Zlonice Railway Museum

The composer and railway enthusiast Antonin Dvořák dedicated his first symphony to the village of Zlonice in Central Bohemia, 60 km north-west of Prague. The main emphasis of the railway museum, situated at the local station, is on railway freight operations. Most of the steam locomotives in the collection were built before 1939 either for shunting at industrial premises, many of them for sugar factories, or for working freight trains on main lines. One of the latter is a very large 2-8-2T tank locomotive fitted with a Giesl ejector. There are also examples built in Skoda at Plzen, and a substantial collection of narrow gauge locomotives by the firm of Orenstein & Koppel, founded in Berlin in 1876. There are some diesel locomotives and an early diesel railcar built in Germany. The museum also includes freight wagons of various kinds, and equipment used for loading and unloading them. There is a display of signalling and other safety equipment, and visitors are able to take short rides on a length of 600 mm track.