The ultimate wartime machine?
If one engine symbolises the Second World War, it is surely the ‘52’. Developed from the ‘50’ until the point the modifications merited a new class designation, this 2-10-0 first ran in 1942. Like its predecessor, it had 1.4m (4ft 7in) diameter driving wheels and a boiler pressure of 16 bar (232lb/sq in). However, it was around two tons lighter than the older design, which had first run in 1939.
The target was to produce
500 Class 52s per month across Germany and the areas it had occupied. For a while this was achieved – and even exceeded.
Simplification included using motion that was, largely, simply drop-forged with a minimum of machining, minimising the amount of material employed on things like running plates/valances and – although not on all locomotives – adopting a tub tender. This was developed from a tank wagon and needed no frames. Initially the ‘52’ design did not even include smoke deflectors – though this was later changed with the development of the small ‘trough’ versions of the style eventually fitted to the Gresley ‘A3s’. Hitler supposedly demanded additions – including an in-cab ‘wee tube’ for the crew to relieve themselves. Such ideas were short-lived.
Locomotives continued to be completed after the war in Germany and elsewhere. Stretching a point slightly, 13 were even delivered to the British (or at least British Zone railways in what was to become West Germany) in 1945-1947. No final total for the number built has ever been agreed.
West Germany ran its fleet down with the last being withdrawn in the 1960s, but elsewhere, ‘52s’ continued much longer: in Turkey into the 1980s and Poland to the turn of the century, for example, and they remained in Russia’s ‘strategic reserve’ until around the same time. The last handful believed to still be in regular service are in colliery employment around Tuzla in Bosnia.
Swathes of engines continued to work in largely unmodified form, but such a large class inevitably did not remain homogenous – and not only through the well-known use of condensing tenders during the war. Post-war variations from the standard design included a pair of Crosti-boiler examples built by Henschel for West Germany’s railways in 1951, while around the same time East Germany’s DR converted 25 to burn coal dust. Of the latter, No. 52.9900 (52.4900), survives at Halle museum shed.
Then there is the ‘Reko-Reko’ engine, No. 52.8055. This was modernised in Switzerland as a light-oil burner with new insulation and other modifications, first running in 1999.
Although almost universally known in English as ‘Kriegsloks’ (‘war locos’), the ‘52s’ were just part of a wider German austerity programme that also included the larger ‘42’ 2-10-0s and ‘V36’ diesels.