| #434.2298 was one of 345 434.2 Class 2-8-0's built between 1924 and 1947 by CKD, and by CSD's own shops. #434.2298 is special, though, because it was built out of an older locomotive from Weiner Neustadt that dated to 1914. I don't know the exact date that #434.2298 was rebuilt, however. The museum's own website is confusing in this regard. The 434.2 Class was based on an earlier Austrian design dating back to 1897 (hence the reason, perhaps, for the rebuild), and was quite modern for its day. It's superheater was often noted, although most new mainline locomotives around the world were superheated by 1924. Later builds after 1939 had larger superheaters than earlier ones, but were counted as part of the same class. The most powerful 434.2 Class locomotives of all put out 1400 horsepower (in spite of weighing only 69.5 metric tonnes, with an adhesive weight of 58), and could pull a 600 tonne train up a 10% grade at 30Km/h, a truly extraordinary achievement by the standards of any era. On level track, however, only 60Km/h was possible. Such heavy haulers as these were clearly intended as freight locomotives, but many were used also on passenger trains (as old photos will confirm), and #434.2186 remains in service with CD as an excursion locomotive (although #434.2298 is inoperable, and not even owned by the CD Muzeum, being from the Narodni Technicky Muzeum collection in Prague). Wikipedia claims that the 434.2 Class remained in regular service on CSD until 1983, but this contradicts most of the other sources that I've read, which put the last year of mainline steam on CSD as 1982. Of course, some units may have been kept as backup locomotives until 1983, just as some American railroads kept steam backup locomotives into 1963, in spite of the last regularly scheduled mainline steam trips being ended in 1960. |