Frédéric Weidknecht steam locomotive 7426 (France).

The Ateliers de Construction du Pont de Flandre, Weidknecht Frères & Cie built and sold steam locomotives in the period from 1880 to 1929. The administration building and the factory were in the 19th arrondissement of Paris (1 Boulevard Macdonald in the Pont-de-Flandre quarter).

Founder of the company in 1876 was the Parisian engineer Frédéric Weidknecht (1842-1902), who received forty patents between 1872 and 1910. These included a steam-powered bus that was presented in Paris in 1896.

Initially the company was called Bureau et Ateliers F. Weidknecht, until 1913 it was simply Weidknecht et Compagnie. In the early days, Weidknecht imported machines from abroad, but manufactured cranes and tools for railways himself. From 1879 onwards he turned to the construction and sale of locomotives for small railways. The first to leave the factory in 1880 with the serial number 104 was a two-coupled tank locomotive (020T) for a gauge of 600 mm.

Read more: History of railways with Alex Meltos ...