Saturday, September 11, 2010

Anatomy of a rural mountain railway


The 51 km scenic railway line through the hill country of lower Silesia from Waldenburg to Glatz in Germany needed a lot of perseverance by those who fought for its construction. However, their ambition was achieved in 1880.

After 1945, with Stalin's redrawing of the maps of Eastern Europe, the railway found itself in Poland, and the termini were renamed Walbrzych and Klodzko respectively.

This new book on this undulating, twisting railway line gives the story of its construction, engineering, stations and sidings and discusses the functioning of the line and its connections from inception until its renovation and re-launch in 2009. Today diesel railcars take an hour and a half to traverse the 51 km.

For those who don't read Polish, the book has over 200 photographs (some in colour), many line drawings and timetables from 1917 to 2009.

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