The company was reformed in 2001 when the former Polish State Railways state-owned enterprise was divided into several units based on the need for separation between infrastructure management and transport operations.

[3] Regaining independence on 11 November 1918 allowed Poland to reclaim the former Russian and Austrian sectors from military railways.

[citation needed] After the victory over the Red Army in the Polish-Bolshevik War (1920), a great deal of damage in railway structure was discovered on the route along which the communists were retreating.

At the same time, the tense relations with Lithuania led the railways around Vilnius and Minsk to a partial disintegration and stagnation.

[citation needed] An economic crisis in the 1930s forced the state to cut back its budget for railway investment.

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 former German, now Polish Western and Northeastern land from the Soviet Union.

Due to the Red Army's rapid advance into Germany proper, the railway lines of Silesia, Farther Pomerania, and East Prussia largely remained intact, so that operations could be resumed.

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.

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.

[citation needed] Since Poland's return to democracy 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, in many cases aided by European Union funding, as well as new rolling stock is slowly enticing people back onto the railways.

It is a railway transportation service that originally functioned in Poland's Tricity area (Gdynia, Sopot and Gdańsk).

It is serviced by electric multiple unit cars at a frequency of 6 minutes to half an hour between trains (depending on the time of day).

The line was opened in 1979 and was used to import iron ore from the USSR, as well as to export coal and sulphur from Poland.

Electric train traction of Polish State Railway started in 1936 in Warsaw area and is performed since the beginning with 3 kV DC.

Until 22 December 2008 Przewozy Regionalne was a wholly owned subsidiary of the PKP Group; after that date, all of its shares have been transferred to Poland's 16 regional governments.