Brussels, 20/07/2011 (Agence Europe) - The European Investment Bank (EIB) granted a loan of €224 million on Wednesday 20 July to Polish rail operator PKP Intercity for the purchase of 20 high-speed trains and a maintenance depot. The trains, which will reach a top speed of about 250km per hour, will operate on existing routes: Warsaw-Gdansk-Gdynia, Warsaw-Krakow, and Warsaw-Katowice on the E-65 line north-south in the centre of Poland. This rail line is part of the trans-European Transport network (TEN-T) priority corridor 23 Gdansk-Warsaw-Brno/Bratislava-Vienna. The project forms part of a series of investments seeking to reduce the train time between Warsaw and Gdansk to under three hours and to less than two hours between Warsaw and Krakow/Katowice. (O.L./transl.rt)