A foot plate tale… OF THE UNEXPECTED
Remembering the pleasure of a cab ride on East Germany’s ‘Steam Sputnik’.
Would you like to come up?” They’re the words every gricer wants to hear. There I was, staring skywards at the cab of a giant (really giant) ‘Pacific’ from a platform so low I could almost have been in the famous ‘Take me by the Flying Scotsman’ poster.
Did I want to come up? What do you think…? So I did.
My only plan was to thank the crew for a good trip; it had been a nice sunny main line day, with balcony coaches, plenty of ‘stack talk’ and bonhomie. The soul was content.
In a moment, I’d wander along the little path from the station to my car parked outside the engine shed and drive home, while the ‘Pacific’, its crew and the last passengers headed off to their final stop.
But the chatter flowed. Departure time was near. “I’d better get down,’ I said, ‘you’ll be away soon.” “Oh,” came the response. “Don’t you want to stay on?”
So that’s how I footplated the pride of the former Deutsche Reichsbahn, riding away from my waiting car. And late home for dinner… again.
I’d come late to Germany’s official main line programme, having up to then largely been fixated on the ‘real steam’ of the narrow gauge. Yet in another month or so, my time in the country would be up. So when, if not now?
My only plan was to thank the crew for a good trip; it had been a nice sunny main line day, with balcony coaches, plenty of ‘stack talk’ and bonhomie. The soul was content
And here I was, peering over the driver’s shoulder as we rattled along the main line. Destination… Erfurt, at that time still a wonderful tangle of castiron Victoriana and precarious-looking signal boxes.
“Where are you heading back to?” the driver asked, as we neared journey’s end. “Göttingen.”
“Good – there are direct connections from here.” “Yes, except… my car’s at Arnstadt. But it’s not a problem, I can take a train back.”
“Really? No need. We’re heading there light engine once we hook off. Just come with us…”
So I did, right to my car. I waved goodbye as the ‘Pacific’ slipped away and on shed…
Spotting the ‘enemy’
Clearly I’m biased, but ‘01.5’ 4-6-2s really are the most magnificent machines. The first appeared in 1962 – two years after Evening Star and six years later than the first of the rebuilt ‘Bulleids’, though the latter comparison, if anything, underplays the Reichsbahn project.
At this point, steam still had decades to go in Germany on the ‘other’ side of the Iron Curtain,
but the original ‘01’ 4-6-2s, built from the mid-1920s onwards, had run through peace and war. They were knackered. So a project began to create some of the most modern express steam locomotives ever seen.
As with the other ‘Reko’ machines, the job of redesign went to the Reichsbahn’s very capable engineers around Max Baumberg in the industrial city of Halle. That’s where the railway had its test centre, and these were the guys who’d come up with crazy engines such as the unique 112mph ‘Pacific’, No. 18.201.
Their prescription for the 4-6-2s was radical. Big boilers with combustion chambers, welded cylinders, replacement cabs, Boxpok wheels (an idea later abandoned because of cracks); in many ways, these were new engines. From now on, they would carry the ‘01.5’ designation.
There was no way they could be mistaken for their older relatives, though, even without new numbers. Indeed, if you let your mind drift, it’s easy to imagine them having been sketched out in a dingy bar somewhere on a Halle back street. There’s a bit of style inspiration from Dan Dare
– or more likely Yuri Gagarin – a few rounds of Pilsner to fuel thinking… and what results is a socialist masterpiece.
OK, I guess it probably didn’t happen like that. More likely it was through a committee and a very sober drawing office. Yet with ‘skyliner’ casing, curved deflectors and a pointy smokebox door, what emerged was a kind of ‘steam Sputnik’. And doesn’t it look great? For the next quarter-century, visitors could see, hear and ride behind some of the biggest, most striking express engines anywhere in Europe. To start with, you didn’t even need to brave the border for some of it: the DR put the 4-6-2s on some of its highest profile trains, including the ‘Interzonenzüge’ (inter-zone trains) that ran beyond the wires and watch towers and through to Hamburg or Bebra in West Germany.
Grice a shed in either of those prosperous places into the 1970s and you could spot these imposing visitors from a land with a very different world view. The ‘enemy’, if you like.
Or you could stand on the ‘right side’ by the climb to the darkness of Hönebach tunnel where the engines dived back into the ‘Democratic Republic’… and just listen. You’d see them in West Berlin, too. One place you’d have not wanted to be was at Bitterfeld station on November 27 1977. Nine people, including the crew, died when No. 01.1516 (its post-1970 number) blew up through lack of water. Even in the DDR though, the days of big ‘Pacifics’ couldn’t be forever. Pushed aside from the top workings, some even ended up as stationary boilers. But ‘my’ engine was chosen to be the official working representative of the class. In 1984, it was converted back from oil-firing to coal and did its new job right up until 2000. Around the time of reunification, No. 01.1531 was even chosen to reopen long-shut metals across the border. But then the accountants did for it; the best you can expect today is to gaze at its cold metal in the darkness of Arnstadt shed. So, decades on, my footplate ride wouldn’t be so easy to repeat. Yet ‘01.5s’ still live. Of the four other survivors,
No. 01.514 is in the Speyer technical museum in the Rhineland-Palatinate. The other three, Nos. 01.509 (Pressnitztalbahn), 01.519 (EFZ/ Baden-Wuerttemberg) and 01.533 (OEGEG/Austria) are all runners.
If you’re ever given the chance, take a spin.
I doubt you’ll regret it.
Pushed aside from the top workings, some even ended up as stationary boilers