When railway tracks were laid in the Cieszyn Duchy, military purposes were the first priority. However, it is worth mentioning that the Austrian engineers planned them poorly – along the border with Prussia, with disastrous results during the War of 1866. After the army, industry came second in the hierarchy of importance, and only then the classic passenger traffic. For this reason, the Košice-Bogumín Railway first ran through Cieszyn, as the section from Bogumín to Cieszyn was completed in 1869, and from Cieszyn to Žilina in 1871, and in 1888 the town was connected to Bielsko (and Galicia) and Frýdek (and Moravia). In 1888, an underground passage was built under the tracks, which was called “Demel’s hole”
(Demelloch) after the then mayor of Cieszyn.
author: Michael Morys-Twarowski
