KRIEGSLO K ‘GTI’
A Class 52 was perhaps the most austere of ‘Austerities’. Not East Germany’s rebuilt version, which ran into the 1990s. explains.
Adigger rips into the torso of a standing engine. It is July 2018 and preserved ‘52.8’ No. 52.8171 is being broken up in the heart of Thuringia.
This is not a first: in 2007 Nos. 52.8007 and 52.8014 were dragged from a shed in woods near Eisleben where they’d been stored and scrapped. In 2008, long-dumped Nos. 52.8097 and 52.8145 were cut up in the goods yard at Frankfurt (Oder); two years before that, the gas-axe went through former preservation main-liner No. 52.8121.
The number of East Germany’s ‘Reko Kriegslok’ 2-10-0s is slowly dropping. Yet the destruction of
No. 52.8171 was still symbolic. This was the moment
It was a triumph of minimalism. But the result was exactly what was intended: basic
the number of survivors fell below half of those built. There are now 99 of the original 200 in existence.
More than 7,000 ‘52’ 2-10-0s were turned out in Germany and the territories it overran in the Second World War, making this surely the most successful austerity design of any nation. Steel replaced copper, complex processes such as machining were cut down, and non-essential equipment was left off. It was a triumph of minimalism. But the result was exactly what was intended: basic.
Most railways either replaced the ‘52s’ as quickly as possible after the war – or continued with them as rugged workhorses almost unmodified, even to the present day in Bosnia.
But knowing its steam era would continue, East Germany took a different approach. The result was the transformation of a design even more austere than a Riddles ‘WD’ into one festooned with greater refinements than a ‘9F’; a non-austerity ‘Austerity’ that would carry on in service as Germany’s very last standard gauge steam in capital stock well into the 1990s.
The ‘52’ wasn’t the first design to undergo a similar process. In fact, the major ‘Rekonstruktion’ programme began in 1957 with a near relative, the (non-austerity) Class ‘50’ 2-10-0; the first ‘Rekolok’,
No. 50.3501, is now a works engine at Meiningen. ‘Pacifics’, 2-8-2s and other 2-10-0s followed. It wasn’t until 1960 that the first ‘Reko-Kriegslok’ appeared, taking up the new classification ‘52.8’ and numbered 52.8001; the project would run right up to December 1967 with the delivery of No. 52.8200.
New boilers were at the heart of the ‘Reko’ scheme – not least because this was a country that relied on the low-grade lignite as fuel. While still recognisably a ‘52’, the rebuilt design was a distinctively East German machine with a more sophisticated boiler that incorporated a combustion chamber firebox and water pre-heater.
It was enough to help the ‘52.8s’ outlive both East Germany (1990) and its state railway the Deutsche Reichsbahn (1993). In the early 1990s, you could have found them pottering around the Berlin area on jobs such as heating points in winter – but also on weekend trains to Lübbenau and Rheinsberg (Mark). The fire was only dropped from the last, Schöneweide shed’s No. 52.8134, in November 1994.
Since then they have been favourites in preservation, in Germany and elsewhere. And it seems this distinctive design will have some life yet. In fact, at the current rate of scrapping, there will still be more surviving ‘52.8s’ even than Bulleid ‘Pacifics’ in well over 100 years…
What follows is a look at the anatomy of this distinctive design. ...Turn the page for diagram