×
Search this website for:
09.03.2021

Not only Luxtorpeda

In the 1930s, railway tourism in Poland began rapidly developing. The young, reborn state was able to pride itself on trains intended for the most demanding passengers. And it was not only the famous Luxtorpeda.

Passengers watching a film on the train, 1936

The reconstruction of railway after Poland regained independence was an extremely challenging task. More than half of the stations were destroyed, railway viaducts were ruined. Most of the locomotives taken over from the partitioners were too damaged and train cars were fitted with over a hundred different types of breaks, heating and lighting systems. If that wasn’t enough, the occupants left behind several dozen kinds of train tracks, connected in various ways.

 

Politicians agree

Even though, political groups rarely get along in terms of political, economical and social aspects of life, they were surprisingly unified in their approach to the transport industry. It wouldn’t have been enough to repair the railway infrastructure, it had to be built anew, since there were simply no railway lines from Warsaw to Poznan, Cracow or Lviv. Several hundred locomotives were bought from the West, and then Polish factories began producing them on their own. The crisis, which had left its mark on all branches of the economy, luckily passed and everyone began thinking on increasing the comfort of train travel and the usefullness of this way of transport for tourism.

In spring 1935, on the decision of the minister of transport Michał Butkiewicz, the League for Support of Tourism (LPT) was founded. The goal of the association was the widely understood promotion of tourism, especially in the context of mass use. It was probably due to the fact that the long-time chairman of LPT was the deputy minister of transport, Aleksander Bobkowski, that it was the railway which was to play a key role in the promotion of tourism. That way, the so-called popular trains gained much importance. Since 1933, year in and year out, several hundred special train cars rode out into the world. The idea of popular trains was based on the organisation of  touristically attractive trips for as many people as possible with the least expenses as possible.

 

Read the full text on the IPN's NextStopHistory website.

 

 

 


Subscribe to our newsletter

Sign up for a fresh look at history: stay up to date with the latest events, get new texts by our researchers, follow the IPN’s projects