Warsaw–Vienna railway

The Warsaw - Vienna Railway (Polish: Kolej referred Warszawsko - Wiedenska, also known as the Warsaw- Vienna Railway ( WWB ) ) was a railway company in the Kingdom of Poland, which belonged to the Russian Empire. The main line ran from Warsaw to the then Austrian border near Sosnowiec and thus corresponds to large parts of today's Line No. 1 (Warsaw - Katowice ) of the Polish State Railways PKP. She was the first mainline of the Tsarist Empire ( Older was only the short distance of 27 km circumference of St. Petersburg to Tsarskoye Selo ). They formed the Russian-Polish part of the Star of rail lines that connected middle of the 19th century, Berlin, Vienna and Warsaw on the former border triangle in Krakow together.

The route was from the outset European standard gauge of 1435 mm, an exception in the Tsarist Empire.

History

The project to connect Warsaw by a railway line to the Austrian border, was built in 1835. In 1839 a stock company was formed to build a railway from Warsaw to Skierniewice. However, the company went bankrupt in 1842 and the construction stopped. On July 4, 1843, the Congress Poland's government took over the administration of the Warsaw - Vienna railway line, and in 1844 the work was resumed. In November, the first section of Warsaw was opened to Pruszków with a train of the governor of Congress Poland. On 14 June 1845, the route to Warszawa was completed on 15 October of the year to Skierniewice and Łowicz, on 1 December 1846 to Częstochowa and on April 1, 1848 to the train station " Granica " (ie " limit " ) before the Austrian border in the forest area Maczki east of Sosnowiec. In the same year was completed, the railway bridge over the former border river Biała Przemsza to Szczakowa station on the went into operation on October 13, 1847 Krakow Upper Silesian Railway, which had in Myslowitz (Polish Myslowice ) Connection to the Upper Silesian railway to Breslau. On September 1, 1848 this was joined on the rail by William Kosel station in Kędzierzyn to Oderberg ( Bohumín ) with the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway to Vienna. A combination of Trzebinia near Krakow on Austrian territory north runway came only in 1856. The Vienna Station in Warsaw was opened in 1845 and remained until the 1920s in operation.

Between 1859 and 1862 two direct connections were made to the Prussian rail network, from Sosnowiec to Katowice and from Aleksandrów Kujawski to Thorn. 1866 a railway siding of Koluszki was built to Lodz. From 1857 to 1912, the track was leased to the German -Belgian Warsaw - Vienna railway AG.

The routes

• Warsaw - Warszawa - Żyrardów ( Ruda Guzowska ) - Skierniewice - Koluszki - Piotrków - Radomsko - Częstochowa - Zawiercie - Ząbkowice - Strzemieszyce Południowe (both now part of Dąbrowa Górnicza ) - former Russian- Austrian border

• Skierniewice - Łowicz since closed 1862/63 the cross-border connection to Thorn.
• Koluszki - Łódź
• Ząbkowice - Sosnowiec

The travel time for over 320 km route between Warsaw and the border station was in 1850 when the trains breakfast with lunch break 10 ½ hours in the afternoon trains without lunch break 9 ½.

Locomotives

The first locomotives came from the Cockerill plant in Seraing, the following in the 19th century by Borsig, then from 1901 until the First World War, Russian-made.

In the years 1898 and 1900, Wiener Neustadt locomotive factory built 18 locomotives of the Warsaw - Vienna railway line, as previously already supplied as a generic IId to the Emperor Ferdinand Northern Railway.