Rataje Park and Railway Open-Air Museum in Poznań

Every day at noon a narrow-gauge steam locomotive in Rataje Park puffs out clouds of smoke and sounds its whistle – though it never leaves. It is the party piece of the Środa County Railway open-air museum, set in the heart of Poznań's second-largest park. Around the locomotives you will find a sensory garden, ponds, a playground with a giant toy train, an outdoor gym and a parkour course.

A park built from scratch

Rataje Park covers more than 17 ha between the Jagiellońskie, Powstań Narodowych, Rzeczypospolitej, Bohaterów II Wojny Światowej and Polan housing estates, on the border of the Rataje and Żegrze districts. It was created from nothing on wasteland and a former industrial site that had to be reclaimed. Construction was completed in December 2018 at a cost of PLN 21 million, almost PLN 12 million of it from EU funds. It is Poznań's second-largest park after the Citadel and the largest park built in Poland since 1989.

The Środa County Railway open-air museum

In the central part of the park, near the Church of the Visitation, stand two steam locomotives: the standard-gauge Tkt48-130 with a dining car from the former state railway caterer WARS, and the narrow-gauge "Baziel", which worked on the Środa line. They are joined by a stretch of track, level-crossing barriers, a semaphore signal, a water crane, a buffer stop and a historic station clock, while the roofed benches are styled as platforms.

The museum recalls a railway whose construction began in 1898 with an 11-km standard-gauge section from Poznań to Kobylepole. Five years later the main narrow-gauge line from Kobylepole via Tulce to Środa Wielkopolska and Zaniemyśl, 59 km long, was finished, and after 1927 the whole network exceeded 115 km. The railway mainly carried sugar beet from the estates along the route, but passengers too. In 1949 it was taken over by the Polish State Railways, and the creation of Lake Malta later cut across its old route.

Sensory garden and active zones

The park is divided into 9 zones, with a square and fountain at its centre. The sensory garden has four parts – rustling grasses (hearing), fruit bushes (taste), herbs (smell) and perennials and creeping plants (sight) – with a sensory path for touch alongside. Further on are hammocks and loungers, tables for chess and ludo, an interactive playground with a big colourful toy train, a picnic meadow, an outdoor gym, a street-workout area, a parkour course and an off-road bike park. The paths have a permeable mineral surface, and the ponds collect rainwater – green toads overwinter in them.

Tripto tip

Time your visit to be at the museum at 12:00, when the narrow-gauge engine smokes and whistles; in summer the show is repeated at 14:00 and 16:00. The locomotives are for looking at – there are no rides. Allow about an hour for the railway museum and the sensory garden, longer with the playground. If the children want a real train ride, the Maltanka park railway runs in season by Lake Malta.