Poznan Glowny - Gdansk Glowny
Operator: PKP Intercity
Train Class: Intercity (IC)
Stock: EP09 Loco + Coaching Stock
Price: 81zl / £16.40 (1st Class)
Distance: 312km (3hr 14 mins)
Departure Experience
Poznan Glowny. A station that has seen a lot of changes over the years. It's now built into a huge shopping centre with a brand new ticket hall with plenty of PolRegio ticket machines that sell tickets for all operators. Perhaps the most I've ever seen in a Polish station. Good information in the main hall and easy access to the main platforms and high quality announcements. Also the new large e-book style interactive timetable displays in place of the usual paper posters. Very much a thumbs up and this is certainly one of Poland's best stations in many respects.
However it's not perfect. The old building has been abandoned, bordered up and in disrepair surrounded by beggers. It's closure has made the Poznan Glowny and the former Poznan Letni stations adjacent to each other segregated now. Despite this, both sets of platforms now fall under Poznan Glowny with the Letni name no longer being used. The Poznan Glowny platforms are to one side of the old building with the former Letni platforms to the other. The passage between the two is now closed, so it's a 5 minute walk between them and I saw locals confused by not being able to find a platform that they had to cross a car park to reach from another.
Rolling Stock (click for pics)
1x PKP class EP09 dating back from the late 1980s which was built by Pafawag
2x
2nd Class 170A with compartments
1x
2nd Class 111A without compartments
1x
2nd Class 156A with compartments
1x 2nd
Class 159A without compartments
3x
2nd Class 156A with compartments
1x
Bar Class 113A With 26 spaces
1x
1st Class 156A with compartments
1x
1st Class 158A without compartments
Honestly this is the kind of journey you really need to check on WagonWeb before booking. It is not uncommon to see trains which are set-up with older first class interior than second class or trains that have one very new carriage and next to it a much older one without half the features. Luckily I checked ahead and booked on the 158A carriage, which is the highest standard and most modern of the whole train which features a mix of refurbished, old and new carriages.
The 158A carriage, which is PKPs newest open interior carriage design for local hauled sets and it is rather nice inside at first glance. Seats with oceans of leg-room, passenger information system, good air-conditioning and heating, bin at each seat, plugs, tables, coat hangers and pull down blinds and huge amounts of luggage space between seats. Very smooth journey with nice blue and white lighting. Very pleasant environment and being the last carriage in the train with nothing else on the back, literally I could see the journey like someone looking out of the tail loco or DVT in the UK, without actually needing to be rail staff.
However the seats, whilst seeming nice, have a flaw. They are fully fabric without any metal or solid back to support them. This means as the seats jerk around a little bit as the train moves around rather than keeping still. Something you can get used to, but still a little annoying. Also the reservation system showed FREE for all the seats, like the FLIRT and whilst there was a good PIS screen at the end of each carrriage, it used a dark orange font that wasnt so easy to see. There were also a couple of monitors in my carriage but 80% of the screen was used for ads the same dark orange font used for the small bit at the bottom with info. Really is unacceptable to be sitting in first class and the PIS to be deemed far less important than the space taken up by ads.
Arrival Experience at Gdansk.
Arrived 15 minutes late as we had to stop at Bydgoszcz for 15 minutes because of a technical break due to the loco pulling our 11 carriage train overheating, at least what I can gather from my limited Polish.
Gdansk Glowny looks like a very unloved station, at least to arrive into. I did not notice a single timetable display on the platforms when I was getting off my train and there were also no screens at all or even platform numbers. Having been around Poland a fair bit, it came to quite a surprise that this station has been unloved so much, when so many smaller cities have had such extensive work done to their main stations.
Walking down to the subway to exit the station also did not make me feel any better as that also looked run down and unloved, with minimal and conflicting signage. Maybe just my platform, I felt, maybe the others and the main hall will be better. One things for sure, I was going to find out in a few days...
Coming next:
- How hard can it possibly be to buy a ticket for and travel on the SKM commuter railway that runs between Gdansk, Gdynia and Sopot, surely relatively straightforward, right?
- The good,the bad and the ugly refurbishments of 50+ year old EMU rolling stock gets tested out
