossing the Vistula River at the site of today's Dębnicki Bridge. It also crossed the Rudawa River with a single-span bridge on Wolska Street. It was built along the earthen rampart of the Kraków Fortress bastions. The bank was used as an embankment along which the track was carried out.

The line was opened on January 18, 1888.Only one station was built along the line - Kraków - Zwierzyniec, and a freight house was built near the point where the railroad crossed the present-day bed of the Wilga River. The Kraków - Zwierzyniec station and its covered platform were located near the present Jubilat department store. The station was not demolished along with the line and existed at least until 1938.

The line was liquidated on January 1, 1911. The bridge was rebuilt as a road bridge and named Dębnicki and the area was leveled to form the representative artery of the Trzech Wieszczów. The embankment of the city's ring railroad was captured in 1904/1905 by Stanislaw Wyspiański in a series of pastels known as View from the artist's studio to the Kościuszko Mound.

Its route, marked out by the ramparts of the first fortifications of the Kraków Fortress, ran in an arc - hence the name, coined from the Latin word circumvallo, meaning to surround with a rampart, to enclose - from the Main Railroad Station along the western edge of the city.

The Dębnicki Bridge was first built in 1887-1888 and it was a three-span railroad bridge. With this bridge the circumvallation railroad forded the Vistula River then the route ran (along the line of today's Konopnicka Street) Dębniki and Ludwinów, crossed the Wilga River and the floodplain of this river with trussed single-span bridges, passed over the Wadowice road with a specially built viaduct - and reached the route of the Transversal Railroad, at which the Kraków-Bonarka station was arranged especially for this purpose. The first train traveled the entire eight-kilometer route on January 18, 1888. The motif of this railroad was frequent in Stanislaw Wyspiański's paintings, when, compounded by illness, he painted views from the window of his apartment on Krowoderska Street.

1-1 Circumvallation railroad tracks running through Kraków past the present University of Agriculture

1-2 Today's Dębnicki Bridge still railroad and truss bridge

1-3 Map of the bridge crossing and Zwierzyniec station

1-4 Watercolor by Stanisław Wyspiański with the line of the Circumvallation Railroad

1-5 Ti-12 locomotive of the same Railroad

1-6 The course of the Circumvallation Railroad route on the map of Kraków

1-7 Demolition of the railroad route and creation of the Trzech Wieszczów Avenue

1.2 On the lake bed

Forgotten railroads charm. Today that railroad rests at the bottom of a lake. On May 28, 1988, a few minutes before 8 pm, the last scheduled passenger train from Sucha Beskidzka to Wadowice entered the station in Wadowice. The line from Wadowice to Skawiec was part of the line from Trzebinia , as well as Jaworzno via Wadowice to Skawiec and Sucha. It was built in 1897-99. This 68-kilometer stretch consisted of such junction stations as Trzebinia, Bolęcin which connected with an important junction station Jaworzno Szczakowa, Spytkowice, Wadowice and Skawce. And so a train starting from Jaworzno-Szczakowa station via Chrzanow went to Wadowice and then via Skawce to Sucha Beskidzka, the other relation was Trzebinia - Wadowice - Skawce, to Sucha Beskidzka. The train traveled slowly for up to 2.5 hours from Sucha to Trzebinia.

Unfortunately, PKP activities led to the physical demolition of the Jaworzno Szczakowa - Chrzanów line, and the Chrzanów - Bolęcin stretch became impassable. The Skawce-Wadowice stretch was 17 kilometers long, with stops in Gorzeń, Czartak , Mucharz (3-track station from 1899), Zagórze near Skawce (1904). The lines were built by German and Italian workers (shocking locals by catching frogs and eating frogs' legs) and local people. The trip from Wadowice to Sucha took 40 minutes. The line was never electrified.

Decommissioning was related to the planned Świnna Poręba water reservoir. Until August 10, 1988, when the Skawce - Wadowice line was definitely closed, only freight trains were already moving irregularly on it. On September 6, 1988, demolition of the line began, and the last stretch of it was taken down on April 15, 1992. To this day, all that remains is a bit of embankment in some places where the track ran, remnants of the bridge in the vicinity of the Mikołaj Manor, a beautiful culvert in front of Czartak, remnants of the foundations of the Czartak station, a classic lattice bridge in Mucharz converted into a road bridge, and remnants of the bridge in front of Skawce.

And once upon a time, in its heyday, trains to Zakopane from all over Poland used to go this way (shortening the route from central Poland 47 kilometers, bypassing Kraków. In the late 1960s/early 1970s, the Tatra, Warsaw-Zakopane express went this way. In Trzebinia, the electric locomotive was uncoupled and two Hungarian SM-41 diesel locomotives were hitched up. I traveled this train on this track in August 1971.

And an addendum about the non-existent Skawce station. Disappearing landscapes, time frozen in the frame. The Skawce train station and the famous railroad bridge, the waters of Lake Mucharski skimming over their remains. The Skawa station building was demolished on a sunny Thursday, April 19, 2012. The debris left behind will be mercifully covered by water, and when the wind blows from Babia Góra, the waves will batter the shores and hum about the turbulent history of the nearby bridge. The station stood on this spot for 128 years. In the building, there was a waiting room, a ticket office, a bar, and apartments upstairs. Until 1988, Skawce was a junction station: from the Sucha Beskidzka - Skawina line the route to Wadowice separated here (just after the bridge over the Skawa River). Thus, Skawce ceased to be a junction station.

The station building was built in 1884. During World War II, the building served as a watchtower on the border between the General Government and the Third Reich, which ran here on the Skawa River. From Jordanów to Kraków transit was made through the Reich. After the war it housed a militia station, a store and the Leskowiec restaurant, popularly known as Na Szpicy. The nearby railroad bridge became the target of an attack by a partisan unit in 1944. On the night of December 30-31, 1944, a nine-man platoon Kurniawa of the AK (Home Army) under the command of Lieutenant Explosives Engineer Tadeusz Studziński (Jędrzejewski) and the Soviet Walka unit of Lieutenant Konstantin Petrovich Zhuk carried out a diversionary action against the railroad bridge in Skawce. The partisans, using more than a hundred kilograms of TNT, blew up a three-span bridge over the Skawa River, effectively stopping rail traffic on the Skawina-Sucha line for 18 days. As K. Zhuk recalls:

On the night of December 30, our group set out on the way. It was snowing. At a distance of ten or fifteen meters, nothing could be seen. In addition to the normal partisan armament, we also came to carry a heavy package of explosives, at the same time, during the night we had to cover a road of forty kilometers, to reach the starting point four kilometers away from the bridge, that is, the village of Marcówka.

To commemorate the event, a memorial plaque was unveiled by Lieutenant Tadeusz Studziński on April 29, 1984, originally placed on the railroad station building in Skawce. It is now located in the new housing development, right next to the subsidized housing. The repeated action of blowing up the bridge took place on 19/04/2014 when the railroad line to Kraków was already moved to the other side of the Skawa River.

1-8 The course of the Sucha Beskidzka - Wadowice and Sucha Beskidzka - Kraków railroad lines on the background of the area flooded by the waters of Lake Mucharski.

1-9 At the top - the station clock in Skawce. At the bottom - freight train on the approach to Skawce.

1-10, 1-11 At the top - a fragment of the train schedule on the Siersza Wodna - Sucha Beskidzka line. At the bottom - the crew of the station in Skawce.

1-12, 1-13 At the top - a correction after the partisans, blowing up the railroad bridge in Skawce. At the bottom - the no longer existing station building in Skawce

1-14 Trzebinia Siersza Wodna train station

1-15 In the 1970s, the passenger line was served by so-called double-decker trains from East Germany

1-16 Original train tickets on the line from Sucha Beskidzka to Wadowice. Especially interesting is the one to Koluszki.

1.3 To Vienna and Pest via Sucha Góra

How people traveled from Nowy Targ to Sucha Góra and then to Kral'ovan. For strategic-military reasons, it was decided at the beginning of the 20th century to build a turnoff through Czarny Dunajec, Podczerwone and extend it until it connected with Sucha Góra and the line built earlier because in 1899 to Kral'ovan on the Kosice-Bohumín main line. In this way, military transports gained the possibility of a new route from Hungary to Galicia. Recall that there was an artillery range in Nowy Targ. The variant through Witów proposed by Count Zamoyski was abandoned...

Work began in 1902 and was completed on July 1, 1904. Initially, 2 trains a day to Sucha Góra and 2 to Czarny Dunajec passed through here. These were passenger trainsets and, when necessary, freight trains, operated by TKh12 steam locomotives. In the 1930s, the TKh12 steam locomotives were replaced by TKh1 steam locomotives, which had a smaller water tank... Because of this difference, it happened that at the stop in Rogoźnik it had to be done manually with the help of the station pump and buckets.

In Czarny Dunajec, a sawmill appeared next to the station, while in Rogoźnik there was a lime kiln and a brickyard. The lime kiln on the Rogoźnik rock, which is an offshoot of the Pieniny Rock Belt distant from the actual Pieniny Mountains. For less than a year in the period November 1938-September 1939, the line's terminus station in Sucha Góra, was in the territory of the Republic of Poland.

During the occupation period, Tkp-11, TKi-3 once TKp101-2 appeared at the Nowy Targ steam locomotive depot and ran courses to Sucha Góra.

The communist period brought changes. Trains on the Polish side ran only between Nowy Targ and Podczerwone. Gravel pits were built for the needs of Nowa Huta. This meant an increase in freight traffic, and thus the introduction of more powerful steam locomotives Tp1 (worked until 1966) and from the 1950s to the end Ty-2, briefly in 1952-1953 ran Tr-12.

Gravel pits were closed in 1965-67, and a few years later the lime kiln in Rogoźnik due to natural protection of the Rogoźnicka Rock. From the Czarny Dunajec station there were also