SÜDBAHN Museum - Mürzzuschlag, Austria 
In Austria, visit the world's largest collection of draisines and historic locomotives.
The exhibition on the historical development of standard-gauge draisines, railcars and motor coaches shows more than 40 original vehicles and reconstructions that were used in the period from 1838 to 1970 for railway supervision and railway maintenance.
The Austrian draisine collection in the Rundlokschuppen Mürzzuschlag
The term ‘draisine’ comes from the district forestry superintendent Karl Friedrich Drais who lived in the Grand Duchy of Baden from 1785 to 1851. As early as 1813, he had invented a four-wheeled car with foot pedal drive for the road and in 1817 a wooden, steerable running machine, as a forerunner of the bicycle. It was not until 1842 that he built a car for railway tracks in Karlsruhe. He tried to market his running machine worldwide and so the name Drais remained in the memory of general public.
The collection shows standard-gauge small cars, now called Nebenfahrzeuge in German, which were in use in the period from 1838 to the 1980s at the ÖBB and its predecessors. These are vehicles that were needed for construction and supervisory services.
The Viennese silk manufacturer Franz Aloys Bernard, who registered a patent in 1838 for a running machine that could be moved on tracks, is considered the inventor of draisines in Vienna.
Address: Heizhausgasse 2, 8680 Murzzuschlag, Austria
Contact: https://suedbahnmuseum.at/en
428/A - draisine collection in Mürzzuschlag
Josef Božek, a leading Czech mechanic and promoter of steam power
Josef Božek constructed his own steam car, which he demonstrated for the first time in our country on September 24, 1815, at the Royal Park in Prague.
However, the mechanic Josef Bozek from Prague, also built (after the English model) a mechanical car – a driving machine – for route inspection, for the builder of the horse-drawn tram in Linz-Budweis, Franz Gerstner, in 1825. The construction itself was headed by the workshop director of the Prague Polytechnic School, Jan Soucek. It was the first known draisine on the tracks in Austria.
