Equipment Department. The roster contains diesel locomotives of the series SM31, SM42, ST43 and SU45, as well as the steam locomotives assigned to the Wolsztyn depot, which formally belong to the Leszno Section. We will concentrate our attention on the diesel locomotives, which in addition to shunting duties serve daily passenger trains on routes to Zbąszynek, Głogów and Ostrów Wielkopolski, as well as six pairs of freight trains - trains servicing the shunting yard of PKP Cargo - Leszno. Along with the photographs we have inserted a poster of SU45-096 leaving Leszno station with a train to Głogów.

In the 1980’s, factory-painted EU06 and EU07 type 4E locomotives were characterized by a light green color on the upper body of the locomotive and in a narrow band near the bottom, while the middle of the body carried a dark green color. Similarly, EU07 type 303E locomotives had an upper body of light green and a dark green lower body. The ends of the locomotives also carried these two hues of green. After a memorable occurrence in 1988, when a train struck a Russian army convoy, locomotive ends started to be painted yellow with the goal of improving visibility. Recently this procedure was given up, and it was decided to return to the earlier paint scheme. However, the repercussions of this decision, worn-out locomotives, and various interpretations mean that we see these locomotives in similar, but different paint schemes. Our editorial colleague Bogdan Waga attempts to sort them all out.

Narrow-gauge comeback-or, the scene after the battle. With these words we commence a series of articles describing the changes in ownership of Poland’s narrow gauge railways, which in 2002 were separated from the structure of the national carrier - Polish State Railways. We will see if their condition today is a great disaster, or rather a success of PKP reform. These articles won’t contain the historical background of the railways, but rather focus on their battle for survival and today’s operations under the wings of new operators. As the first we present the Smigiel Narrow Gauge Railway, which under PKP management operated passenger services the longest and was the last to quit. It’s recent operator is the Association of Local Railway Transport (SKPL) from Kalisz under the leadership of Tomasz Strapagiel - association president.

Many enthusiasts of small railways have a gleam in their eye when certain operations on a layout can be accomplished automatically, for example blocking section after section of track occupied by a train, closing crossing barriers or alternating the departures of trains from a station. Unfortunately, only a few have knowledge on the subject of building systems for the automatic operation of a miniature railway - particularly on the complicated interdependencies - due to the difficultly of the subject manner of lack of interest. We try, in an approachable way, to fill this breach and help in the building of such a system by beginning an occasional series of articles entitled “electronics on the model railway layout”. In this article, we present several simple systems, which can be built based on parts recently available from the Polish firm STERKOL.