Dzierżoniów Śląski–Radków railway

The Dzierżoniów Śląski–Radków railway was a historic local railway in present-day Lower Silesian Voivodeship in south-western Poland. Built under German administration as the Eulengebirgsbahn, it connected Dzierżoniów (then Reichenbach im Eulengebirge) with Radków (then Wünschelburg) by way of Pieszyce, Bielawa, Srebrna Góra, Nowa Ruda-Słupiec and Ścinawka Średnia.^[1][2] The company was called Eulengebirgsbahn.

With a total historical length of 54.9 km, the line was one of the most unusual local railways in Lower Silesia because it crossed mountainous terrain and included an Abt rack railway section between Srebrna Góra and Nowa Wieś Kłodzka near the Silver Mountain Fortress.^[2][3]

The historic route no longer functions as a continuous railway. Its western and eastern remnants correspond mainly to modern PKP line no. 341 (Dzierżoniów Śląski–Bielawa Zachodnia), line no. 318 (Bielawa Zachodnia–Srebrna Góra) and line no. 327 (Ścinawka Średnia Dworzec Mały–Radków), while the central mountain section toward Nowa Ruda and Ścinawka Średnia has long been out of regular use.^[3][4]

The line began at Dzierżoniów Śląski on the Katowice–Legnica railway, from where it used a local alignment through the textile settlements of Pieszyce and toward Bielawa.^[1]

Beyond Bielawa the railway entered increasingly difficult mountain terrain on the northern edge of the Owl Mountains. It passed through Ostroszowice, Grodziszcze, Jemna and reached Srebrna Góra, one of the main tourist destinations of the range because of the nearby fortress.^[2][5]

The most technically demanding part of the railway lay between Srebrna Góra and Nowa Wieś Kłodzka. There the trains climbed toward the fortress area over a rack section, crossed major viaducts and then descended toward Wolibórz, Dzikowiec and Słupiec.^[2][3]

From Słupiec the line continued to Ścinawka Średnia Dworzec Mały and then across the northern edge of the Table Mountains foothills via Ratno Dolne and Ratno Górne to Radków.^[2]

The railway was created at the turn of the twentieth century as a local mountain line serving the Owl Mountains region and the area around Srebrna Góra. Dzierżoniów's municipal history records the creation of the local Owl Mountains railway at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.^[1]

The line opened in stages. The final section from Silberberg Stadt (now Srebrna Góra) to Wünschelburg (now Radków) entered service on 5 August 1902 after construction difficulties in the mountain section had delayed completion.^[2] Contemporary and later regional descriptions have treated the route as both a transport link and a tourist railway because it gave rail access to the mountain settlements and the fortress at Srebrna Góra.^[5][3]

The best-known feature of the line was the rack railway stretch near Srebrna Góra. According to historical descriptions, the train climbed about 141 metres in roughly 4 km between Silberberg Stadt and the summit station Silberberg Festung, after which it descended toward Neudorf and Volpersdorf.^[2]

This section used the Abt system and became one of the very few rack-worked public railway segments in the region. Modern planning documents for the revival of the route still identify the former Srebrna Góra–Nowa Ruda Słupiec section as the historically most attractive part of the line and explicitly note that it had once been worked with rack rail technology.^[3]

The railway gradually lost its original transport role during the twentieth century. The mountain alignment and the costly operation of the rack section made the route difficult to run economically, and the line eventually ceased to function as a through railway.^[2]

On the surviving western section between Dzierżoniów and Bielawa, passenger services disappeared for decades before their return in the twenty-first century. Official local summaries in Bielawa note that passenger trains returned on 15 December 2019, after an interruption of nearly 42 years, on the rebuilt Dzierżoniów–Bielawa Zachodnia section.^[6]

In the twenty-first century the historical route has again become important in regional transport planning. The Lower Silesian regional authorities have reopened the Dzierżoniów–Bielawa section and launched the revitalisation of the former Bielawa Zachodnia–Srebrna Góra section, approximately 12 km long.^[4][6]

In 2025 the Instytut Rozwoju Terytorialnego began wider conceptual work on a future communication corridor running from Wrocław via Bielawa and Srebrna Góra to Ścinawka Średnia, Tłumaczów/Otovice and the Broumov area. The institute also stated that further analysis of rebuilding the former Srebrna Góra–Nowa Ruda Słupiec section would be possible after rail services had first been restored to Srebrna Góra itself.^[3]

The Dzierżoniów Śląski–Radków railway remains well known in Lower Silesia under the traditional Polish name Kolej Sowiogórska ("Owl Mountains Railway"). Although much of the historic through route is no longer operational, the line survives in regional memory as an engineering landmark and as an important part of the transport and tourist history of the Owl Mountains and Srebrna Góra.^[3][5]

• Jerczyński, Michał (2002). Kolej sowiogórska (in Polish). Srebrna Góra: Nasza Srebrnogórska Oficyna Wydawnicza. ISBN 978-83-914176-6-9.
• "Historia Dzierżoniowa" (in Polish). City of Dzierżoniów. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
• "Kolej Sowiogórska" (in Polish). Instytut Rozwoju Terytorialnego. 3 March 2025. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
• "Eulengebirgsbahn – Betrieb der Strecke". Wüste Waltersdorf (in German). Retrieved 10 March 2026.
• "Bliżej odbudowy linii kolejowej do Srebrnej Góry. Jest umowa!" (in Polish). Rynek Kolejowy. 27 May 2025. Retrieved 10 March 2026.
• "Od powrotu kolei do Bielawy z szynobusów regionalnego przewoźnika skorzystało blisko 600 000 podróżnych" (in Polish). City of Bielawa. 15 January 2026. Retrieved 10 March 2026.