the mountainous Zackenbahn railway - back in operation soon

Bad Warmbrunn ('warm fountain') is served by passenger trains but the station has seen better days.

Ober Schreiberhau station

Jakobstal station, just a platform now

Last year two of our directors visited the nice old town of Hirschberg (aka Jelenia Gora) in Silesia, Poland and managed to get most of the way from there by train to Harrachov across the Riesengebirge or "giant mountains" which form the border in this area between Poland and the Czech Republic. A noisy diesel hauled passenger train from Hirschberg up the mountain side by a steep convoluted trajectory was followed by a transfer to a nice new diesel railcar at Ober Schreiberhau (aka Szklarska Poreba) - but it didn't go very far, only 9 km as far as Jakobstal where a change to a bus was involved to Harrachov, and then a Czech diesel railcar.

Up to 1945 this line was operated by the Deutsche Reichsbahn as the territory involved Germany and the Czech Sudetenland.  It was electrified in the 1920s. After 1945 the area north of the Riesengebirge border was given to Poland and the cross border line was unused.

The line to Ober-Schreiberhau continued to be operated by the Polish railways as it is a ski resort, but  the electric catenary to Harrachov was dismantled by the Russians and taken to Russia (although not all of it) and the line fell into disrepair.

After much vacillation by Czech and Polish authorities, restoration of the complete line is underway again as per the sign, and according to it should be complete in 2 years from now.

A German model railway group has created an N scale layout based on the old line: the website with historic photos of trains in the mountains.