Barciur
OBS Chief
Hello all! As you may or may not know, I have posted some travelogues on this forums years ago. I always had them with a lot of pictures and details, often requiring a large amount of posts so that things load properly. I am returning and I will post two travelogues from my summer trips. This first one will be a short incursion into Ukraine which I have done to test out the new train running between Warsaw and Lviv, with a change of trains on the border, and returning with a more established Intercity+ train. Here is a map of my journey. The light blue is the route of my first trip, and the Intercity+ back to Poland - so both international trains. The brown is a regional rail trip, and the red is my Polish connection from the border town of Przemyśl back to Lublin.
Without further ado, enjoy the armchair journey alongside me as we venture into Ukraine!
We are now at the Lublin main station, with the old departures board showing our train departing to Rava-Russkaia at 23:46
Here's the arriving train. The train is operated by a private company, SKPL, on the contract with Ukrainian Railroads. The staff is Ukrainian, the operator is SKPL on Polish territory. The train is Duwag Wadloper, a Dutch DMU built in the early 80s and now renovated and polonized to run on Polish tracks. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Düwag_Wadloper
Inside, there is a storage car with no seat reservations, but it has seats on the side that are subway-style. Therefore, some people made their own beds out of them. Otherwise, it stores a lot of suitcases.
It is set up as a regular, open space car with 2+2 configuration, and a table seating of 4 in the middle.
This train only runs to the border, as there is gauge break at the Polish-Ukrainian border. We follow non-electrified single track from Rejowiec to Hrebenne, going at top speed of 40-50 mph along the route.
After about 3.5 hours of clacking along for just 110 miles, we arrive at the border, where first the Polish exit checks take place. You stay in your seat as the border and then customs agents do their work.
You still get stamped, which is about to be phased out in November, as the EU is going to an all-digital entry-exit records system which will no longer stamp. Sad to see the era of stamps go away, but we do live in the digital world nowadays and it is what it is!
Here we are entering Ukraine. This is an exact place of the border.
The Ukrainian border guards will also take our passports, but they will actually take them off the train and walk away with them somewhere....
Without further ado, enjoy the armchair journey alongside me as we venture into Ukraine!
We are now at the Lublin main station, with the old departures board showing our train departing to Rava-Russkaia at 23:46
Here's the arriving train. The train is operated by a private company, SKPL, on the contract with Ukrainian Railroads. The staff is Ukrainian, the operator is SKPL on Polish territory. The train is Duwag Wadloper, a Dutch DMU built in the early 80s and now renovated and polonized to run on Polish tracks. You can read more about it here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Düwag_Wadloper
Inside, there is a storage car with no seat reservations, but it has seats on the side that are subway-style. Therefore, some people made their own beds out of them. Otherwise, it stores a lot of suitcases.
It is set up as a regular, open space car with 2+2 configuration, and a table seating of 4 in the middle.
This train only runs to the border, as there is gauge break at the Polish-Ukrainian border. We follow non-electrified single track from Rejowiec to Hrebenne, going at top speed of 40-50 mph along the route.
After about 3.5 hours of clacking along for just 110 miles, we arrive at the border, where first the Polish exit checks take place. You stay in your seat as the border and then customs agents do their work.
You still get stamped, which is about to be phased out in November, as the EU is going to an all-digital entry-exit records system which will no longer stamp. Sad to see the era of stamps go away, but we do live in the digital world nowadays and it is what it is!
Here we are entering Ukraine. This is an exact place of the border.
The Ukrainian border guards will also take our passports, but they will actually take them off the train and walk away with them somewhere....