‘JUMBO’S’ CV

Built in France by Schneider et Cie, No. 44.1486 was delivered to Germany’s Deutsche Reichsbahn in 1943. After Germany’s post-war division, the engine remained on the eastern side of the border, and in forthcoming decades would be based in places familiar even to British readers, such as Meiningen and Nordhausen. By now more than 50 years old, it was formally withdrawn in 1993 and transferred to the group at Stassfurt shed, which has run it ever since.

As well as open days at the shed, the Stassfurt group organises various railtours under its own banner each year. Stassfurt is only around 25 miles from the Quedlinburg terminus of the Harz mountain steam lines, and from Wernigerode is around 1½ hours by rail. The shed is, however, around a mile south of the station, on Güstener Weg. Also here are Nos. 44.1182 and the remains of No. 44.2663, as well as engines from other classes.

The other operational ‘44s’ are Nos. 44.1593 (VSM, Beekbergen, Netherlands), and 44.2546 (Noerdlingen, Bavaria).

Built from 1926, but with all except ten dating from 1937 onwards, the ‘44s’ worked not only in Germany, but also France, Belgium and Poland, among others. Although West German steam ended in 1977, the East German area around Sangerhausen continued to attract enthusiast visits into the 1980s to witness ‘44s’ hauling trains over steep gradients in the area. Others survived as stationary boilers, and indeed even in 1991, when it prepared a renumbering scheme to take place in January 1992, the (East) German Deutsche Reichsbahn was able to count 20 engines on its books. Over the years, engines were converted to burn oil – and for a while some even burned coal dust – as well as the more conventional coal firing. However, the oil crisis led the DR to set aside and re-convert oil-fired locomotives back to coal.