We have already spoken about the marriage of Nestor Krauss with the widow Maffei, which gave origin to the long tradition of Krauss-Maffei. What we did not know until now was that the marriage did not bear fruit in terms of offspring.
Nestor Krauss, in fact, was more committed to draw improbable locomotives than to take care of his wife, in this starting a tradition that has proliferated since the appearance of railroad simulations and is becoming a social plague in the Internet age.
The drawings that I propose here were found in a beauty of Mrs Annelotte Ursula Krauss-Maffei and purchased by some of my collaborators at an auction.
Together with stringy love letters tied with a pink bow, on the bottom of the beauty, used as a wallpaper, dirty with lipstick, blush, foundation and whatever else, a package of sheets of projects and a scented card of iron filings with the words "Fuer Dich, Schatz" (For you, darling) and the signature of Nestor.
Following the active interest of friends at BAEUL and important research we have learned that, as a wedding gift, Nestor Krauss designed and built this beautiful and elegant S 2/5. based on S 3/6 shortened, which he intended to use on the line Monaco-Oberuntermittelwald near Starnberger See where the couple had a cabin for the weekend.
At the outbreak of World War I, Mrs. Krauss-Maffei, in a patriotic crisis or perhaps because she was tired of spending useless weekends in the woods and nature, gave the locomotive to the Army Railway Administration, which used it to tow ammunition convoys on the Western Front.
The locomotive carried out its task with great obstinacy until November 1917 when, on the Verdun front, it was hit by a 235 mm grenade while pulling some ammunition wagons for the artillery.
On that occasion the verb "to pulverize" was coined.
Here is the great importance of these drawings that are the only legacy of a locomotive and a story ... of love (?)