Ukrainian trains still running

[Willbridge]

Ukraine conflict: Thousands of people try to force their way onto a train to Poland - BBC News

Ukraine invasion: Warning shots fired to control crowds at Kyiv station - BBC News

This is quite like the situation in Paris that was portrayed in the film Casablanca, described in the memoir Destiny's Journey by Alfred Doeblin, and in Brave Genius by Sean B. Carroll. Except that it's worse and depends on the power for traction remaining on.

What authors and journalists rarely discuss is the viewpoint of the employees trying to run the railway. On the Eastern front of WWII, Deutsche Reichsbahn used to run equipment trains west after the Wehrmacht pulled out, to keep the Soviet Army from using them and to replace the cars destroyed in those History Channelesque clips from Allied fighter-bomber attacks. I've been caught up doing my work in chaotic crowds a few times, but no one was threatening to bomb or strafe me; health risks in the crowds were the danger. The ability of humans to carry on with their work can be amazing.

Two films do come to mind that showed railway employees caught up in a chaotic situation: The Train and Bhowani Junction. Perhaps others can be suggested.

 

[jis]

I have traveled on a train from New Delhi to Howrah (Kolkata) in the middle of the 1971 India - Pakistan War that created Bangladesh. The ride was complete with blacked out train and all that as long as we were in areas that were within reach of the Pakistan Air Force. My ride was after India had established air supremacy in the east, so the blackout was discontinued east of Allahabad (today's Prayagraj). The situation was quite crowded (more than the usual) and chaotic at stations only in the East what with millions of refugees streaming in from then East Pakistan. As far as railway staff experience goes I suppose employees of the South Eastern, Eastern and Northeast Frontier Railways bore the brunt, both of huge military shipments and refugee movements.

There are several films from the time of Partition of India in 1947, which at same same time show the chaos and are gruesome at times, because that is the way it was. I guess Train to Pakistan (based on Khushwant Singh's novel of the same title) is one of the more famous ones. One of the other chaotic killings that took place on trains in India was after Indira Gandhis' assassination, when even prestige trains like the Rajdhani arrived in Delhi with gruesome scenes of butchered bodies of Sikhs in the trains, but I have not seen any of the several movies that have come out since then about that period.

 

[dadonatrain]

I’ll,Google this myself but I’ll,ask,here too since so many of you know so much about rail travel.

There is a border btwn Ukraine and Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. I wonder if there are rail lines people might try to get out that way. Right now they could use all the help they can get!

 

[dadonatrain]

Ukraine conflict: Thousands of people try to force their way onto a train to Poland - BBC News

Ukraine invasion: Warning shots fired to control crowds at Kyiv station - BBC News

This is quite like the situation in Paris that was portrayed in the film Casablanca, described in the memoir Destiny's Journey by Alfred Doeblin, and in Brave Genius by Sean B. Carroll. Except that it's worse and depends on the power for traction remaining on.

What authors and journalists rarely discuss is the viewpoint of the employees trying to run the railway. On the Eastern front of WWII, Deutsche Reichsbahn used to run equipment trains west after the Wehrmacht pulled out, to keep the Soviet Army from using them and to replace the cars destroyed in those History Channelesque clips from Allied fighter-bomber attacks. I've been caught up doing my work in chaotic crowds a few times, but no one was threatening to bomb or strafe me; health risks in the crowds were the danger. The ability of humans to carry on with their work can be amazing.

Two films do come to mind that showed railway employees caught up in a chaotic situation: The Train and Bhowani Junction. Perhaps others can be suggested.

I wonder if another risk is that as long as trains do keep running OUT of Ukraine to Poland or anywhere they eventually won’t get back to take more people out!

 

[jis]

Apparently most of the refugee traffic is now flowing towards Poland by train.

 

[MARC Rider]

Isn't there a gauge change at the border? I know that some through trains actually get their tucks/bogies replaced at the border, but would it be faster to just have passengers transfer trains?

 

[jis]

Isn't there a gauge change at the border? I know that some through trains actually get their tucks/bogies replaced at the border, but would it be faster to just have passengers transfer trains?

There are only a few through trains. There are many more choices with connection at the border. That is usually the case at most European borders.

 

[Willbridge]

Apparently most of the refugee traffic is now flowing towards Poland by train.

I think of the neighboring countries that is the strongest rail connection. Regarding Hungary, I just looked up Lviv>Budapest and there is only one through schedule (with a transfer at the border, but no other changes) and it runs every other day. There are a couple of other multi-transfer connections.

In the evacuation of Paris in WWII, the main problem was getting train crews together. As one of the BBC videos shows, empty trains are returning, but they may get tied up in the interior. I can surmise that the Hours of Service rules are suspended.

In 1971 I was caught in an SNCF strike. The French crews ran trains after the strike deadline if they needed a ride home. My train left Strasbourg on time because it was run for the French Army, but for other passengers the line-up of departures was a mystery. From reading Doeblin's book, I suspect that was what happened in WWII.

 

[PeeweeTM]

German railfan site Drehscheibe-online.de has in the 'Ausland' part a kind of trip report ('[PL] und in gewisser Weise [UA]: Przemysl in der Nacht vom 25. auf den 26. Feb.') of someone picking up Ukrain family in Poland.
You may have to re-click the link on the site and let Google have a try on translating German into English.

 

[Willbridge]

German railfan site Drehscheibe-online.de has in the 'Ausland' part a kind of trip report ('[PL] und in gewisser Weise [UA]: Przemysl in der Nacht vom 25. auf den 26. Feb.') of someone picking up Ukrain family in Poland.
You may have to re-click the link on the site and let Google have a try on translating German into English.

Schon gut! I'll translate it when I'm awake, as Google can't pick up some of the image text. (Ich spreche Eisenbahn.) The pix are great.

Google Translate is much better with German now than a decade ago. Back then I ran a news article about a novel bus purchase by the Berlin system and it helpfully translated the abbreviation BVG as Federal Supreme Court (Bundesverwaltingsgericht). What Google thought they would do with hundreds of yellow buses ich kenne nicht.

My name is down in the middle of the agenda below. I spent two years watching the other side practice. Though I had studied Russian history and Soviet foreign policy, I always hoped that they would find a better path.

 

[cirdan]

Isn't there a gauge change at the border? I know that some through trains actually get their tucks/bogies replaced at the border, but would it be faster to just have passengers transfer trains?

That's why it's mostly done on sleeper trains.

The gauge changing facilities exist primarily for freight though.

 

[BalmyZephyr]

Just heard from someone who got out to Poland via bus. She only has her cat, nothing else. It took 11 hours (instead of 1) because the roads were clogged with refugees.

 

[BalmyZephyr]

Update, she could have taken the train out of Lviv but she found it too scary: people panicking and rushing the train, lots of crowd movements, and people left behind when a train leaves were screaming. She could not take it. A friend working for a company that chartered a bus for its employees had two seats open for her, her sister, and the cat.

 

[BalmyZephyr]

The refugee we are hearing from says that Poland is making the trains free for the refugees.

 

[PeeweeTM]

Trains in Germany (at least DB) and the Netherlands (NS) are free for Ukrainian refugees showing a passport, according to news sites.

 

[Metra Electric Rider]

Part of the reason that Poland is taking so many refugee's is because large parts of the Ukraine were once Polish territory* and because of their long held distrust (and dare I say hatred) of the Russians - the eternal enemy, more so than the Germans.

*For example L'viv was called L'vov and my father went to school there in the 1930's when it was a Polish city.

 

[Willbridge]

Part of the reason that Poland is taking so many refugee's is because large parts of the Ukraine were once Polish territory* and because of their long held distrust (and dare I say hatred) of the Russians - the eternal enemy, more so than the Germans.

*For example L'viv was called L'vov and my father went to school there in the 1930's when it was a Polish city.

Yes. In the Tomsk Municipal Museum there's a Singer sewing machine that was built when it was L'vov in the Russian (tsarist) Empire.

Stalin moved Poland west by giving it the eastern provinces of Germany and taking the eastern provinces of Poland for the Soviet Union. The touchiness of it was illustrated when Germany and Poland signed a treaty to end WWII in 1970 and the Deutsche Bundesbahn was directed to remove system maps from pre-war passenger cars that showed the pre-war network. These and earlier boundary changes have left all sorts of relationships. The Bundesbahn's print map of European railways in 1970 solved a lot of problems by not showing national borders.

In 1971 I was on a DB train that made a special stop to deliver ethnic German refugees to a camp near the inter-German border. They were released by Poland as part of the treaty. I had a good view of it from the dining car where I was having lunch. Conversation stopped. I don't know what everyone was thinking, but I was doing the arithmetic that showed that it had been a generation since the war in Europe had ended, but the human misery was still going on.

In 2005 I went from Germany into Poland and returned through the border controls. By my 2014 visit, the border controls were gone, and the magnetism of Berlin was attracting customers from the former German parts of Poland. Here are Polish vans waiting for passengers at Berlin-Tegel Airport. I can understand why Ukrainians might want to join the EU.



In 2005, Deutsche Reichsbahn platform canopies in the Szczecin, Poland union station.

 

[cassie225]

Are there camps set up when they reach Poland, hotels, relatives,etc So sad

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

Are there camps set up when they reach Poland, hotels, relatives,etc So sad

At this point one hope so. But the timing of this event there probably still trying to get this organized.

 

[jola]

Part of the reason that Poland is taking so many refugee's is because large parts of the Ukraine were once Polish territory* and because of their long held distrust (and dare I say hatred) of the Russians - the eternal enemy, more so than the Germans.

*For example L'viv was called L'vov and my father went to school there in the 1930's when it was a Polish city.

Poland was part of the Russia for a very long time till WWI. After that Lvov was Polish town till WWII and become Russian after WWII and Ukrainian after 1991. I don't know where they change tracks but it might be that Lvov has both set of tracks and because of the geography and history it primary choice for people to migrate vs other routes.

 

[Willbridge]

At this point one hope so. But the timing of this event there probably still trying to get this organized.

Following this through the BBC and NPR, efforts are underway, based partly on the experience with other refugee waves. The problem is more the potential numbers, rather than the number that have made it in so far.

 

[west point]

Much of the refugee problem IMO comes from the lack of belief that Russia was actually going to invade. Many of the European and other countries did not believe US intelligence that Russia was going to invade. Some analysts believe that invasion reports were not believed because US reports about WMD stockpiles that Hussen had proved false.

So, instead of having 2 weeks to prepare for refugees most countries and NGOs had no time to prepare.

 

[Just-Thinking-51]

The Russian seem just as unprepared for a shooting war as much as the European countries were unprepared for refugees.

These train are electric power and the simple fact that still running, indicates a tactical mistake or the Russian were not planning for resistance.

 

[Willbridge]

Much of the refugee problem IMO comes from the lack of belief that Russia was actually going to invade. Many of the European and other countries did not believe US intelligence that Russia was going to invade. Some analysts believe that invasion reports were not believed because US reports about WMD stockpiles that Hussein had proved false.

So, instead of having 2 weeks to prepare for refugees most countries and NGOs had no time to prepare.

Yes. In particular, I detected a certain snarkiness in the Berlin daily that I was skimming. Even the BBC World Service had some commentators who were doing the radio equivalent. In fact, anyone who looked closely at the Iraq reports should have at least doubted them (as the French did), while anyone in the Ukraine case who looked at satellite pictures and reports from travelers should at least have been concerned.

Watching what direction trainloads of tanks are going is something that we did back in the Cold War and it's not rocket science.

 

[Willbridge]

Are there camps set up when they reach Poland, hotels, relatives,etc So sad

There's a very thorough article on rail aids to refugees from the International Railway Journal. It is running behind events, but it has more info than you'll get from mass media:

https://www.railjournal.com/regions...m_source=&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=31205
Some airlines are also offering assistance.