Category: Warsaw

Back at Kielce railway station, which had a light dusting of snow on the ground, getting the early afternoon train back to Warszawa Centralna. The service starts down in Krakow and ends in Olsztyn, with my ticket purchased on-line a couple of days ago.

Artwork at the end of the subway at Kielce railway station.

Kielce railway station waiting hall and ticket desks. The railway station was first constructed in the 1880s, but this is a much more modern building, albeit now quite dated.

The old style split-flap boards, I miss these from London Liverpool Street.

Lots of information boards, so it was clear from where the train was departing from.

More platform, track and sector boards, which fortunately do make sense for those passengers paying attention.

A busier service than I had anticipated, with the train being one of the older Stadler rolling stock, but it was all clean and well maintained.

Boarding the train in Kielce. The journey was all smooth and on-time, with the train being nearly full. The seat reservation system works well, with the signage being relatively clear, although not perfect. The staff member performing the ticket check was helpful and polite, although I didn’t see any refreshment trolley working its way up and down the aisles on this service.

The service starts from Kielce (where the 9hr 19 min) is above, then goes to Radom and then Warsaw. I noticed the very strange rail routing today on my map, although there is a line which goes directly from Radom to Warsaw without looping around. I assume it’s not a mainline, but there are no stops between Radom and Warsaw, so it’s an erratic route in geographic terms, which doesn’t make for the quickest of services.

And safely into Warsaw…. There was a little problem here as the staff couldn’t open the doors, which led to the guard who was standing near me phoning someone. There was a good 60 second wait for the doors to open, which is fine when you are near the guard and can see what’s happening, but it’s nervy for those further down who just assume only their doors weren’t opening.

It’s warmer in Warsaw and the air quality is better, I still have a sore throat that I’m putting down to air pollution in Kielce. Anyway, the train journey represented good value for money, around £6 for the three-hour long service.

Although I’ve been pleased with how good the services from Flixbus have been recently in Poland, I’m also conscious that I do prefer rail travel. The fare to get from Warsaw to Kielce was around £6 with both Flixbus and PKP Intercity, so on this occasion, I went for the rail option.

The ticket purchasing process is all very easy with PKP and it can be done on-line and the ticket is sent as a PDF file which can be saved to the phone. Although international tickets and berth tickets need to be printed, there’s no such need for intercity services within Poland. I completed the purchase on PKP’s Polish site, but they do have an English version.

Everything was very clear, this is platform 3 at Warszawa Centralna, with the yellow printed timetables visible, as well as on displays in numerous places. Like nearly everything else in Poland, the platform and railway station were clean and tidy.

This tells passengers where to wait on the platform depending on which carriage their reservation is at, with mine being the 14:25 service to Krakow.

The European way of presenting track information isn’t always obvious at first, this is platform 3, track 2.

And the sector of the platform I have to wait at. So, platform 3, track 2, sector 3.

Here comes the train, dead on time. I used my phone to take this and so it’s a bit blurry, but the signage along the train makes things nice and clear for passengers who want to check that this is the correct service. I appreciate this, I hate confusion when using public transport, especially when it’s avoidable. Also, trains across much of mainland Europe, and indeed the United States, have a number on, which makes it much easier to see which service is which. The UK don’t have this and perhaps they should….

It’s not the most luxurious, but second class is sufficiently comfortable. There is wi-fi and power at every seat, both of which worked fine. The passenger next to me had an argument with the conductor for about three minutes, which seemed very exciting. It was more of a complaint than an argument and I was disappointed that I couldn’t follow exactly what was going on and what was being said. It was something to do with the out of order toilet, but I’m not sure exactly what, nor why the discussion went on for so long. But, little dramas like this are exciting.

Disembarking at Kielce, the train arrived on time. I was surprised that the bulk of passengers got off here, I thought most would be going from Warsaw to Krakow.

And Kielce railway station. All was well with this journey, the staff were polite and the ticketing purchasing was easy to understand. There is a catering carriage on board, but a staff member also pushes a trolley through selling hot and cold drinks, as well as snacks.