New ‘main’ station for Warsaw is not ‘central’
THE Polish capital Warsaw has gained a new ‘main’ station, although despite being new it is not the city’s main station! Named Warszawa Główna, which means Warsaw Main station, the new terminus is located west of the city centre and west of the actual main station Warszawa Centralna (or Central). It lies on the site of a previous station – also known as Warszawa Główna which was the city’s main station for two decades after the Second World War from 1945 to 1965 when the cross city line serving Warszawa Centralna opened fully.
To further complicate the history another station also named Warszawa Główna was built in the 1930s, on the original cross city route, and was nearly finished when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Renamed Warschau Hauptbahnhof by the occupiers and seriously damaged by fighting between Polish resistance forces and the Germans in 1944, it was rebuilt in the 1950s and is now called Warszawa Śródmieście and used only by regional trains.
The 1945 Główna station was constructed on the site of the goods depot of the original ‘Vienna’ station built in 1844 when the first section of the line to Vienna opened (this station closed in 1921).
After 1965, the site was partly used by the Warsaw railway museum plus some special trains, but by the 21st century it was mostly overgrown, apart from the museum site. The new Warszawa Główna was built between 2018 and 2020 and opened on March 14 this year. It is mainly used by regional services, including some locohauled push-pull peak hour ones serving Łowicz, Sochaczew, Skierniewice and Łódź, but will also be used by longer distance services while the 1950s/60s built cross city route via Warszawa Centralna is rebuilt over the next few years.