THE ARMOURED train Štefánik returned to Slovakia in September after spending six months on a trip to the Netherlands. The Museum of the Slovak National Uprising (SNP) lent the train for the exhibition Flags in War, which presented several military trains in Utrecht.
Organised on the 300th anniversary of the signing of the Utrecht Peace Treaty, the exhibition featured hospital and food trains used in wars.
Štefánik was repaired by the Banská Bystrica-based SNP Museum for the 65th anniversary of the 1944 Slovak National Uprising, in which Slovaks rose up against the wartime Nazi puppet regime.
To mark the 300th anniversary of the Peace of Utrecht in the Dutch city of the same name, the local railway museum organised one of the biggest exhibition projects in Europe concerning history and railways, called Trains in War. Part of the Dutch project involved the presentation of 16 train sets from all over the world.
“Slovakia had the chance to present the once-used armament deployed in the SNP in 1944 as one of the eight countries,” Dalibor Lesník of the SNP Museum told the TASR newswire. “When unloading it, the workers in the cargo harbour in Bratislava were helped by the SNP Museum employees and by railway workers as it was placed on the tracks,” he added.
After the exhibition ended, Štefánik was loaded onto a vessel and arrived in the Bratislava harbour on the Danube on September 6. Afterwards, the train will remain in the Bratislava-based Museum of Transport, and will eventually be returned to Banská Bystrica.
