were produced in Sosnowiec. The Warsaw Uprising caused widespread damage of Warsaw rolling stock, network and electric traction; both bridges over the Vistula River and the tunnel on the Warsaw Cross-City Line were destroyed. At the beginning of 1945, the Ministry of Transport was created, as well as the Regional Directorate of National Railways. Many pre-war locomotives were sent to the Soviet Union. Poland received many German locomotives as a compensation for war losses. In June, the rail connection with Warsaw was opened, using a temporary railway station made of warehouses. On 15 September 1945, PKP took over management of all railway lines on new Polish territory from the Soviet Union. Most of these lines were either destroyed or inaccessible. The railways in the country were divided into ten districts. During the mid-to-late communist era, the state of the Polish railways deteriorated to a large extent. Once a large and profitable network, the systemic lack of funding and failure to acquire new rolling stock left PKP far behind the railway operators of Western Europe in terms of technical advances and passenger comfort. In addition to this, the poor state of many rail lines throughout the country led to ever-increasing journey times for passengers, and as a result left the railways far less able to compete with intercity bus and air services. During the entire communist period, only one major infrastructural project relating to the railways was completed. This, the Central Trunk Line, was a prestige project completed in 1976, intended both for heavy coal transport and fast passenger services. This line for the first time allowed passengers to travel in comfort and at relatively high speed from Kraków and Katowice to Warsaw; however, high-speed services have never started, although test runs reached 250 km/h in 1994. Moreover, despite the successful completion of the section from southern to central Poland, the planned extension to Gdańsk and the country's Baltic ports was never realised, and this significantly curtailed both the usefulness and potential of the line. Since Poland's return to the sovereignty in the early 1990s, the Polish State Railways have faced ever-increasing competition from private automotive transport and the country's rapidly expanding network of motorways and express roads. However, ever-decreasing journey times, better schedules which allow for well-coordinated connections, the rise of private operators and large-scale investment in infrastructure as well as new rolling stock is slowly enticing people back onto