ROLLING - STOCK, "KUKUSHKA"

A RAILWAY ENGINE “KUKUSHKA”

The museum staff wanted to have a real railway engine. They found it in Svencioneliai. In 1972 when the way Utena-Svencioneliai was closed, some engines called “Kukushka” were taken away to the scrap metal. Only one was going from the station to the factory. Since 1973 it was in the yard of the company “Liejiniai”. This railway engine is one of three narrow railway engines in Lithuania (two others stand in Panevezys and Siauliai railway stations). When the company was eliminated, the company “Velga Vilnius” took the property. The owner is Jozef Fiedorowicz who lives in England, but comes from Svencioneliai. So he presented the people of Anyksciai with the railway engine. He also offered his help restoring it. It is no wonder. Not far from his home near Oxford there is a Railway Museum, which he visits every summer with his grandson. On March 19, 2002 a railway engine with the number 2032, made in 1949 in Pilzen (Czekia) in the “Shkoda” factory was brought to Anyksciai with a prime mover. The engine weighs 15 tons.

Now the engine “Kukushka” meets tourists on the platform of the railway station in Anyksciai and is the monument of the narrow gauge railway history.