The Vistula Railway (

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles, people from Poland or of Polish descent * Polish chicken *Polish brothers (Mark Polish and Michael Polish, born 1970), American twin screenwr ...

: ''Kolej Nadwiślańska'') was a railroad system, opened on August 17, 1877. It ran from northwest to southeast, through the territory of the former

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It w ...

, known after the

November Uprising The November Uprising (1830–31), also known as the Polish–Russian War 1830–31 or the Cadet Revolution, was an armed rebellion in the heartland of partitioned Poland against the Russian Empire. The uprising began on 29 November 1830 in W ...

as Privislinsky Krai (part of the Russian Empire). It was, upon construction, the longest railroad in the Congress Poland. Starting in Mława, which back then was located near the border with the

German Empire The German Empire (),Herbert Tuttle wrote in September 1881 that the term "Reich" does not literally connote an empire as has been commonly assumed by English-speaking people. The term literally denotes an empire – particularly a hereditary ...

, the connection ran through Ciechanów, Warsaw,

Dęblin Dęblin is a town at the confluence of Vistula and Wieprz rivers, in Lublin Voivodeship, Poland. Dęblin is the part of the agglomeration with adjacent towns of Ryki and Puławy, which altogether has over 100 000 inhabitants. The population of ...

Lublin Lublin is the ninth-largest city in Poland and the second-largest city of historical Lesser Poland. It is the capital and the center of Lublin Voivodeship with a population of 336,339 (December 2021). Lublin is the largest Polish city east of t ...

, and Chełm, to the strategic railroad junction of

Kovel Kovel (, ; pl, Kowel; yi, קאוולע / קאוולי ) is a city in Volyn Oblast (province), in northwestern Ukraine. It serves as the administrative center of Kovel Raion (district). Population: Kovel gives its name to one of the oldest runi ...

(now Ukraine). In Mława, the system reached the Prussian railway network, as the nearby German border station of Działdowo (Soldau) was another important junction, with connections to

Gdańsk Gdańsk ( , also ; ; csb, Gduńsk;Stefan Ramułt, ''Słownik języka pomorskiego, czyli kaszubskiego'', Kraków 1893, Gdańsk 2003, ISBN 83-87408-64-6. , Johann Georg Theodor Grässe, ''Orbis latinus oder Verzeichniss der lateinischen Benen ...

(Danzig), Olsztyn (Allenstein), and Toruń (Thorn). Altogether, the length of the system was 522 kilometers, and originally, it was a broad gauge line. In 1887, the Vistula River Railroad employed 2364 workers. During the World War II (1939) the railroad was partitioned forming the Soviet Kovel Railways as one of its successors. In 1953 Kovel Railways were merged with Lviv Railways. Lublin Station still has the original main station building dating from 1877 (though rebuilt in the 1920s), which opened together with the railroad and is well preserved to this day.

References

International railway lines Railway lines in Poland Railway lines in Russia Railway companies of Russia Railway companies of Poland {{Poland-rail-transport-stub

See also

References