Goerlitz - Wroclaw

[WestCoast]

Hi all,

Has anyone ever done this stretch recently? It seems like all the direct trains I had wanted to travel on have been totally canned, I had wanted to travel Dresden-Wroclaw on the RE service last year but it's completely gone it seems?

Fast forward, I had a long weekend in Wroclaw this Easter and did a day trip to Goerlitz, changing at Wegliniec. Travelled on a KD Newag train for the longest bit - was every bit as nice as a SBB Stadler or such - fast acceleration, smooth & extra comfy seats. Changing onto a leased(?) DB Regio train at Wegliniec which was going through to Dresden - Trilex I think is the operator after it crosses the border?

Goerlitz is also a beautiful surprise, really nice Old Town and fascinating with the foot bridge connecting to the other half of the town in Poland, Zgorzelec. The station is also very historic it seems, you can tell it was a big junction station back when Lower Silesia was German/Prussian. There's a map on the wall showing the line to Leignitz, Breslau etc as they were.

The price of the Polish ticket was outrageously low - KD have a weekend ticket which you can travel on to Goerlitz for 35 zloty (£7.10 GBP), so four and half hours there and back for that and you could use it all weekend across their network. Seems low even by local standards!

My question is do we know if they are going to extend the KD service from Wroclaw to Goerlitz by electrifying the line? The diesel KD services from Jelenia Gora seem to go all the way to Goerlitz. It seems Poland has fully upgraded their side of the line to Wegliniec - and looks like they are electrifying further towards the border- but Germany has evidently not electrified their side at all. This arrangement seems temporary but I could be wrong.

 

[433N]

Sorry, I don't have the answer to your question but could I just ask if you flew direct to Wroclaw from Scotland. I fancy putting Poland way up my list but would prefer to explore to the south of Warsaw.

Agree on Goerlitz ... well, worth a visit. When we were there, they were filming a cookery programme on that bridge - must have been famous since there were alot of people going up and getting freebies. Zgorzelec was a little less worth a visit ... unless you wanted tobacco.

 

[duesselmartin]

Hi all,

Has anyone ever done this stretch recently? It seems like all the direct trains I had wanted to travel on have been totally canned, I had wanted to travel Dresden-Wroclaw on the RE service last year but it's completely gone it seems?

Fast forward, I had a long weekend in Wroclaw this Easter and did a day trip to Goerlitz, changing at Wegliniec. Travelled on a KD Newag train for the longest bit - was every bit as nice as a SBB Stadler or such - fast acceleration, smooth & extra comfy seats. Changing onto a leased(?) DB Regio train at Wegliniec which was going through to Dresden - Trilex I think is the operator after it crosses the border?

Goerlitz is also a beautiful surprise, really nice Old Town and fascinating with the foot bridge connecting to the other half of the town in Poland, Zgorzelec. The station is also very historic it seems, you can tell it was a big junction station back when Lower Silesia was German/Prussian. There's a map on the wall showing the line to Leignitz, Breslau etc as they were.

The price of the Polish ticket was outrageously low - KD have a weekend ticket which you can travel on to Goerlitz for 35 zloty (£7.10 GBP), so four and half hours there and back for that and you could use it all weekend across their network. Seems low even by local standards!

My question is do we know if they are going to extend the KD service from Wroclaw to Goerlitz by electrifying the line? The diesel KD services from Jelenia Gora seem to go all the way to Goerlitz. It seems Poland has fully upgraded their side of the line to Wegliniec - and looks like they are electrifying further towards the border- but Germany has evidently not electrified their side at all. This arrangement seems temporary but I could be wrong.

The Dresden to Wroclaw service seem to come and Go with lots of disagreement regarding financing.
It is on todays timetable roughly two hourly.
The summer time table dir Poland might not yet be in the database but I assume it will run this year.

 

[WestCoast]

Ah no problem just interesting to hear anyone who has been to that part of the world. Yes I did, flew Ryanair direct from Glasgow to Wroclaw, believe they also fly from Edinburgh. 70 quid or so return with all fees.

Agree, I didn't mind Warsaw but I'd put Wroclaw, Krakow & Lublin way ahead of them for a visit, also Gdansk is a favourite of mine up in the north. I actually liked Wroclaw the best of all of them as it feels less busy and you can definitely see its mixed heritage of German & Polish in the architecture of which a lot has been restored very nicely.

 

[WestCoast]

The Dresden to Wroclaw service seem to come and Go with lots of disagreement regarding financing.
It is on todays timetable roughly two hourly.
The summer time table dir Poland might not yet be in the database but I assume it will run this year.

DB Reiseauskunft is just showing for today the TLX,KD 1 stop connection changing at Wegliniec which is easy enough (trains wait side by side and presumably wait for each other), changing between German diesel DMU and the Polish EMU. It just seems to make sense to me that they would electrify the line for the short section between Wegliniec & Goerlitz so the train could run direct and it would hook up with an eventual electrified line Goerlitz - Dresden. Maybe just wishful thinking

I think this is quite a new arrangement because none of the DB automated announcements at stations said Wegliniec they just announced the train to ___________ is now arriving

 

[duesselmartin]

The last time I travelled that route was in the year 2000 in a Dresden to Warsawa and Krakow sleeper.
The train changed locos in Görlitz, Wegliniec and then got shunted in Wroclaw with the Krakow section joining the service from Berlin Zoo.
Now all a faded memory.

 

[30907]

I don't think Goerlitz-Dresden is high priority for electrification, and Wegliniec is electrified more for freight which uses the border crossing at Horka.
However, PKP is electrifying to Zgorzelec, and there is lobbying on the German side... I wonder if our German readers can add to this.

 

[dutchflyer]

Not being german I just read a list of more as 200 different sections/routes that are (Q in Parliament to the transport minister) that are on the list for possible electrification on DSO-forum. This one also is, but does not have high priority-densely run lines in urban areas score much higher. IN DE they have a kind of universal appraisal system that also covers environment and predicted benefits for investments in roads/rails/bridges etc.-if its >1,00 you get a sizeable grant for it from central govmt. When its approved it gets on a list and the money only starts to flow when it gets on top of that list and in the yearly budget. Besides that-they currently have an enormous shortage of qualified workers for such jobs (both engineering/planning and the dirty-hands job).
For some quirky reason the cross-border section Görlitz-Zgorzelec is FREE (which simply means the guard will not come to check there), due to unsurmountable problems that would arise when the CIV/SISC INTernational tariff system would apply.
Note that PR (polregio) still has a weekendticket for 45 PLN (same price since many years), valid even more days like on easter-untill 1/1/19 it also covered all of KD, but they stepped out of it-the many other local operators still accept it (except of coruse KM around Warszawa-they never did).