Kostopol, a town of less than three thousand inhabitants on the Zamčyske River in the Volyn Voivodeship, was granted city status only in 1923, and two years later became the seat of the district. Around the same time, it was enriched with a magnificent railway station building on the Rovne - Sarny line, built back in the time of the Partitions of Poland.

Kostopol and Janowa Dolina

The construction of the station was linked to the realisation of a new section of the railway line from Kostopol to Yanova Dolina, located several kilometres to the west. The settlement of Janowa Dolina, dubbed (much too loosely) "Volyn's Gdynia", was founded in the inter-war years as a model company settlement by the State Basalt Quarries.

It was a model establishment, realised on the basis of a modern urban plan, electrified and connected to the water and sewage system. Along the streets, planned on a regular grid, wooden four-family villas were built; moreover, the functional programme of the settlement included a school, a kindergarten, a community centre (the so-called "block") with a cinema hall and a canteen, a health centre, market halls, a chapel and a cemetery. Thanks to the construction of the railway line to Kostopol, the settlement was integrated into the national railway network.

Architecture of the railway station in Kostopol

The railway station in Kostopol was the most imposing railway development in that part of the borderlands that fell under the Radom Regional Directorate of State Railways (the northern part of the Volhynia and southern Polesie Voivodeships). This was a relatively small area compared to the areas under the administration of the Vilnius and Lwów directorates, and railway investments were therefore made here relatively least, primarily in connection with the construction of new railway sections on the Luck - Stoyanov and Kostopol - Janowa Dolina routes.

The station building in Kostopol received an architectural design typical of its time in the convention of traditionalism of modern provenance. Built on an elongated rectangular plan, it was covered with a complex roof: a gable roof was used over the central, higher part of the building, and a mansard roof with picturesque façades over the side parts.

In terms of detailing, the designer used modern solutions with a dominant motif of a risalit topped with a baroque volute gable. This element has a characteristic articulation, common in this trend: it is a two-storey gable - in the lower storey divided by pilasters and covered by volutes, in the upper storey with only volutes.

Railway stations of similar architecture

A whole series of railway stations, built in Poland in the 1820s, have similar form features, These include stations in Żyrardów, Słonim, Nowojelnia, Podbrodzie, Pruszków, Pionki, Wilkołaz, Biała Podlaska, Bielsk Podlaski, Wołkowysk, Oziernica, Skidel, as well as repetitive stations on the sections Zgierz - Brodnica, Nasielsk - Toruń, Kutno - Strzałkowo, Vilnius - Lida or Troki - Orany. The Kostopol project, on the other hand, was literally repeated in two more locations: in Sienkiewiczówka on the Luck - Stojanów line and in Werbkowice (the latter is located within the current Polish borders, in the Lubelskie Voivodeship). Unfortunately, the lack of access to design documentation does not allow detailed findings as to the authorship of these buildings and the exact time of their construction. It is most likely that they were developed in the design office of the Radom directorate; however, no information on this subject has survived in the archival resources.

Today's fate of the railway station in Kostopol

The railway station in Kostopol still exists today, still performing its original function. However, the Yanova Dolina settlement has been gone for a long time. It was burnt down in April 1943, during the Volhynian massacre, when units of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army slaughtered about six hundred Poles living there. In the entire Kostopol district, at least 4.2 thousand people of Polish nationality fell victim to the crimes of the Ukrainian nationalists.