COMMENTS TO MY PAGE "ART POSTCARDS WITH A RAILWAY MOTIVE"

Wiener Neustädter Lokomotivfabrik

In 1842 in Wiener Neustadt a locomotive works was founded by Günther Wenzel. In 1861 it was sold to the Vienna Maschinenfabrik and the owner Georg Sigl (1811-1887), who expanded it into the largest plant in the Austrian Empire. By 1870 the 1000th locomotive had been made and the workforce exceeded 4.000. The product line was expanded to include printing presses and other machinery. The G. Sigl factory became one of the primary producers of steam locomotives for the railways of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The factory designed and built locomotives tailored to the specific needs of the region, including engines capable of operating on mountainous terrain and handling heavy freight loads. A tornado in 1916 destroyed much of the locomotive works. The loss of crown lands by the Austria Empire after the First World War caused a great loss of production and as a consequence the workforce was reduced to a few hundred men, The Great Depression worsened the situation. After the nazi Austrian Anschluss in 1938 the factory was taken over by the German company Henschel & Son. To increase production of locomotives the factory was greatly expanded.  The facilities were completely destroyed in 1945 by air bombings.

November 15th 2024

 

 
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.