This feels like what a noble steam locomotive should look like, and this rather lovely Krauss 310 was built in Linz in 1903. It’s now sitting in the courtyard of Bratislava’s Transport Museum, looking rather photogenic in the baking Slovakian sun. I might have mentioned it was very hot and sunny when I was there. The locomotive is older than most modern democracies and arguably more reliable than some and it served for decades on narrow-gauge lines in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. There’s no option to climb aboard the locomotive, but it was too hot anyway for such escapades.
The attached little red wooden wagon adds a rustic contrast, though perhaps a bit less decadent. It’s charming in that functional and splintery kind of way, and I dare say it wouldn’t have passed modern health and safety inspections, unless those inspections were done by candlelight and accompanied by schnapps.
From the front and the relatively small size of the locomotive is a little more obvious now and it looks somewhat less of a thundering beast.