News / PKP buys Alstrom Pendolino trains for € 665 million [60]


Nice try, but it's pretty obvious to anyone with any common sense that PKP Intercity needed something to show how they were changing. Perhaps you haven't noticed, but a lot of refurbished carriages have been coming online. From a marketing point of view, the Pendolino was perfect - it got people thinking about rail again, even if their local renovated station only offered IC connections.


Half of that was paid for by the European Union. So the reality was a mere 80 million złoty a year for the Pendolino if you look at the 17 year agreement that was signed. That price also includes the cost of maintenance and the building of the depot in Warsaw, so Poland really didn't pay very much for the trains.


Maybe not badly needed, but PKP Intercity needed a marketing tool to show how much the company has changed since 2009. Shiny new trains are always a good way to do that. The numbers are up a huge amount, and the Pendolino certainly brought a lot of attention to the company.


Why would PKP Intercity spend money on trains run by the provinces/Przewozy Regionalne? That wouldn't make any sense whatsoever.


That's why they made that order with PESA, isn't it?


Now now. We all know that PiS would prefer a Polish HST concept, which would exist solely to provide endless management "jobs" for their supporters and would never be finished.

News / PKP buys Alstrom Pendolino trains for € 665 million [60]

You're living in dreamland. The mess with the Fyra shows that it's just not that easy to build a high speed train. You can't just throw money at it and hope it works - you need to get there gradually, which is exactly what PESA are doing with the Dart. I imagine they'll be able to modify the Dart to go at 200km/h once it proves itself at 160km/h in regular service. PESA can then try and go for a 250km/h train with the experience and lessons learnt from the 200km/h Dart - even the Dart itself might be able to do it. But this all takes time and careful planning - not just throwing money at money pits.

If it was so easy to build high speed trains, Spain would have done it themselves. But Talgo needed Bombardier to help, and even with that help, they couldn't get the trains to the original proposed top speed without even more cash.

Stick to PiSonomics Greggy, you clearly have absolutely no idea how difficult it is to build such things. Poland has wisely concentrated on building decent products that will be used by the vast majority of people, not niche vanity technology like high speed trains.

More to the point, we're in the era of consolidation. Alstom, Bombardier, Hitachi and Siemens have the world market between them - a Polish entrant would need the help of one of the Big 4, which would mean not being able to compete anyway.

News / Poland's election winning party: PIS proclamations [229]


Doesn't mean it's a good tactic in the long run for them.

Anyway, it's all good. PiS winning outright means that they'll have absolutely no possibility of blaming anyone other than themselves when it all falls apart.


I think you don't really get it, do you?

Still, your obsession with TVN/GW shows that you're just another typical PiS supporter.

News / PKP buys Alstrom Pendolino trains for € 665 million [60]


In theory. In reality, they're highly unlikely to ever make a profit on it - many TGV lines run at a loss, and the small amount of profit from selling the TGV pales in comparison with the huge cost of the network. From what I recall, even the profitable lines are unlikely to ever repay the capital costs.


Strange...could have sworn that PESA won a huge order not so long ago with DB Regio, for instance. Must also have been dreaming about all those healthy exports from Solaris and PESA. Even Newag have started to get into the export game. It's actually quite remarkable what Polish companies have managed to do in the last few years with transport vehicles.

Another factor for buying the Pendolino is that there won't be problems with getting it approved to run in CZ/A/D. Any Polish solution would have to be approved from scratch, which is an absolute nightmare for most companies.

News / PKP buys Alstrom Pendolino trains for € 665 million [60]


Not sure how to break it to you, but it's much easier to buy an off the shelf product (that someone else already invested considerable amounts in - in this case, the British taxpayer) than it is to try and build something from scratch. The Dutch tried the Fyra and it was an absolute disaster - what makes you think a Polish HST wouldn't be a similar joke?

The TGV is a matter of French national pride, but their Intercites network is a mess and local trains aren't even worth mentioning.


Hitachi tends to demand that significant resources are spent on projects. There's no need for that sort of thing for 20 trainsets, and the only other serious possibility, Siemens, also has had terrible problems with getting the Velaro certified. I don't like the Pendolino much, but they got them relatively cheaply and they're good for 250km/h.


If that was true, Germany would do everything in her power to stop companies such as Solaris and PESA. Except they're not..

Face it Greggy, you really don't understand the first thing about transport. Poland wanted some shiny trains to show that PKP Intercity is modernising, and the Pendolinos were available cheaply and without any large commitments. They've done the job at an acceptable price.

Anyway, if the Pendolino was so terrible, why is it used throughout Europe successfully? I'd much rather have the Pendolino than the utter shambolic mess that is/was the Dutch HSL and Fyra.

Law / Length of time to receive confirmation of Polish Citizenship [26]

You're obliged to identify yourself to the Polish authorities using a Polish document.

News / Have PO (Platforma) operatives in Poland fallen into a panic? [332]

It's actually a massive blessing for Poland's enemies. Macierewicz will be far more focused on imagined internal enemies, but he'll still massively overreact to the slightest thing from Russia.

News / Have PO (Platforma) operatives in Poland fallen into a panic? [332]

Hahahaha. Macierewicz as Minister of Defence - just like we all said.

Still, makes it much easier for Russia, I suppose. Macierewicz is an amateur, and he'll be eaten alive by a combination of not being skilled enough at diplomacy (to encourage NATO to base more here) along with sabre-rattling towards Russia. I fully expect some articles in the next few weeks from some Russian general announcing that missiles are now pointed directly at Warsaw.

News / UAE's Emaar to Invest in Poland [26]


Antoni Macierewicz is the new defense minister. That means Russia will almost certainly put some extra forces into Kaliningrad with the sole intention of winding him up. He's a psychopath, but also not very competent.


You do realise that OPEC is more or less the reason why oil is so cheap right now?

Saudi Arabia has very clearly decided to bankrupt Russia, and they've got deep enough pockets to ride it out for several years. They've even started dumping oil into Poland, so clearly they're hoping to destroy the Russian oil industry before increasing prices again.

News / UAE's Emaar to Invest in Poland [26]


Except they won't get work permits here. They might allow a few in (like with COVEC), but the bulk of the work will be done by locals.


Why would they pay more to Westerners when they could pay less to Poles?


After today's announcement, I think we can expect new Russian bases in Kaliningrad.

News / PKP buys Alstrom Pendolino trains for € 665 million [60]


From what I gather from reading the various industry publications on the matter, PESA had no experience of building such a train in the real world. Their fastest product is the PESA Dart, which will enter service with a 160km/h top speed. I'm pretty sure PESA could have put together something that would operate at 200km/h, but going from 200km/h to 250km/h (as the tender required) is a huge, huge jump in railway engineering terms.

I'm not a fan of the Pendolino, but from an operating and passenger point of view, they've been a success. Compare the successful introduction of the Pendolino vs the utter disaster that was the Dutch/Belgian Fyra, for instance. If PESA had tried to build a comparable train, then it would've been a disaster. Yes, PESA will gain a lot of experience with the Dart, and it wouldn't surprise me if they improve the Dart to operate at 200km/h in time. But they're a long, long way away from producing a viable 250km/h product, and PESA wisely built the Dart to be functional and reliable at 160km/h.

News / UAE's Emaar to Invest in Poland [26]

Have you seen the fall in the stock market recently? It's not a surprise in the slightest - the markets simply don't trust this new government, especially with the amount of new taxes that they're planning.

News / Warsaw's silent march in support of 5th Commandment - Thou shalt not kill [75]


It's not that surprising. Many people only found religion in a serious way after their old political masters went away.

Travel / Any Natural Spa Resort near Wroclaw? [4]


What about this place in Niemcza?

hotelniemcza.pl/en

Niemcza isn't a very nice place, but the hotel and spa itself is wonderful.

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]


...Did Polly just admit to watching TVN24?!


That's interesting about obywatel, though thinking about it, it's always been a clumsy word for me to pronounce.

What is interesting is just how much influence German had on Polish, while Russian appears to have had little to no influence beyond the PRL newspeak.

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]


The German invention of the printing press was almost certainly mega-technology in the day, and the Germanic states in existence then were pretty wealthy. Hence why Polish is so heavily influenced by German.

What might be interesting is if Polish starts to influence English in the UK...

News / Warsaw's silent march in support of 5th Commandment - Thou shalt not kill [75]


It's absolutely disgusting. What kind of sick person chooses to focus on the living arrangements of one of the victims rather than the cruel tragedy?

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]


Indeed, and there's a core point of linguistics that humans tend to choose the easiest form of communication.

You can't deny that English is heavily influencing Polish now, but so did German and so did Latin.

Language / Too many English words in the Polish language! [709]


Given how many German words exist in Polish, it would seem insane to suggest that Polish is in any way "pure".

Even the other way round - that most German of German words - "grenze", comes from "granica".

History / How come Polonization never works? [87]

See, you can't stop yourself.

A fair census would ask people what religion they were, what nationality they were and what their first language was. But then again, that wouldn't meet the political motive of those trying to make out that there were more Poles than in reality, eh?

History / How come Polonization never works? [87]

When the racist Pole has the choice between allowing self determination and crushing it, the racist will always crush it.

Typical of you to try and defend the typical racist II RP policies, though.

History / How come Polonization never works? [87]

Oh Greggy...you could at least try and accept that there was a very clear political motive behind that census.

History / How come Polonization never works? [87]


The 1931 cenusus was a joke, because they deliberately didn't ask about nationality, but rather about mother tongue.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish_census_of_1931
goes into quite a lot of detail about how it was intentionally rigged.

News / Don't read "Gazeta Wyborcza" Polish newspaper -- wPolityce.pl [83]


Apart from the constant mockery of Kaczyński, that is.

I like Angora as well, though.

News / IBM fears racist attacks on employees on Poland's independence day [63]

Actually, if it wasn't for Milosevic behaving like a complete idiot, it's quite likely that Yugoslavia would have survived as a confederation. It was only the Slovenian and Croatian reaction to Milosevic's games that broke Yugoslavia apart.

News / Don't read "Gazeta Wyborcza" Polish newspaper -- wPolityce.pl [83]


I'm not even so sure he rejects the values, given that he willingly embraced them for years.


Typical of PiS supporters. They're haunted by Jewish people, for inexplicable reasons.

Travel / Looking for a good places to have fun in Warsaw [8]

Any strip club seedy enough to resort to such crude advertising definitely is going at their own risk.

Law / Starting a business in Poland as a Norwegian (EU) citizen - without a work permit or Polish citizenship [19]

Aw. What is it with the Polonia being exceptionally bitter towards anyone that can be successful in Poland?

Anyway, we'll keep on abusing Poland for all it's worth. It's very nice getting rich off the back of paying Poles slave wages.

Food / Polish Pear Wine and Cider - is it popular in Poland? [9]

Strange. Must have been hallucinating, because the shops are full of cider now.

History / What was better in Poland under communism? [67]


The environmental damage done during Communism was astounding. No amount of small scale activities could make up for the vast harm done then.


And suffering appalling shortages with a culture of bribery. It was routine for people to be asked to bring their own supplies to hospitals!


Not much use if the dental care was rubbish, which it was.


That's not exactly a good thing. Think how much people were paying through indirect taxation (essentially wages being kept artificially low) to provide jobs for everyone.


Blimey, that's a naive statement if there ever was one. That might have been true for someone that owned pigs in a village, but the stuff that was used to produce "meat" in shops was...well.


Not quite. A lot of emphasis was placed on who you were - if you were the daughter of factory workers (and they had a good political history), you were going to get a place at the expense of someone who performed academically. There was a huge amount of manipulation in university entries, so the bar was rather connected to who you were. For instance, if you were a nobody from a city, you weren't getting into law studies regardless of how well you did academically.


Universities are applying the pressure themselves to provide more and more nice cushy positions for their own people. It's a problem of the autonomy granted by the PZPR back in the day.


And also subject to shocking shortages.You couldn't get good quality clothes easily, especially in the 80's.