The Krynica Line

Nikifor, the Lemko painter of Krynica, made his long journeys by train, and mostly without a ticket. Conductors would put him off at the next station. He did not much mind: it gave him time to look the building over and draw it before the following train came. The stations along this line, from Krynica through Tarnów and on towards Lwów, turned up in his pictures one after another, and railway stations are now listed among the subjects at the museum that carries his name.

One of the regional trains between Kraków and Krynica is called Nikifor.

The line runs 149 km from Tarnów through the Beskid foothills to Nowy Sącz, then up the Poprad valley past a string of spa towns to Muszyna, where an 11 km branch climbs to Krynica-Zdrój. It is an ordinary working railway, served by POLREGIO's regional trains and PKP Intercity's TLK and IC services from Kraków, which take around four hours. Replacement buses are planned between Tarnów and Stróże from March to June 2027.

Trains leave the Kraków–Rzeszów main line at Tarnów and turn south, following PKP line 96 into the Beskid foothills through Tuchów and Bogoniowice Ciężkowice, and on to Bobowa-Miasto and the junction at Stróże. Most of the way is single track on a line opened on 18 August 1876, the emperor's birthday.

PKP Intercity's TLK Karpaty and Małopolska and the IC Malinowski are locomotive-hauled, by electrics such as the blue EU07 and EP07 in the photographs here. POLREGIO's regional services run as electric multiple units and carry names of their own: Jaworzyna, Dolina Popradu, for the Poprad valley, and Nikifor.

The painter and the conductors

Zbigniew Wolanin, writing in the Almanach Muszyny in 1999, set out how Nikifor travelled. He walked around the Lemko villages to sketch their wooden churches, and took the train for everything further. He seldom paid, so conductors often put him off at the next station, where he drew the building before boarding the next train. Wolanin traced the sequence of stations in his pictures along the line from Krynica through Tarnów and Przemyśl to Lwów, and in the Nowy Sącz museum's archive found a pre-war timetable on which a morning train from Krynica reached Lwów by the afternoon.

The line took Nikifor's neighbours away as well. Stations at Grybów and Nowy Sącz were loading points for transports of Lemkos to the east in 1945, and in the summer of 1947 those of the Nowy Sącz district were deported west under Operation Vistula. Nikifor was sent with them, and returned to Krynica, by Wolanin's account fairly soon after, carrying watercolours of ports and ships.

Up the Poprad

Beyond Nowy Sącz the line crosses the Poprad to Stary Sącz, near where the river meets the Dunajec, and turns up the valley. The Poprad runs north out of Slovakia, and for about 30 kilometres the Polish–Slovak frontier follows it. The section between Rytro and Piwniczna is known as the gorge: forest comes down to the water on either side, and the track shares the narrow floor of the valley with the river and the road.

Past Piwniczna-Zdrój the trains call at Łomnica-Zdrój, Wierchomla Wielka and Żegiestów, where the 513-metre tunnel was blown up twice. Sappers destroyed it in September 1939 and retreating German troops in January 1945. For three years afterwards the train stopped short and passengers crossed the hill to carry on.

The branch

At Muszyna the 1876 main line goes on to the Slovak frontier at Leluchów, and the Krynica trains leave it for an 11 km branch. Krynica had spent 35 years at the end of a carriage road, and the local company's line opened only on 29 May 1911, one of the last built in Galicia. During the First World War the branch shut for the winter, and the head of the Krynica commune wrote to the Polish members in Vienna that moving one wagon the 11 kilometres to Muszyna meant 204 kilometres of light-engine running, four trips of 51 kilometres from Nowy Sącz.

The trains stand for up to 19 minutes at Muszyna. Then they climb through Powroźnik, where an old wooden church is on the World Heritage list, to the terminus at Krynica-Zdrój.

POLREGIO and PKP Intercity between them run about eight trains a day each way along the whole line, and most of them come through from Kraków. Kraków to Krynica-Zdrój takes about four hours; the fastest direct train, the TLK Małopolska, takes 3 hours 59 minutes. From Tarnów the journey is about three hours.

Direct trains, Wednesday 18 November 2026

Other POLREGIO trains run between Tarnów and Krynica without continuing to Kraków. The next timetable starts on 13 December 2026.

Replacement buses in 2027

PKP Intercity's notice for the 2026/27 timetable says that from March to June 2027 track work will close line 96 between Tarnów and Stróże, and that replacement buses will run towards Krynica-Zdrój. The exact dates are not yet published, so check before travelling in those months.

As of November 2026, from KOLEO's timetable (opens in a new tab) for 18 November 2026 and PKP Intercity's notice (opens in a new tab) of 16 October 2026.

Tickets for the POLREGIO regional trains are priced under the Małopolska tariff, and seats are not reserved. PKP Intercity's TLK and IC trains are sold with a reserved seat and priced by date, so the cheapest seats go early: promotional fares from Kraków to Krynica were 19 zł on the Karpaty and 34.80 zł on the Małopolska.

Tickets for all of them are on sale at KOLEO (opens in a new tab) as well as the operators' own sites. Fares for 18 and 19 November 2026, as of November 2026.

Interrail and Eurail passes are valid on the POLREGIO, TLK and IC trains on this line, on a Global Pass or a Poland Pass. POLREGIO's trains need no reservation. Interrail's table of railway companies recommends one on TLK trains, where they are often full, and lists some IC trains with a mandatory reservation, so check the train before travelling.

For this trip alone a pass is not worth buying: the POLREGIO fare from Kraków to Krynica is 28.50 zł. It pays only when the line is one stop on a longer journey through Poland.

Checked November 2026 against Interrail's table of railway companies (opens in a new tab), last updated 21 October 2026.

The stops below are all on the line. The spa towns of the upper valley suit a slow day out from Krynica.

Krynica-Zdrój, at the end of the line, is the natural base. Nowy Sącz suits a stop halfway along it, and Tarnów an early start.

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