Otto Straznicky

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Otto Straznicky (spoken: Schtrassnitski), called Ostra (born May 16, 1922 in Vienna ; † December 10, 2017 ), became known nationwide in the 1970s as the builder and operator of the Ostra-Bahn , a small transportable park railway with which he from 1973 to 1997 carried over a quarter of a million children to a total of around 800 events in eight European countries. The trained locksmith also built an extensive collection of rare old model railway products and from 1962 the largest collection of old locomotive nameplates in Germany with around 500 exhibits, which is now in the ArsTecnica exhibition in Losheim . During the last 15 years of his life, he maintained his contact with the public by actively participating in the Altentheater of the Free Workshop Theater in Cologne. In front of his house in Erfstadt-Köttingen, 20 km southwest of Cologne , he had installed a disused steam locomotive for almost three decades from 1969.

Life

Youth and wartime

Liliputbahn in Vienna's Prater with steam locomotive Da1, April 2013

Otto Straznicky was born in Vienna and spent his youth there. Two weeks before his sixth birthday, a new attraction for transporting visitors was opened in the Vienna Prater in 1928, a miniature railway with a gauge of 15 inches (381 mm), which made a lasting impression on Otto Straznicky. In the same year he received a Märklin metal construction kit for Christmas, which justified his inclination towards metal constructions. At the age of 16 he began an apprenticeship as a locksmith in 1938. In the same year he experienced the so-called annexation of Austria to the German Empire , which made him a de facto German citizen and henceforth also subject to German military service. As early as the third year of his apprenticeship (1940) he began to build a miniature steam locomotive with a 60 mm gauge with the consent of his master.

In the Second World War he was drafted into the Wehrmacht and used in the campaign against Russia that began in 1941 and in the western theaters of war. As part of one of these missions, he was quartered as a motorcycle orderly in Erfstadt-Köttingen in 1944 , where he met his future wife, Änne. Soon afterwards he was taken prisoner by the Americans. After his release he found his way back to Köttingen in December 1945, where a neighbor, the Rheinbraun engine driver in the nearby brown coal industrial center Knapsack , found him a job as a locomotive heater on the connecting line of the “ Roddergrube ” briquette factory .

The constantly changing working hours and night shifts spoiled Straznicky's fun with the “big” railroad, however, and he began with other projects in his free time: Although before the currency reform in 1948 there was a shortage of everything in Germany and hardly anything could be bought in shops In 1947 he was able to complete a drivable garden railroad electric locomotive built exclusively from scrap materials with a gauge of 60 mm, including two passenger cars.

In 1962 he began collecting historically valuable locomotive nameplates, and in the decades that followed he put together one of the largest collections of these. In addition, he constantly collected old and rare model railway pieces, in particular locomotives from the Märklin and Bing companies of the H0, 0 and I tracks, the oldest of which was made in 1895.

Ostra-Bahn and public effectiveness

In 1967 he acquired the master's title and started his own business with a small locksmith's workshop, which gave him new freedom. In 1968 he bought a two-axle steam locomotive, which was used from 1911 to 1966 as locomotive number IB on the Jülich Kreisbahn . On December 22, 1969, he had the Deutsche Bundesbahn bring it to Köttingen on a Culemeyer street scooter, named it after his wife Änne and set it up in front of his house. He steamed her a few more times at first, but stopped doing so after neighbors complained. Lok Änne stayed in front of his house for many years, where Straznicky looked after her lovingly. Only after his wife died from cancer did he hand them over to the Dutch museum railway Zuid Beveland , which transported the locomotive from Köttingen to Goes on September 24, 1996 , but found there that the effort to get it back into operation would be greater than expected and the locomotive in 2016 brought near the Kruiningen-Yerseke train station .

His greatest success was the Ostra-Bahn , with which he fulfilled his childhood dream of having his own steam-powered garden railway. Using a kit from the Zimmermann company, he built a live steam tender with a track gauge of 5 inches (381 mm), which he named after his grandson Ralph . For this locomotive he laid self-made transportable tracks in front of his workshop. On August 4, 1973, he made his public debut with this system at a children's festival in Erftstadt- Liblar . The real steam scene was still very small at the time, so that from 1975 he was a regular guest at the Nuremberg Toy Fair for 17 years and thus became known to the interested specialist audience and was able to spread the real steam idea. He also appeared in 1975 with his train in Rudi Carrell's TV show Amlauf Band .

In total, he was with his Ostra-Bahn at around 800 events in the FRG, the Netherlands, Denmark, Austria, Switzerland, France and in 1988 in the states of the GDR ( Ore Mountains ) and Poland ( Jelenia Góra in the Giant Mountains ), which were then still part of the so-called Eastern Bloc. . The last year of operation of the Ostra-Bahn is mentioned in the literature as 1997, Straznicky himself noted on a handwritten poster: "1998 end of operation", 25 years after the start of operations. In total, he carried over 250,000 children on his train.

“'Ostra' is known like a sore thumb in Erftstadt and far beyond. The face, the gestures, the appearance are unmistakable. "

- Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger, May 16, 2012

Commitment in old age

Straznicky also sought public efficacy after the end of his railway activities in old age. He was involved in various associations, wrote several historical essays, including one on "the miners' settlement in Köttingen" in 1996, and worked as an amateur actor in the Altentheater of the Free Workshop Theater in Cologne from around 2001 until shortly before his death. At the age of 90 he was still driving his scooter from Erftstadt to Cologne. At the age of 95, he died on the 2nd of Advent in 2017.

His collection of locomotive signs is now in the ArsTecnica exhibition in Losheim on the German-Belgian border, and his tinkering vein is continued in the model real steam locomotive workshop of his grandson Ralph.

“For decades, the Viennese-born traveled all over Europe with his 5-inch train, and he also put together one of the largest collections of railway signs and tin toys in Germany. His whole life was determined by the railroad. "

- Südwestrundfunk: Obituary Ostra, December 2017

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ The magazine MIBA No. 13/1964 contains a photo of this train
  2. ↑ Spoorweg-Maatschappij “Zuid Beveland”: Ostrabahn. Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
  3. ^ Spoorweg-Maatschappij “Zuid Beveland”: Het transport van de locomotief naar Nederland. Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
  4. ↑ De Nederlandse Museummaterieel Database: Loc 1B van Stichting Spoorweg-Maatschappij Zuid-Beveland (SZB). Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
  5. ↑ Akademie 55plus Darmstadt: Seniors play their lives. Retrieved October 1, 2019 .
personal data
SURNAME Straznicky, Otto
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ostra, Otto; Ostra-Bahn, Otto
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Model train builder
DATE OF BIRTH May 16, 1922
PLACE OF BIRTH Vienna
DATE OF DEATH December 10, 2017