Tricity Rapid Transit Rail Ltd

7,000 shares (2.112%) Owned by the Municipality of Sopot.

4,000 shares (1.207%) Owned by the Municipality of Pruszcz Gdański.

620 shares (0.187%) Owned by the Municipality of Rumia.331438

History

Source:

Before 1945

The first steps towards building additional tracks for suburban service between Gdańsk and Sopot were taken in 1912. Station tracks were modified, and buildings were torn down on the planned route. The project was interrupted by the outbreak of World War I.

During the interwar period 1919 – 1939, the Tricity area was divided into two zones under two different governments. Gdańsk (Danzig) was a Free City not in Poland, while the new city of Gdynia was part of Poland. The transportation systems of the two zones were completely separate. Although rail transport in Gdańsk was operated by PKP, the city authorities of Gdańsk did not revive plans for an urban rail service.

World War II caused terrible devastation in Gdańsk. But after the war, the borders dividing the Tricity were abolished.

After World War II

When World War II ended in 1945, all of the Tricity became part of Poland.

The first plan for electrification of the Gdańsk railway network was developed by Prof. Roman Podoski of the Politechnika Warszawska, an advocate of railway electrification. The plan called for electrification of the existing tracks. But a much bolder and more expensive plan, calling for the construction of two additional tracks to serve traffic within the urban area, was proposed by Zbigniew Modliński, then director of the Gdańsk Regional Board of Polish Railways, and later Polish Vice-minister of Transport. The second plan was adopted. In October 1950 the decision was made to build separate tracks for the urban railway. A branch of the Warsaw 'Bureau of Railway Electrification' was established in Gdańsk to prepare the plans.

Rolling stock for the new service came to Poland as war reparations from Germany. During the war, Berlin S-Bahn cars were overhauled in the (then) German town of Luben to the east of Berlin. When that town, now known as Lubin, was ceded to Poland under the terms of the Potsdam Conference in 1945, eighty-four (84) S-Bahn cars were in the Luben repair shops. Additional cars were sent to countries east of Germany as war reparations, and while many were sent to Russia, at least 80 two-car sets, and possibly as many as 189 cars, remained in Poland. These cars were allocated to the Tricity region for use on suburban services, and one set is preserved in this condition at a museum at Koscierzyna.

The cars operated in Berlin on an 800 volt DC third rail power supply, a system which is still used today in Germany but was not used in Poland. They were modified in Poland by changing the power supply system from 800 V using third rail to a system using an overhead catenary. Also, the small lights were changed to larger ones that would conform with PKP standards. A total of 80 two-car electric multiple units, belonging to three different series ET165, ET166 and ET167 were modified. They were later renumbered as Polish series EW90, EW91 and EW92. A temporary depot for the German cars was established on the Gdańsk – Gdańsk Nowy Port route near Gdańsk Zaspa Towarowa station.

The first train from Gdańsk to Sopot ran on 2 January 1952. At that time, double-track existed only on the Gdańsk – Gdańsk Wrzeszcz segment, and the line to Sopot still had only one track. The second track to Sopot was completed on 22 June 1952. This second track allowed service frequency to be increased to every 10 minutes. On July 22, 1952, the double-track connection to Gdynia Orłowo was completed. On May 1, 1954, the electrified double-track reached Gdynia Główna railway station, the principal station in Gdynia. On 15 January 1956 the double track was extended further to Gdynia Chylonia, and on December 31, 1957, the first electric multiple units reached Wejherowo.

On the Gdynia – Wejherowo segment, SKM ran on tracks shared with other trains. Tracks built for urban rail service from Gdańsk to Gdynia were built to different specifications than mainline tracks, with curves of smaller radius, bridges built for lower loads, and a top speed limited to 70 km/h.

The electrification on the long-distance tracks was switched over to 3000 V DC, the Polish standard system, on 14 September 1969, and on 19 October 1969, it was switched to 3000 V DC between Gdynia Główna railway station and Wejherowo. Since the former Berlin cars only operated on 800 V DC, service between Gdynia and Wejherowo was taken over by new EN57 EMUS built in Poland by Pafawag in Wrocław. To relieve the pressure on the increasingly worn-out Berlin cars, these were only used on the line between Gdańsk Glowny and Gdynia Stocznia, and passengers travelling to further points changed trains at Gdynia Stocznia.

1976: Retirement of Berlin cars, power supply changed to 3000 V DC

It had been originally assumed that the useful life of the ex-German cars and the associated 800 V DC power supply would be 15 to 20 years, and in the early 1970s it became clear that the time for a complete replacement of rolling stock had come – to occur on a day called 'Day X.' Finally, on Sunday, 19 December 1976 all SKM traffic was halted in preparation for the switch-over, and on 20 December 1976, the entire SKM system was switched over to 3000 V DC, the standard Polish system. On the changeover date, the electrical substations supplying 800 V DC power were disconnected, and the power supply was reconnected to new electrical substations supplying 3000 V DC which had been built in advance. This required other changes, including lengthening of platforms and building a new depot complex in Gdynia Cisowa. The changeover caused widespread disruption in the Tricity, since it happened on the busy weekend before Christmas and the public did not receive adequate notice in advance

The former Berlin cars were immediately withdrawn from service, since they could not operate on 3000 V DC. One of the old Berlin trainsets can be viewed in the railway museum in Kościerzyna. In preparation for the changeover, a new series of cars called EW58 had been developed, incorporating technical innovations such as thyristor controls, anti-wheel-slip devices and so forth, which were expected to provide major improvements. The first EW58s were tested in 1974. But the EW58s required components purchased with Western hard currency, a major problem in Communist Poland. The technological innovations proved troublesome in actual practice, and the high energy demands of the EW58s strained the power supply. In the end, twenty-eight (28) three-car EW58 trainsets were produced by 1980.

The remainder of the SKM fleet was equipped with EN57 and EN71 cars built by Pafawag in Wrocław. The latter EN71 is a four-car version of the three-car EN57 trainset.

Until the 1970s, the ridership continued to grow heavily, which surprised even the builders of the line. In 1959 the number of travellers reached over 50 million passengers annually. About 152,700 residents were said to live within a distance no more than 800 metres from SKM stations. More than 40% of the Tricity population used this means of urban transport. However, this led to a problem that is still evident to this day—crowding in the trains. Back in those days, some people were forced to ride on the outside of the trains.

1970s and 80s

Traffic on the lines reached its peak during this period. The introduction of automatic block signals allowed an increase in train frequency to every 6 minutes. Construction of a third track on the Gdynia – Rumia segment also continued. Thanks to the change to 3000 V, the electric multiple units were able to operate beyond the Gdańsk – Wejherowo line, and run on the same tracks as standard trains in case of emergency. As a result, regular trains could also run on SKM tracks. In 1975, the annual number of passengers travelling by SKM exceeded 100 million people. Ridership sometimes reached 300 thousand passengers daily.

The eighties were a time of economic recession, not only for railroad. No new investments, except for the ones started in the 1970s, were made. The electrification of Polish railways was progressing rapidly instead, and plans appeared to electrify the Gdynia – Kościerzyna route. Construction of the first Polish nuclear power plant in Żarnowiec started in 1986, and three units were planned for this village in 1986–1990.

Unrealised plans

The original plans called for electrification of the line from Gdańsk to Pruszcz Gdański, but this plan was abandoned in the 1950s when it was realized that it would require moving some catenary supports which had been placed too close to the track. This catenary supports had been part of a railway line in Sudetenland electrified by the German Railways, then confiscated by the Soviet Red Army and brought to Poland. This former German equipment was subsequently moved to the Gdańsk – Nowy Port line and to the vicinity of Gdynia Postojowa where it remains in use today. Later plans in the 1960s for building new tracks to Pruszcz Gdański would have required demolition of the historic Gdańsk Główny railway station and replacing it with a postmodern concrete-block structure. This plan was not carried out.

In 1953-1954 a project was developed to electrify the Gdańsk – Nowy Port line using 1500 V DC current, and a number of EW90 cars were modified to operate at this voltage in 1954. The operation lasted until the 'first snowfalls' of winter, when their electric motors developed problems due to freezing and moisture in their insulation.

Several times in the 1960s and 1970s plans were made to connect Wrzeszcz with Kokoszki and Kartuzy. It is surprising that this line was not rebuilt and electrified, as the cost was relatively modest. A more ambitious project called for a Seaside SKM that was to run from Zaspa Towarowa to Sopot, east of the existing line, to relieve pressure on the crowded (Sopot - Gdańsk) section.

Time of changes

The fall of the communist regime and the change of economic system brought an enormous increase in the use of private automobiles, and as a result a decreasing number of passengers in urban mass transport. During the 1990s, the annual number of passengers served by SKM was halved, from 80 million to 40 million, but it continued to be an important urban transport service in Tricity.

Market economy forced many reorganizations in PKP. The main change was to leave the division made on a geographical basis and start to divide PKP in departments depending on responsibility. As a part of these changes, the Urban Passenger Transport Department was founded in Gdańsk, responsible for marketing trade side of SKM.

Alongside these changes, works on commercializing PKP were in progress and soon after SKM became a separate company in July 2001. In June 2005 the line to Nowy Port was finally closed, as it provided no income.

On December 2, 2005, SKM achieved 25th place in the top 100 Polish companies by Rzeczpospolita newspaper. It was the highest place in Pomeranian Voivodship and the highest position for the company from the PKP Group.