Prague, June 28 (CTK) – A special train pulled by a steam engine and consisting of carriages used by Czechoslovak presidents both before and after WWII set out for its ride across Czechia and Slovakia from Prague Masaryk Station on Thursday.
The Presidential Train project is organised by the National Technical Museum (NTM) together with the Czech Railways (CD) and the Slovak Railways (ZSR) companies within the events marking the 100th anniversary of the establishment of Czechoslovakia.
The train, including two engines and nine carriages, will stop in 15 Czech and Slovak towns during the summer, including Brno, Olomouc, Zlin and Plzen in the Czech Republic and Bratislava, Zilina and Kosice in Slovakia.
One of the carriages, Aza 1-0086, dates back to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. It was produced for Franz Ferdinand d’Este, successor to the throne murdered in Sarajevo in 1914, by the Prague-seated Ringhoffer plant in 1909, and later it was used by Tomas Garrigue Masaryk, the first Czechoslovak president in 1918-35.
Another unique carriage is Aza 1-0080, which the Ringhoffer company produced specially for Masaryk on his 80th birthday in March 1930.
The third historical piece in the Presidential Train is a representative carriage which a plant in Bautzen, then East Germany, produced for the Czechoslovak president in 1968.
Though all the carriages are functional, people will not be able to travel by this presidential train and they can only enter the youngest the three festive carriages.
The train will also include the Aza 1-0083 dining car from 1891, which was a part of the imperial train of Austrian Emperor Franz Josef I and also of the train that took the last emperor, Karl I, and his family from Austria to the Swiss exile in the night to March 24, 1919.
Furthermore, visitors to the Presidential Train can see the Aza 1-0085 carriage, which was originally made for Baron Rothschild in 1906. After his death it went to the state railways and after the end of the monarchy it became one of the representative carriages of the presidential train.
In Ca 4-5086, a newly reconstructed carriage designed for passenger express transport, the visitors will see an exhibition highlighting Czech presidents’ train rides.
The train’s ride will end at the end of August.
The public can see it at at the Masaryk Station in Prague from August 28 till September 2.
