Jon Searles' photos with the keyword: stove

Ceramic stoves have been in use in the Czech Republic, both for heating and cooking, since at least the 17th Century. The older ones are extremely ornate, and not easily recognizable as stoves (which could be a safety hazard). However, they became much simpler in the 19th Century as they became more practical, small stoves for everybody, which is also when they were increasingly used for cooking. Usually, they've run on coal, and in spite of this you can still buy them.

This was after I got on. As I've said already, CSD kept some very old fashioned passenger car technology until comparatively late in their history, with some wooden passenger cars from the 1940's being heated by coal stoves like this one. American and British trains stopped using these with the advent of steam heating in the 1880's and 1890's, as the combination of coal stoves and wooden construction was thought to constitute a fire hazard.

Nadrazi Unhost, in spite of serving a small town (village?), is a staffed station that's also nicely equipped. This is the waiting room, complete with a stove, schedules, posters, and a table for cards, eating, reading, or whatever while you wait for your train.

Here's another shot of the smoking coal stoves, only with the Nadrazi Branik station (nadrazi actually means "station" in Czech, so I'm using this incorrect terminology for the English speakers) building visible.

These vintage coaches, partly of wooden construction, would form the consist for the steam excursion to Krivoklat that I posted photos from a few months ago. I took these photos largely to illustrate their coal-fired heating stoves, as although they were built during World War II, they were about 70 years out of date even then, with these stoves for heating, as well as, usually, four-wheel wooden construction.

These ceramic stoves, usually fired by coal and used for heating more than cooking, aren't unique to Sumava and in fact can be found in various sizes all over the Czech Republic. They also aren't anything resembling new technology, as I've seen some from as far back as the Baroque period. Originally they were mainly for palaces and other very expensive buildings, sometimes reaching enormous sizes, but now the irony is that they're being made obsolete by central heating and/or the even more modern phenomenon of independent electric radiators in each room, so now they're as much associated with cottages in the countryside.

Ceskoslovenske Drahy used coal stoves for heating trains until surprisingly late in their history, and this particular passenger car wasn't built until the early 1940s, although it looks 100 years older because of all the wooden construction, and if you could see the outside, it's 4-wheel undercarriage, devoid of modern trucks or bogies. Rolling stock like this could be seen in Czech movies as late as the 1980s, although I don't know the precise year that they were pulled from regular service.