Östergötland Railway Museum Visit, October 2015

Keith Chambers reports: 

I visited Östergötland Railway Museum near Linköping on 29th October 2015. Östergötland once boasted a very extensive 891mm gauge system which included the Northern Östergötland Railway (NÖJ) and the Mid Östergötland Railway (MÖJ). The museum is closed at this time of year but I was a guest of Linköping's local authority and was given a personal tour by the very friendly and knowledgeable Johan Högquist the museum's head curator. There is a lot of narrow gauge rolling stock crammed into the three track building. There are two steam locos. Firstly former NÖJ 2-8-2T no.18 which became SJ class N4p 3160. It is 891mm gauge and was built by Motala in 1920. The other steam loco is a 600mm gauge feldbahn 0-8-0T locomotive built by Borsig in 1919. It saw industrial use firstly at a paper mill and later at Eds Bruk Ironworks. There is also an ex NÖJ 4wPM built in 1935 which became SJ Zp class 271. Finally there was electric railcar no. 1 of the MÖJ which became SJ Xa1p class 26. This was the jewel in the museum as far as Johan was concerned as it was Sweden's first electric locomotive.

As you can see photography was difficult in the limited space available. The 891mm wagon behind the locomotive was for sugar beet which was a principle traffic on many railways in the area.

And this is NÖJ 2-8-2T no.18: