entire Polish railway network. It's true that this paint does always fitwell with dirty passenger consists covered with colorful graffiti, but if one is lucky to find such a locomotive with an olive setof double-deck stock or a freight train, or standing alone somewherein a station or in a depot, it's enough to bring a tear of joy toyour eye. You may read further commentary on the above phenomenon on page 10÷12.

It wasn't long ago that in Poland photography was forbidden of almost everything beyond christenings, weddings, funerals, communions, and perhaps also trips to places without strategic importance. One of the most guarded secrets of socialism was railway transport. Dilapidated narrow-gauge choo-choos which ran twice a day, or old water towers, were protected state secrets. In spite of that, many of us railway enthusiasts tried to make pictures of items that interested us in those forbidden times. Some photographed with cameras hidden „up their sleeves”, risking extreme unpleasantness should they be caught by guards. Others did this activity legally on the basis of permission issued in the 1980s. Both, during the course of their railway escapades, had serious "adventures" many times with officials of the railway or civilian police, or simply with officious railway workers. Time passes without regret, and many details of these events are disappearing from memory and lost. So, we decided to begin a series of reminiscent articles in KMiD under the common headline „The Forbidden Railway”. We ask all of our colleagues who were photographing in those „forbidden” times to write their most interesting adventures and send them to the editors. In this way we will record the increasingly less-known pages of our recent history. In the first part we present the recollections of our colleague, chief editor Krzysztof Wiśniewski.

In the first 100 years of railways,steam traction held unquestionable dominance on the railway scene.In many countries, steam locomotives continued to be used for severaldecades even after the rapid evolution of diesel and electrictraction. Despite the elimination of steam locomotives fromnormal traffic on most of the world's railways, they haven't passedfrom the scene. In recent years, it's been possible to witness arebirth of steam locomotives in museum and tourist service in manycountries (outside of Poland, of course). Historically, moststeam locomotives have used coal as fuel. As steam locomotivesevolved, so did the various installations intended to supply theselocomotives with this fuel in the quickest and most efficient waypossible. What facilities remain, how were they built, andhow did they work? All this will be answered by the material on pages 20÷56 (limited, of course, to those types of installations whichwere found in Polish territory).

In conjunction with our article onlocomotive coaling towers, we present, for the benefit of our readerswho also model steam railways, an overview of the companies producingbuildings and equipment in the form of kits you can assemble yourself. From these firm'scatalogs we will search out everything which can be used for buildingcoaling stations for a model locomotive depot (limited to thoseproducts, which are generally available to Polish purchasers). Wepresent short reviews of different products, point to their „pluses” and „minuses”, and above all advise as to how well a kitcorresponds to modelling Polish railways; we also warn if a kit does not correspond tothe equipment being used in Poland to such a degree that it cannot bemodified in a modeller's workshop.