The Slovak sting turned out in Prague: Stará Strela is like new!
She first started on the line between Prague and Bratislava on July 13, 1936. She covered the distance in 4 hours and 51 minutes, in 1938 it took her even half an hour less. Its speed of over 130 hours per hour was unique in the world. The car disappeared from the track in 1960, when one of all two manufactured pieces got to the Kopřivnice museum.
For the last two years, he has undergone a facelift for about 45 million crowns, which has returned Strele to its original beauty and especially the opportunity to go to the tracks. “It will be restored to the state from 1936,” revealed Aha! expert guarantor of the renovation Jiří Střecha, which is the most important thing in the project. “That’s what it looked like and worked when it first left the factory,” he explained. For the weekend, Strela headed to Lužné u Rakovníka, where they may be interested in seeing the renovation of the Czech Railways Museum.
Modern and safe
And how is the control of the Missile different from today’s trains? “It’s different, but for its time it was made very modern,” said Roof. “The driver only operated the throttle lever with his left hand, the right brake, and he didn’t have to worry about anything else. She had such a semi-automatic system. The missile was also one of the first vehicles with a “dead man’s pedal,” a pedal that the driver had to keep depressed. If this were not the case, an alarm would sound after a while and the train would then stop automatically.
They looked under her skin
As Jiří Střecha said, one of the most demanding moments of the renovation was the work on the body, which had to be completely revised. “Then I will also find information on what the interior looked like. Not everything has survived, especially in terms of color. Sometimes, for example, we found hidden fragments in the original colors under the slats, and we based on that, “he said. In addition to examining the samples, the preserved p sampler from 1935 helped to fine-tune the correct cherry shade.