Just as a follow on to my previous post, this features memories of childhood trips to Poland by train to visit my grandparents and other Polish relations, featuring things you never see now. Some of you might find it interesting. We would go every two years.
Traveling on a ferry across the North Sea from Harwich Parkeston Quay to Hoek van Holland. The crossing would take six hours as part of the Day Continental service from Liverpool Street, and the ferry was the St George I believe. The boat train from London was usually Mk 1 stock and a class 31 or 37 at the head.
Arriving at the Hoek to find the station full of trains. There was the local one to Amsterdam of course, usually one other, and then our train, the Nord West express. As you walked down the platform, the train would consist of DB coaching stock in green or blue for Berlin, Hamburg, and Copenhagen. There was also PKP green couchette and seating coaches for Warsaw. However, as we only went every two years, my dad would pay extra for the very last coach at the head of the train. A very imposing dark green coach with ribbed sides, brass badging on the side, and lace curtains at the windows. The RZD Russian sleeping car from Hoek to Moscow via Berlin and Warsaw. Complete with stern looking sleeping car conductor.
Ex BR electric loco at the head of the consist, that used to run over Woodhead. Sorry, I don't know the class.
Sitting on the plush bottom bunk, looking out over the flat farmland of Holland as the train made its first stops at Rotterdam Schiedam and Utrecht Centraal. Little did I know then that as the train went from Rotterdam to Utrecht, it passed through the town station of Woerden, the Dutch town in which I now live.
Remembering the first of many border guards that would board the train during the journey, the first being at Hengelo I believe near the Dutch/West German border.
My dad doing ilicit money exchange with the sleeping car conductor, exchanging US dollars for Polish Zlotys. Also agreeing to help the conductor smuggle packs of 200 Marlboro in exchange for unlimited tea, served in glasses with exotic looking holders.
Other passengers changing into pyjamas for the entire trip.
The scary (for a little boy) passage between two coaches, via the concertina curtains and the bouncing corrugated step plates, with the track passing beneath.
Being awoken in the early hours of the morning by loud rapping on the door and the light being switched on, as the West German guards and then the East German guards did the passport check at Helmstedt.
Being awoken again by more passport checks at the East German/West Berlin border at Marienborn.
Watching out of the window as we traversed West Berlin at Hauptbahnhof and Zoo stations, and even more intense passport checks by East German guards.
Watching out of the window again as the train slowly passed through the Berlin Wall, seeing all the watch towers, barbed wire, no mans land, and the wall itself as the train passed through on an elevated section of track.
Arriving into Berlin Ostbahnhoff and seeing green DR coaching stock and Mitropa sleeping and restaurant cars on various other trains.
Remembering the grim and depressing looking blocks of flats near the station, so different from what I saw in West Berlin.
Remembering our Russian car and the PKP cars being shunted into a siding near Ostbahnhoff for a couple of hours with no explanations, and no one asking, it was just accepted, and then finally coupling up to some DDR stock and trundling to Frankfurt Oder for the final border check with Poland.
Remembering the Polish PKP locos that reminded me of class 82 and 83's from the WCML.
Finally arriving into Warsawa Gdansk station some 28 hours after leaving Liverpool Street, and seeing lots of massive black PKP steam locos puffing through the station pulling iron ore or coal wagons. And about twenty of my relatives waiting on the platform as arriving cousins from the West was a big event in those days.
The return journey was the same, except even more intense at Berlin Ostbahnhoff. As another poster said, they would run barking guard dogs under the train, use mirrors, lift all the seats in the compartments or all the mattresses in the sleeper. They would search the locomotive, and border guards would ride the train back to West Berlin.
I was in Berlin Ostbahnhoff a few weeks ago, and now it is just a sleepy Berlin station. It was strange to stand there and remember back to those Cold War days !
France have high speed post trains.
Currently on holiday in the South of France and spotted two ex SNCF coaches with the inward opening doors that I described, stabled in the old Frejus St Raphael auto train yard. There seemed to be people living in those coaches.
Something quite odd that's not likely to happen again is the mixed train plus plane service "the silver arrow" that linked Paris and London in pre-chunnel times.
