Austrian Simple

As mentioned here, electrification came early to Austria, and by the mid 1960's almost a third of the route mileage, some eleven hundred miles, was electrified at 15,000 volts. Naturally this had been carried out principally on the important main lines radiating from Vienna, both to the western and southern frontiers of the country, and many of the little-used branch lines were still worked by steam power.

Since these lines were in most cases laid with comparatively light track, the older and smaller locomotives were retained while the larger, more powerful main-line engines made redundant by electrification were scrapped.

One of the few passenger designs still in use in Austria in the 1960's was the Class ' 35 ' 2-6-2, a 2-cylinder simple expansion engine built in large numbers by the old State Railway between 1909 and 1917.

Formerly Class ' 429 ' of the State Railway, engines of this design formed part of the stock of the Czech, Jugoslav and Italian State Railways after the first war; in 1952 nine of the Italian locomotives, Class '688 ' of the F.S. Italia, came back to their original birthplace as Nos. 35.251-9.

About twenty of these elegant machines, and one of the similar 2-cylinder compounds of Class ' 135,' were still in use on the lines of the old Kronprinz Rudolf Bahn, and were amongst the very last steam passenger locomotives in use in Austria.