Re-Instating a Single Mountain Track

Part 1/

Re-Instating a Single Mountain Track

Some months ago we visited the Owl Mountains in Poland.  Where several of Hitler's Mountain Bunkers were being built and where thousands of people died building them.  Along the way we found a track bed, this is the railway used to transport the prisoners, equipment, concrete and waste rock from the insides of the mountain. This line has many bridges in disrepair but most of the track was still in place. It is with this line that we have decided to write a series of Blogs about.

The above image is of the bridge before renovation work has begun and give you an insight as to what many years of closure can do to an un-maintained railway line.

Look closely at the railings, the walkway has gone and the railings are rusty and weak now.

Here you can see the damage on the bridge, total neglect at the time of taking this photo.  A concrete walkway has been added in the middle of the track to gain access to one side and back.  Needless to say this bridge does not look like this now - see further below.

But walking down the line away from the bridge we found hundreds of these recent markings giving us a suggestion that "is there going to be some effort to make a cycle path or possibly upgrade the line".  Yes this has been one of the many snowy days we have been to this line.

So back to this bridge, and here we can see that a major renovation is in Progress.  The bridge is now covered in wooden walkways preparing for repair work to start.

Here we can see the huge amount of preparation work that has taken place in order to start the repair and upgrade.  We were temped to walk on it but as there were no workmen on site we decided not to venture and will leave it for an update visit.

Further above we have a photo of the track and sleepers etc in place - but here we can see that everything has been removed deemed no good and needing to be replaced.  Note all the walkways now in place so that the workers can make their repairs.

Another view of the skeleton of this amazing bridge. Hopefully a train will pass over again in the near future.

We have already walked the track bed in both directions for several kilometers and our next blog part 2 we will show some of the past rail line and who was it's manufacturer and the year it was made giving us chance to time stamp the line.

Continued on 2/

All of the images contained within these blogs are copyright protected

A Sony Xperia Mobile Phone was used to shoot these images