For the Love of Cable Cars: The History of Poland’s Trams

krakowskie-przedmiescie-1918-82616990.jpg, default, Krakowskie przedmieście w 1918, photo: Biblioteka Narodowa Polona, For the Love of Cable Cars: The History of Poland’s Trams

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Snaking and clattering their way across city streets like gaudy, metallic beetles, trams are a distinctive feature of many European cities. Overhead wires, hanging a few metres above the metropolis like a crosshatch of gossamer thread, are a ghostly sign of tram routes – marked out beneath by slaloming tracks carved into the road.

The heyday of trams came in the late 1800s, with the vehicle now seen, to a certain extent, as a vestige of bygone era. Some European countries, most notably, the UK, have since lost the majority of their tram networks – though, in other nations, like Germany, trams are zipping from strength to strength.

But for Poland, the dawn of the tram age coincided with wider changes, from growing modernisation, to Polish independence, to border disputes – with trams influencing society, literature and song. Read on to learn the history of Poland’s love affair with trams…

Warsaw: An International Tram Story

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First electric tram, 1908, photo: Polona/pl

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Warsaw’s first experience of tram transport came in 1866, when a short horsecar line was built to transport goods and passengers between the Vienna Railway Station and the Wilno and Terespol stations across the River Wisła. At only 6km, the line was rather meagre by today’s standards, and was designed with a width to match the Russian railways.

A history of the city’s tram lines, written by Czesław Rudnicki and published in 1915, explained that concessions were first granted to the main Russian railroad company for 87 years (until 1952), with the city itself neither participating in the contract, nor in the profits.

As Hanna Polańska notes, the first line mainly served goods transports between the railway stations. When passengers used the trams, there were no designated stops, with the vehicle only coming to a halt at the traveller’s request. On legends for contemporary maps of the city, the lines were listed as ‘horseback’ routes – as opposed to tram lines.

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The new means of transport were not immediately called trams […] they were called: horse-drawn railway, iron omnibuses, carriages, horse-drawn cars, trains. In the city dialect, even the word ‘toads’ was used due to the slow movement of the wagons and their ugliness.

Author

From '150 years since the first horse drawn tram line in Warsaw' by Hanna Polańska

However, between the 1860s and 1870s, new wagons were purchased, including double-decker and freight cars and, in 1873, permanent stops were also installed. After a new railway bridge was opened in 1875, passenger numbers began to grow.

But the growth of the network was still plagued by issues: accidents were frequent; services were irregular and infrequent; and there even were reports that, in poor weather, passengers had to push stuck trams.

In 1880, the city decided to enlarge the tram network to truly serve residents, concluding an agreement with the Belgian Société Générale de Tramways Varsoviens (General Society of Warsaw Trams) to rebuild and expand tram lines across the city. The agreement was set to last for 36 years – after which point the tram lines would become the property of the city. The following year, the first route was launched, a single-track line which passed from the currently non-existent Nalewki Street, through to Krakowskie Przedmieście, and ending at the Mokotów tollbooths. Trams ran from 7:30am to 10:00pm.

By the mid-1880s, the tram network in Warsaw was 22km long, and hosted 80 trams, which served 12 lines. In the years following, the network extended ever-further across Warsaw. Tram ephemera, including a ‘humorous tram calendar’, released in 1894, and several tram-themed postcards were also produced, as trams began to catch on amongst the population.

Thumbnail — Marszałkowska Street in Warsaw before 1914, photo: Wikimedia Commons

But there were increasing difficulties: rails were various widths, with the oldest having a wider Russian gauge, whilst lines post-1880 had a standard-gauge. Issues regarding the construction of new lines, as well as fees the city was required to pay to the Société Générale de Tramways Varsoviens, also caused concern.

Hence, in 1899, the city decided to buy the entire tram network, consisting of 17 lines covering 30km, 234 tram cars and 654 horses.

In 1903, the process of electrifying the tram network began, supported by a government loan.

In his Trams and Electric Railways (1901), Tomasz Ruśkiewicz claimed that:

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One of the most important uses of electricity in practice is […] for motor purposes in general, and in particular for locomotion. Electric railways, in the proper sense of the word, have not been used properly so far […] while city electric railways i.e. trams are becoming more and more popular every day.

Author

Trans. JB

The City Trams Power Plant was built near the Vienna Railway Station, and the first electric tram was finally launched in Warsaw in March 1908. The tram was complete with a new logo – depicting the Warsaw mermaid, a winged wheel, and lightning bolts.

That year, the number of passengers recorded was 42 million, and three years later, this had risen to 76 million.

But though contemporary commentators praised the development of the tram network – with one even noting that ‘it would be difficult […] to even imagine Warsaw without trams’ – progress was still relatively slow. Horse-drawn carriages still continued to run in some areas of Warsaw until 1916, and Warsaw’s tram network looked paltry in comparison to other metropolises across Europe. In his 1915 history of the city’s tram lines, Rudnicki suggests that the size, population and significance of Warsaw warranted a more extensive network than the existing 39.5km, served by 260 wagons. Instead, he proposed the network should be 140km, with around 1,100 wagons.

The network did, indeed, expand in the early 1920s, with the first night route launched in 1921, and lines creeping across Warsaw. By 1925, an official guide to the city’s tram network showed trams ran on most tram lines every five to 10 minutes. A single regular ticket was recorded as costing 15gr. The most expensive option was an unnamed (not personal) quarterly ticket, at the price of 78.75zł.

Still, one issue was connections to the suburbs. In 1927, a private line called Elektryczne Koleje Dojazdowe (EKD, or Electric Commuter Rail), was established, the first standard-gauge electric railway in Poland, owned by an electrotechnical and power industry company. Although similar to trams – and borrowing organisational charts from the city’s tram system – the EKD line was, in certain cases, incompatible with Warsaw trams, many of which used a wider gauge. The route travelled from Warsaw to Grodzisk Mazowiecki, west of the city.

The line was particularly known for its use of novel technology, boasting modern traffic light systems imported from Sweden, and carriages imported from England. A guide to the line in 1929 praised its connections to the outskirts of the city, away from ‘the hectic heartbeat of metropolitan life’. Ten years later, it was running every 10 minutes during rush hour.

The city’s tram network were was also linked to other transport proposals in the Interwar period too; notably, plans to build a metro line, which were suggested in the mid-1920s. In 1929, the Underground Railway Department was established at the Construction Office of the City Trams Directorate, responsible for the construction of the underground – but work was paused after the Great Depression.

Tram culture: ‘The driver is strictly forbidden to talk to passengers…’

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A tram standing at a stop, 1920, photo: szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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As a result of their popularity and extensive reach across Warsaw, trams soon became a social and cultural feature; monopolised for political propaganda, as well as featuring in the arts. One of the first Interwar tram-based cultural references came from Fryderyk Járosy, a Polish-Hungarian cabaret compère.

Járosy first arrived in Warsaw on tour with the Russian émigré theatre, Siniaja Ptica (The Bluebird) in 1924, but spoke little Polish – a major issue for the theatre’s premiere. Help came from poet Antoni Słonimski, who spent one hectic night in the swish Bristol Hotel training Járosy in the secrets of the Polish language, fuelled by coffee and cognac. But even when Járosy got to grips with the basics of Polish, there was still one final issue: what to do about hecklers?

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I offered him a universal response: ‘The driver is strictly forbidden to talk to passengers.’ It succeeded, because on the day of the premiere someone in the audience actually spoke, and when Járosy gave this pure Warsaw-tram-based sentence, he received fierce applause.

Author

Antoni Słonimski, trans. JB

Járosy spoke with an accent for the duration of his career – but his clumsy Polish language skills only served to strengthen his appeal among audiences.

Trams also featured in comic sketches and in songs. In the 1931 slowfox Idzie Wiosna (Spring is Coming), composed by Zygmunt Karasiński and written by Tadeusz Stach – and first performed at the Wesoły Wieczór (Pleasant Evening) theatre – crowds on the city’s trams symbolise the hustle and bustle of a new year:

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Spring is coming, everything is waking up from sleep
Full benches, parks and trams
Warsaw is smiling in the sun…

Author

Trans. JB

In the 1925 Qui Pro Quo shimmy, Czy Pani Ma w Niedzielę Czas? (Are You Free on Sunday?) by Jerzy Boczkowski and Andrzej Włast, taking the tram network provides an opportunity for love:

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Do I go to the cinema or take the tram?
I’m looking for ladies
Here and there…

Author

Trans. JB

The image of the tram as a location for a romantic encounter was also taken up in the short 1935 novel, Dziewczyna z Tramwaju (The Girl On the Tram) by Kazimierz Chyliński, which describes a young man, Mieczysław Trawiński, spotting his celebrity crush, the American film actress Dolores Costello (or her double) on a tram on Warsaw’s Marszałkowska Street. Absorbed by her appearance, Trawiński boards the tram, even though it is going in the opposite direction to his house, to follow her across the city. When she departs the car, he has little idea where he is in Warsaw, but is determined to pursue her regardless. Far from just a linchpin of city transport, the cramped nature of the tramcar – which brings unknown strangers close together – serves rather to intensify emotional and physical experience:

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Between the back of one passenger and the profile of another, Dolores’s face finally flashed. Trawiński was motionless, and with all the effort of his eyes he began to absorb the wonderful image of the girl.

Author

Trans. JB

Trams were mentioned in other literary works, too. The first collection by Polish poet and journalist Jerzy Jankowski, who is considered to be the first futurist in Poland, was called Tram Wpopszek Ulicy (A Tram Across the Street). In typical futurist style, the collection included poetic experimentation with typography and wordform, and emphasised city infrastructure and machinery – including trams.

But other 20th-century works used the image of the tram to emphasise the danger of the new modern, mechanical world. Bruno Jasieński’s short novel, Nogi Izoldy Morgan (Izolda Morgan’s Legs) details the results of a tram accident, in which Izolda loses her legs. Noting the staccato and futuristic style of the novel, with its almost poetic ‘fragmentary sentences’, Kamila Kuc describes the work as:

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A depiction of the various ways in which the machine has infected the life of contemporary man. This is captured in frequent descriptions of a busy, intimidating city: ‘People ran, walked, shoved, cars snarled, trams rang, spitting out and swallowing new cargoes of people at the stops, racing past him with a monotonous grind of their polished nails.’ The power station where Berg works resembles locations from the later futuristic narratives in cinema, such as Lang’s ‘Metropolis’ (1927) and Chaplin’s ‘Modern Times’ (1936).

The novel begins with the 23-year-old Izolda being dragged out from underneath the front of the number 18 tram by ‘fourteen pairs of […] hands’. Though the rescue scene here appears to be a hopeful one, Izolda’s rescuers are depicted as little other than disembodied body parts – an allusion to the later amputation of Izolda’s own legs; the situation soon turns uncomfortable, even unstomachable, with the rescuers feeling awkward at the sight of her bloodied body and severed legs, tendons trailing.

The act of pulling Izolda out from under the tram – and coming face-to-face with her deformed appearance – is a visual and haptic encounter with otherness which leaves characters self-conscious of their own bodies: the rescuers feel uneasy; Witold Berg, Izolda’s boyfriend, is nearly sick when he sees her in hospital. But this bodily vulnerability is specifically linked to menacing machinery, especially trams. At the hospital, as Berg mulls over Izolda’s appearance, his interior monologue is interrupted by a brief bracketed section describing the external sounds of ‘people on the street, carriages, the rattle, trams trrr’, heightening his mental disorientation; later, his mind returns to accidents at his workplace involving machinery, as well as fears that he too will be hit by a moving vehicle.

The novel regularly comes back to the threat of traffic accidents, and even when, at the end of the novel, Berg deliberates tries to avoid the path of a tramcar, he somehow ends up stuck on the tracks anyway. Trams, with their straight, pre-destined path through the city, should be easy to avoid – but the novel instead offers a more disturbing picture. As trams stalking the narrative, consume characters’ thoughts and pose a continuous danger to the body, the only inevitability is that pedestrians cannot escape their influence.

Warsaw trams of the 1930s & beyond

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Plan of tram and autobus lines, photo: Polona.pl

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By the 1930s, Warsaw was home to an extensive tram network, running from Bielany in the north to Wierzbno in the south, across to Koło in the west and Gocławek, across the river, in the east. But conditions for tram workers were deteriorating – and after wages fell, with holiday bonuses cancelled, tram drivers organised a couple of strikes in 1931, supported by the communist party. The strike featured music and song about current working conditions and the need to take action, using metaphors of transport and punctuality:

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The tram drivers see that it is impossible to delay
What affects some people today – awaits others tomorrow. […]
The trams are not moving.

Author

'A song about the strike of Warsaw tram drivers', trans. JB

In 1938, as part of the National Museum’s pioneering Warsaw: Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow exhibition, a map was released which showed the significant progress in the city’s infrastructure since the first horse-drawn trams were launched in 1865. According to the map, the next step for Warsaw was the development of a metro line; and plans from the 1920s – which had initially been shelved due to the Great Depression – were resurrected and extended. Work on the metro started in 1938, with seven lines proposed. But due to the onset of World War II, the plans were never completed. The Warsaw metro finally opened nearly 60 years later, in 1995.

As a result of the trauma and devastation caused by World War II, much of Poland’s infrastructure – including tramlines – was destroyed. The tram network remained operational during the war, and tramcars were famously used as barricades by insurgents fighting during the Warsaw Uprising. But following the Uprising, the city’s streets, houses and transport network was systematically destroyed by the Nazi Germans. This included the tram power plant in Warsaw. Out of the 710 pre-war tram cars, only around 200 survived the war.

Many of the lines destroyed in the war were never rebuilt, especially as much of the cityscape changed post-war. A few streets in downtown Warsaw still bear ghostly relics of pre-war tram tracks, and some old lines have also been excavated during renovation works in recent years. But surviving, working trams also became an irrefutable symbol of hope for many residents returning to the ruined city following the war:

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[In Praga] an operating tram emerged – a red Warsaw tram, an indispensable element of the reviving landscape of our city. People reacted enthusiastically upon seeing the tram. Pedestrians on the sidewalks stopped, others ran towards the wagon cheering and clapping loudly.

Author

From ‘Drugie Narodziny Miasta: Warszawa 1945’ by Aleksander Pacho, trans. JB.

Trams were also mentioned in songs written around the end of the war, including Wacław Brzeziński’s 1945 tango Idziemy Znów Nowym Światem (We’re Going Back to Nowy Świat Street), which described the joyous vision of ‘neon lights […] shining’ and the sound of ‘trams […] ringing’:

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Krakowskie and Marszałkowska are alive again
And near the station, a carefree crowd is humming…

Author

Trans. JB

The city’s tramlines were extended and rebuilt post-war, creating a network spanning across the city.

Kraków: How can trams succeed?

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Floriańska Street in Kraków, 1929, photo: szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl

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But Poland’s tram history, of course, was not just Warsaw-based. Another city home to an extensive tram network was Kraków, where the first regular horse-drawn omnibus line was created in 1875.

But proposals for horse tram lines – from Poles and non-Poles alike – had actually been suggested prior to this date. In 1871, the British and Foreign Tramway Company proposed one line; another was suggested the following year by Count Mycielski, with excessive costs involved. However, neither parties gave adequate responses to further questions, and eventually withdrew their proposals. In 1875, the Belgian Agence Des Capitalistes et Des Proprietaires (Capitalists’ and Proprietors’ Agency) also proposed a tram line, and requested information from the city about the population size, railway connections and industrial plants – although contact eventually also broke off.

There was also some scepticism amongst locals about the need for trams:

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We don’t know who had the idea of trams in Kraków, but we cannot be completely happy with the idea […] for us, we admit, a tram crossing the old streets of Kraków is something inexplicable but unpleasant […] and if the omnibuses aren’t doing great business, and gradually disappear from the Kraków horizon and melt away – how can trams succeed?

Author

From ‘Czas’ (Time), 25th August 1881, trans. JB

But six years later, two proposals were sufficiently mapped-out to be considered: a plan by the Enterprise of the Iron Horse Road in Trieste, Linec and Lviv, and an idea submitted by the Belgian Society of Local Railways representing the Bank of Belgium. It was the latter that was finally given the go-ahead, with the first line – a single-track line operating on the old omnibus route – opening in 1882.

The tram line immediately became a popular means of transport, with new plans to expand its reach across the city. In the mid-1890s, a Kraków Tramway Joint Stock Company was established, in order to meet new Austro-Hungarian legal conditions that specified all railway line companies had to be based in the empire. By 1896, the newly-created company owned 32 trams, worked by 36 crew members. But tram network had few of the mod cons of today’s trams, with platforms open to the elements to accommodate the horses, and tramcars lacking heating.

The city subsequently decided to electrify the network, ordering 17 electric carriages, which arrived in 1901. The first electric line opened on 16th March 1901, with tramcars able to transport 30 passengers, at speeds of between 10 to 30km per hour. The horse-drawn trams, which at that time were still running in some areas of the city, were also modernised, fitted with electric lighting – with many locals fascinated by the new technology.

However, some residents were still cautious. In 1901, the socialist magazine Naprzód (Onwards) claimed that:

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The commune will have to build a new hospital and a new institution for the mentally ill as soon as possible. A hospital for people damaged and injured by a tram, and another one for the inhabitants of the streets on which the tram runs and for those who ride the tram, because they will go crazy with the tram bells.

Author

Trans. JB

Incidentally, the launch of electric trams in Kraków coincided with another major Polish cultural event: the premiere of Stanisław Wyspiański’s play The Wedding at the City Theatre, which took place that evening, at 7:00 pm. Wyspiański himself also quipped that the electric trams could have an ‘honorary horse’ in from of them ‘for tradition’.

In 1913, as the city expanded, officials decided to implement standard gauge tracks to improve the capabilities of the network. As a result of World War I, coal supplies were interrupted, causing the hours of operation of trams to be cut. Prices were also raised, and repairs proved difficult to organise, with the condition of the network deteriorating. Conditions did not improve until the mid-1920s, when new investments and repairs took place, increasing the scope of the network. In 1925, the city also finally switched from left-hand driving – a relic of the Austro-Hungarian empire. New lines were also constructed across the city.

Unlike in Warsaw, which suffered extreme devastation during World War II, Kraków escaped relatively unscathed, with trams running almost until the end of the war. However, as the Nazis retreated, bridges were destroyed across the Wisła River, leaving some tramcars immobilised in the city.

After the war, officials had ambitious plans to expand tram connections ever further – but cost issues meant few proposals could be achieved. However, the city’s tram network remained a crucial part of the city’s infrastructure – and still does today. Last year, the first autonomous tram was also tested in Kraków, running 3.4km without a driver.

Łódź: electric tram pioneers

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Ulica Piotrkowska in Łódź, 1900, photo: Wikimedia Commons

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But though Poland’s two most prominent cities acquired an extensive tram network in the late 19th century, the first electric trams were actually launched in Łódź. In the 1890s, the city, then an industrial hub, had a patchy transport system, consisting mainly of cabs and carriages. Whilst horse-drawn trams were first proposed as a solution, hygiene and construction issues caused delays in the plans.

In 1895, an alternative project was suggested: electric trams, which were cleaner and faster, and which could transport passengers by day, and goods by night. The plans were backed by prominent industrialists, including Alfred Biedermann, Emil Geyer, Juliusz Heinzel – as well as the main initiator, and father of Łódź trams, Juliusz Kunitzer (who, incidentally, was later shot and killed on a tram during the 1905 revolution).

The first trams launched on 23rd December 1898, and popularity was higher than expected. Poems were penned in local papers celebrating the tram network for both industry and residents in Łódź, calling it a ‘joy for the nation’ and ‘fun for the crowd’. The electric tram network also prompted the creation of a specially-constructed power plant, as there was no municipal power plant in Łódź at the time.

Accidents, however, did occur – and cab drivers, incensed by the new transport competition, would also occasionally block the tracks. But the new infrastructure was mostly celebrated across the city. In the years following, the tram network expanded to smaller towns connected to industries in Łódź, with single-track lines expanded into double-track. Different lines were given different colours and markings to help residents navigate, as many locals at the time were illiterate.

The tram network ground to a short halt in 1918 due to a miners’ strike, which caused a coal shortage. Residents were, apparently, fascinated when a temporary system of horse-drawn freight wagons appeared in the city – unlike other metropolises in Poland, Łódź had never installed a horse-drawn tram system.

Further lines opened following World War I – and by 1921, some tram employees had even formed their own 11-person dance and entertainment orchestra, providing an additional source of income.

Other notable Polish tram lines

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Trams in the Upper Silesian conurbation, 1939, photo Wikimedia Commons

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Of course, many other cities and towns in Poland – or which were formerly included within Poland’s borders – also boast vast tram networks.

Lviv, now in Ukraine, established horse-drawn trams in 1880. Lviv became the first city in the Austro-Hungarian empire to have an electric tram system, when a new electric line was created in 1894. The electric tram line was launched to tie in with the General National Exhibition taking place in the city that year, which presented the economic and cultural achievements of the then-Kingdom of Galicia and Lodomeria.

In fact, electric trams weren’t the only new mode of transportation to be created for the exhibition: the city also launched a cableway – the first to be created in Poland (then still under partition).

The tram system in Lviv developed further during the Interwar period, when Lviv was included in Poland’s borders, and also inspired song. One was the sprightly and folkish 1936 Tango Łyczakowskie – named after the neighbourhood of Łyczaków in Lviv, and written in pre-war Lviv dialect. The word ‘tram’ is written as ‘trambal’ (rather than the Polish ‘tramwaj’) – and there are quite a few ‘trambaly’ rattling through the number, with one particularly knotty depiction in the middle of the song:

Text

Tram after tram
Behind the tram, a tram
And behind that tram
There is only one tram left…

Author

Trans. JB

Life in interwar Lviv – tram network and all – was also a source of nostalgia for many Poles post-war. In 1947, Marian Hemar, the Polish poet, cabaret writer and son of Lviv, penned a waltz, wistfully titled Moje Serce Zostało we Lwowie (My heart stayed in Lviv), recalling the city of his youth. By 1947, Hemar had been living in the UK for six years – he writes that he is divided from Lviv ‘by a thousand lands and seas’ – but he is haunted by memories of Lvovian trams, which destabilise his sense of belonging:

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Even today, I still think
Although I have foreign cobblestones under my feet
That I was on the tram yesterday…

Author

Trans. JB

Aside from Lviv, other Polish tram networks are also worth mentioning. The Silesian metropolitan region is home to one of the largest tram systems in the world, which has been running since 1894 and connects central towns and cities, including Katowice, Bytom and Gliwice. During the Interwar period, and following the ratification of borders in the region, the tram network was divided between Poland and Germany, with Polish and German companies taking over operations of the tram lines in their jurisdiction. In certain cases, however, this proved a tricky issue. For some towns caught on the border, including Bytom, new systems had to be put in place to allow Polish trams to run freely through German territory. In the district of Rozbark, which had been subsumed into Germany, Polish trams were allowed to pass through the area so long as they did not stop on German lands. This transit system ran until the German–Polish Convention regarding Upper Silesia expired in 1937.

Another tram network plagued by border issues was that of town of Cieszyn, now on the Polish-Czech border. A tram system was established in the town in 1911 – but ten years later, after the newly-created states of Poland and Czechoslovakia appeared on the map, the tram service was discontinued. However, last year, officials in Cieszyn – and its Czech counterpart, Český Těšín – announced they would be working together to symbolically reconstruct the old tram route.

Whilst the heyday of Polish trams has passed, the mode of transport remains a much-used, and much-loved, part of everyday life. Nowadays, the country’s older trams are being gradually being phased out, replaced by slick modern designs – but signs of over 100 years of Polish tram heritage remain, offering a unique insight into the changing face, fate and fortunes of Poland itself.

Written by Juliette Bretan, May 2021

_{Sources: salon24.pl; jstor.org; muzeumwarszawy.pl; wkd.com.pl; um.warszawa.pl; tramwar.pl; mpk.krakow.pl; dzieje.pl; mpk.lodz.pl; uml.lodz.pl}

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