Being the last place in the world to operate scheduled standard gauge steam passenger services has not prevented a tourism crisis in Wolsztyn, the attractive town in Western Poland that until mid-2023 was home of the Wolsztyn Experience (WE) and its world-renowned footplate experience courses.
During the 25 years WE operated (1998-2023) countless thousands of overseas visitors flocked to Wolsztyn, but its closure following the death in June 2023 of founder Howard Jones MBE has led to the current crisis facing the town and its devastating impact on local businesses.
One of those badly affected has been Natalia Sroczynska, owner and manager the popular Locomotiva restaurant in the town centre, who misses the groups of visitors from as far afield as the US, Australia and the Far East, which accounted for as much as 30% of the restaurant’s business at popular times of the year.
“There are no tourists from abroad in Wolsztyn now”, laments Natalia, “we used to see people from the UK, the US, Germany, Japan, Korea, the Netherlands, but there is no-one now. “During the peak months of May-June and from September onwards they were a vital part of our business.
“Overseas visitors would often make bookings here for groups of 15 to 25 people, but this has all gone now. The problem lies with the Parowozownia (steam depot) because the depot manager there really doesn’t like tourists, and is more interested in country and western music than steam locomotives.”
That absence of international visitors is in spite of there still being timetabled steam services on six days a week, when the depot’s one active main line steam locomotive, Mikado (2-8-2) Pt47-65, operates a weekday afternoon round trip to Zbaszynek, on the Berlin-Warsaw main line, and a Saturday round trip to Poznan, 50 miles (80kms) north-east of Wolsztyn.
While the Zbaszynek service makes it relatively easy to travel by steam to Wolsztyn by connecting there from one of the regular Berlin-Warsaw expresses, the two hour afternoon round trip, running partly in hours of darkness during the winter months, is hardly planned with tourists in mind.
Under the timetable that operated until December 2023, the steam loco worked two weekday round trips to Leszno, 29 miles south-west of Wolsztyn, with its second trip of the day offering the chance to alight en route at the lakeside resort of Boszkowo or have lunch at a fine hotel near the next stop, Wloszakowice, before an afternoon return to Wolsztyn on the steam service.
Sadly there are no such attractions at Zbaszynek, a large and rather desolate junction station that serves what was once an important railway town, with the current steam timetable seeing the train arrive at 15.04, then hastily run around its two coaches before returning to Wolsztyn exactly half an hour later (15.34).
There are occasional special trains on Sundays and holidays using the Wolsztyn steam locos – there is also a 0-6-0 tank engine suitable for local specials and part of the former line to a place called Nowa Sol as far as Swietno survives as a museum line and sees use by a handful of special trains each year.
But what Wolsztyn depot badly needs is someone with marketing skills and capable of seeing the uniqueness of the depot and the value to the local economy of promoting it properly and offering a broad enough range of steam activity to bring back those many hundreds overseas visitors who deserted the town with the demise of the Wolsztyn Experience.
Apart from the rather limited steam operation, one recent change to the railway scene in Wolsztyn was the reopening in September 2024 of the section of line to Powodowo, first station along a route to a place called Sulechow, which closed to passenger traffic three decades ago, but survived for use by freight traffic from a now-closed cement works.
Travelling there on a near empty railcar it is not immediately obvious why this section of line was reopened, but it is a pleasant way of spending an hour and travelling through more of the local forest, with the line seeing four round trips on weekdays only, two of which are through workings to or from Poznan.
As I have written before, Wolsztyn is a very easy place to reach from the UK, either travelling via Berlin or Warsaw and connecting with the steam service at Zbaszynek, as mentioned above, or by taking one of the regular Ryanair or Wizzair flights to Poznan from a number of UK airports.
From the airport a 159 bus gets you to the main rail station (Poznan Glowny) in about 20 minutes (PLN6.00/£1.15). Then Wolsztyn is an 80-minute, 50-mile trip on a smart Koleje Wielkopolskie (KW) railcar, for a fare of PLN25.60 (£5.10), or PLN19.20 (£3.70) for anyone aged 60 or over.
The KW website (www.koleje-wielkopolskie.com.pl) is great for finding and printing off PDF line timetables (Rozklad Jazdy) but it has no English version, so for buying print-at-home tickets for local journeys I use an excellent Polish website http://www.Koleo.pl which can be programmed in English and sells tickets for all the many Polish operators, including KW.
A single on the Wolsztyn-Zbaszynek steam service costs just PLN12.50 (£2.50) – or PLN9.37 (£1.85) for the over 60s – but the vast majority of its passengers are students and local people returning from Wolsztyn to one of its remote calling points, with scarcely a tourist to be seen.
Yet Wolsztyn is a delightful place to visit, with an attractive old town and museum dedicated to its most famous son, Robert Koch, as well as an imprssive folk museum. There are two large lakes to walk around, some fine restaurants, and a decent hotel (Kaukaska) a short walk from the railway station, where bed & breakfast costs PLN180 (£35.00) a night.
For regular updates on steam activity at Wolsztyn, go to http://www.parowozy.com.pl
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