Managing to organise a three-night autumn mini-break to Poland, and spend two days riding on Europe’s last standard gauge steam services for a total cost of well under £250.00 might sound pie in the sky, but a recent trip has proved that such things can still be done.
In a crazy world where my return Ryanair flights from Stansted to Poznan cost less (£35.02) than an off-peak return from Haslemere to Stansted (£39.75 with railcard), the total cost of a four-day break, including all fares, food and accommodation, came in at just £224.30.
There had been fears that the untimely death in June of Wolsztyn Experience founder Howard Jones MBE would spell an end to regular steam working from this famous locomotive depot in Western Poland, but daily steam services resumed on 4 September 2023 after a gap of almost a year.
So more than 25 years after Wolsztyn Experience support ensured it became Europe’s last outpost of scheduled working standard gauge steam, it is once again possible to travel behind Polish Mikado (2-8-2) Pt47-65 as it takes students and locals on its twice-daily 46km (29-mile) trip from Wolsztyn to Leszno.
Following closure of the Wolsztyn Experience, which had attracted enthusiasts from all over the world to its famous footplate experience courses, funding of continued steam working is now down to a local Polish organisation, so how long it can continue is the great unknown.
Wolsztyn remains a delightful place to visit, with an attractive old town, two large lakes to walk around, a number of fine restaurants, and a decent hotel (Kaukaska) that is less than ten minutes’ walk from the newly re-built railway station, where it costs just PLN150 (£29.40) a night for bed and breakfast.
It is also a place that is easy to reach, with regular Ryanair and Wizzair flights to Poznan from a number of UK airports and a very good local service on the 50-mile route from Poznan’s main station to Wolsztyn, or by rail from Berlin on one of the two-hourly Berlin-Warsaw expresses to the junction station of Zbaszynek, from where there are irregular local services to Wolsztyn.
From Poznan Airport regular 159 bendy buses get you to the main rail station in about 20 minutes (PLN6.00/£1.15). Then Wolsztyn is an 80-minute, 50-mile trip on one of the new Koleje Wielkopolskie (KW) railcars for a fare of PLN24.90 (£4.90) or PLN18.67 (£3.70) for anyone aged 60 or over.
While the KW website (www.koleje-wielkopolskie.com.pl) is great for finding and printing off PDF line timetables (Rozklad Jazdy) it has no English version, so for buying print-at-home tickets for local journeys I discovered an excellent Polish site www.Koleo.pl which is in English and sells tickets for all the many Polish operators, including KW.
The current steam timetable sees weekday departures from Wolsztyn for Leszno at 06.03 and 11.43, with return services from Leszno at 07.50 and 13.44, while on Saturdays there is a single round trip from Wolsztyn to Poznan, which departs at 12.40, reaches Poznan at 14.43, and returns at 16.24.
When a single on the Wolsztyn-Leszno steam service costs just PLN17.50 (£3.40) – or a mere PLN13.12 (£2.60) for the over 60s – it is rather surprising and disappointing that this area does not feature more prominently in the travel plans of British tourists and rail enthusiasts.
Having passed through a very busy Stansted Airport on 18 October 2023 it did seem rather remarkable on the following day when I was clearly the only tourist or enthusiast aboard the lightly-loaded 11.43 departure from Wolsztyn and had the same experience on my return steam-hauled journey from Wloszakowice.
Travelling on the second Leszno service of the day, one popular trip with regular visitors is to take a 45-minute journey to the small town of Wloszakowice, where an arrival at 12.28 gives you plenty of time to take a five-minute walk from the station and enjoy a wonderful lunch at the stylish Toscania restaurant before returning to Wolsztyn on the steam-hauled departure at 14.17.
Wloszakowice is one of only two remaining passing places on the route to Leszno and is a great place to capture photos of the departing steam locomotive. The other crossing station and vantage point is Nowawies Mochy, where, like Wloszakowice, there are semaphore signals controlled from within the station building, as well as by a crossing keeper at the south end of the station complex.
I only had a wait of 40 minutes at Nowawies Mochy for the steam service to appear at 12.06, having alighted from a northbound railcar after a trip to Leszno. But long gaps in the timetable meant a lengthy wait before returning to Wolsztyn at 13.53, although there is a shop with beer not far from the station and an ancient waiting room to shelter in on a wet and gloomy autumn day.
Among a number of cultural attractions in Wolsztyn is a fascinating museum (photo above) devoted to the life and work of Robert Koch (1843-1910), the German physician who discovered the causes of a number of infectious diseases such as anthrax, cholera and tuberculosis. Koch moved to Wolsztyn from nearby Rakoniewice in 1872 and worked there until his fame took him to Berlin in 1880. He won the Nobel Prize in 1905.
Not far from the Koch museum, and on the same side of a street appropriately called Ul. Doktora Kocha, is the pick of Wolsztyn’s restaurants, a smart cellar bar called Piwniczna, where from its extensive menu I enjoyed a pork chop and chips with a bottle of dark beer from a brewer called Kozel for a modest cost of PLN46.00 (£9.00).
For regular updates on steam activity at Wolsztyn, go to www.parowozy.com.pl
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