GERMANY’S ‘9F’
It can shift more than 2,800 tons and is bigger than a ‘Duchess’. In the latest of our series on eastern Germany, TONY STREETER takes a look at a monster of an engine.
Jumbo’ is resting. A soft panting, a sizzle and a gentle whir from a turbogenerator speak of pent-up force. When driver Uwe Hüttner reaches out to the regulator, he has at his fingertips enough power to shift over 2,800 tons up a 1-in-250 grade.
Tipping the scales at a shade under 180 tons with a full tender, longer over the buffers than a ‘Duchess’ and with nearly 15ft between the rail and the top of the cast chimney, this 2-8-2 would knock down most British bridges if you were misguided enough to run it here. Watching a ‘44’ moving a big train is like seeing a Sumo wrestler in action. Driving one, as Herr Hüttner says, is a pretty unique experience.
It’s hard, in a way, to see how a ‘44’ can fit into the modern main line scene – after all, while nearly 2,000 were built between 1926 and 1949, that was to haul the very heaviest trains; the tractive effort is more than half as much again as a ‘9F’. However, tiddly 4ft 7in wheels mean this is hardly a high-speed design: top permitted whack is 50mph.
Of more than 50 ‘44s’ that survive in conditions ranging from museum piece to rotting carcass, just three are runners today. Of those, only this one, No. 44.1486, remains in eastern Germany. Another is in Bavaria, with the final member of the trio based at a private line in the Netherlands.
Managing a ‘Jumbo’ is not the easiest thing. Yet that’s just what No. 44.1486’s keepers at Stassfurt shed, to the east of the Harz mountains, have done since the early 1990s. They plan to carry on at least until next September – but to do so after that the group needs to find hundreds of thousands for an overhaul.
For now at least, No. 44.1486 can look back at 75 years of almost continuous service, though these days life is pretty gentle. Of the four to six weeks of activity the engine manages to total each year, most of it is spent trundling around with local railtours. Yet every so often the ‘44’ has a chance of a proper job – and one of those is to come this October 18-20: organisers of the Eisenach-based heavy-freight ‘Plandampf’ have requested Stassfurt’s ‘Jumbo’ for what could be the last time. This time it’s to run alongside two smaller engines, 2-8-2 No. 41.1144 and 2-10-0 No. 52.1360. In the past though, the ‘Plandampf’ has included pairing up with Germany’s only other working ‘44’, No. 44.2546 from Noerdlingen (Bavaria).
Will Europe’s biggest 2-10-0s ever be doubled up again? Or will No. 44.1486 end up joining classmate No. 44.1182, cold inside Stassfurt shed? If so, the ground-trembling experience of a pair of ‘Jumbos’ moving monstrous loads will, like ‘9Fs’ at Consett or ‘8Fs’ on Shap, be just one more the world has lost…