KFNB - Minotaur and Ajax
The steam locomotives "MINOTAURUS" and "AJAX" were freight locomotives of the KFNB . Numerous wing lines belonged to the double-track main line. The two machines were procured for the route to Stockerau. They were supplied by the Jones, Turner & Evans locomotive factory in 1841 and had the axle formula B1. The "AJAX" is the oldest surviving steam locomotive on the European continent.
The "AJAX" got a new tender in 1856, which had been built in 1847 by the machine factory of the Vienna-Gloggnitz Railway. The machines were rebuilt in 1858/1859 and received new boilers. In 1867 the "AJAX" even got a third boiler with a 1.0 m² grate surface, 5.8 m² fire box and 52.0 m² boiler pipe heating surface. The locomotives had inner cylinders; the driving wheels of the second coupled axle were without flange.
Because of their large wheels, the locomotives could also be used in passenger train service. They were used on the Stockerau wing section .
The "MINOTAURUS" was taken out of service in 1867 and used in the construction of the Moravian-Silesian Northern Railway until it was retired in 1871.
The "AJAX" was decommissioned in 1874, but not scrapped, but instead parked in a shed on the northern runway, where it was forgotten.
For the 70th anniversary of the KFNB in 1908, it was rediscovered, restored, largely returned to its original state and restored to its roadworthiness. In 1911 it was transferred to the Austrian Railway Museum and exhibited there. During the extensive renovation and redesign of the museum in the 1990s, the locomotive was quartered in the Straßhof Railway Museum for a few years ; from 2006, it was restored according to scientific principles together with other historical vehicles from the Austrian Railway Museum in a hall at Vienna's Nordbahnhof .
Since the end of November 2008, the "AJAX" can be viewed again in the main building of the Technical Museum in Vienna (level 2). There it is listed under the inventory number 40561/1.
literature
- Alfred Horn: The Kaiser-Ferdinands-Nordbahn , The Austrian-Hungarian Railways, Volume 2, Bohmann Verlag, 1970
- Karl Gölsdorf : Locomotive construction in old Austria 1837-1918 , Slezak publishing house , 1978, ISBN 3-900134-40-5
- Gabriele Zuna-Kratky , Wolfgang Tobisch and others: LOK MOTIVE . Technisches Museum Wien (Ed.), Vienna 2008, ISBN 978-3-902183-17-0 .