Railways in Russian Poland and Austrian Poland were very well intergated to MPS and kkStB total networks.

   This made the train travelling in the area quite special when different languages were spoked among the passengers.
In Imperial Russia the Jews were allowed only to inhabite the so called Pale areas which included:
* In the Kingdom of Poland (or the region of the Vistula) the Province of Warsaw, Kalish, Kielce, Lomzha, Piortkow, Plotsk, Radom, Souvalki, and Sieldce.
* In Lithuania, the provinces of Vilna, Kovno, and Grodno.
* In White Russia, the provinces of Minsk, Vitiebsk and Mohiliev.
* In south-western Russia, the Provinces of Volhynia, Podolia, Kijev (except the city of Kijev), Tchernihov, and Poltava.
* In southern (new) Russia, the Provinces of Bessarabia, Herson, Jekaterinoslaff, and Taurida (except the town of Jalta).

   The Jews formed quite number of the population in the area in these provinces. Their total number in 1897 (the last available reliable figure) was 5.215.805.
   This was a result of the historical reasons. As far it is known, the first Jewish immigrants reached Poland in very early times from the countries on the Lower danube and from the Kingdom of the Khazares, who had accepted the Jewish faith. In national sagas and legends show their importance at this early era.
   At the end of eleventh century many entered Poland from Germany, and in 1264 Boloslas the Pious granted them numerous privilidges which were extended by Casimir the Great in 1334, in which year the great statue concerning them, called the "Jus Magdeburgium", was enached, followed by another called the "Privilegia Judaeorum" in 1357.
The Jews soon spread through Courland, Lithuania, and the Ukraine, so that there were in the end of the 18th century number of Jews living in Poland and on the Russian frontier, the prohibitive policy of that country making any movement across the border impossible.
The law of 1789 gave the Jews the right to live in certain provinces, but in 1792 a great change took place. The first partiation of Poland gave to Russia, White Russia and part of Lithuania; the second in 1793, and the third in 1795, added the ten Vistula provinces, and, in annexing this land, Russia obtained at least a half of the entire European Jewish population as sublects.

   In 1835 the Jews were by the "Code of the Rights of Jews" confided to certain districts of the Russian Empire, these districts constituting the so called "Pale".
   The "Pale" consisted of twenty-five of the provinces of the entire Russian Empire. It begun immediately south of the Baltic Provinces, stretched throughout the west,and extended over the south as far east as the Don Cossack Territory. It covered 362.000 square miles, or less than 20 per cent of the European Russia, and only a little over four per cent of the entire Russian Empire. Their importance as railway empoyers in both Russian Poland and Austrian Poland was minimal. kkStB opened ones a course to the Jewish born young men in Lemberg to be teached to become as Locomotive drivers. From the 50 participants who were selected in this four year training only seven passed the examination, all others quited from the course.
   Compared with the parallel Polish course, where 38 passed the examination. Maybe because the Jews were much more oriented to their traditional professions, as shop keepers, mobile traders, tax collectors for the Crown or local adminstrations, etc. But they formed the majority of the train passengers in the 3rd class in all local passenger trains running in the area. Many of them travelled in weekly bases to neighbouring countries, Roumania, Austria, and Germany to make their living by participating in market "torgs" trade and bought small goods to be sold in local Jewish populated villages in the area. They were an every day sight on the railways and the history of railways in Russian Poland, Lithuania, Ukraina, and Galitzia (Austrian Poland), Bukowina and Bessarabia can not be written without mentioning them in railway history.
They formed even the majority of the population in certain important railway junction towns just as Wolkowysk (Vaukavis) being renamed in 1912 to Bagrationovskaja, in the honour of General Bagratin. But the railway line from Siedlets (Sieldce) to Bagrationovskaja (185 versts) remaided as "Volkovyskaja Linija Privislinskih Zhel.Dor." in offical timetables. Very little has been published of the railways in these areas, due lack of knowledge because many primary sources have been dissapeared over the times and the results of the 1914 - 1918 and 1939 - 1945 wars.
During the last forty years I have tried to collect some material out of the still existing sources and what I have found out the story forms a quite unique railway history in Europe with changing borders, different adminstrations, changes of gauges, fast groving railway networks, devastation of wars, period of rebuilding and again devastations as a result of next war, closed borders, and the change of the ethnic populations, formation of new (old) states, a story not found at all in Western Europe.