Giants of Steam

by Jonathan Glancey

  On the basis of this comparison, Wagner seemed to have proven that a well-designed, two-cylinder Pacific could do the job of a more complex and more expensive compound. (This ‘evidence’ had a marked effect on British engineers like Cox and Bond when they were considering standard British post-war designs.) And yet, back in the 1920s, Deutsche Reichsbahn chief mechanical engineer Friedrich Fuchs and chief testing engineer Professor Hans Nordmann continued to investigate the potential of compound drive, no doubt inspired both by the performance of the French Nord railway Super Pacifics, which were appreciably smaller than the 01s but exerted power outputs in daily service well above the rated power of the 01, and, from 1929, by the remarkable work of the Chapelon rebuilds.

  In 1932, four separate experimental high-pressure compound types were introduced, while in 1935, at Fuchs’s instigation, Adolf Wolff at Borsig prepared project drawings for a four-cylinder compound 4-8-0 derived directly from Chapelon’s design, but substantive work on this was prevented by the Second World War. Eventually, 231 standard 01s were built. Between 1950 and 1957, and again from 1957 to 1961, two batches of 01s were rebuilt with combustion-chamber boilers under Witte’s direction for the Deutsche Bundesbahn, the West German state railway, and rated up to 2,417 ihp. It was a delight to see these and other 01s hard at work, and in spotless condition, on expresses in the early 1970s. From 1962 to 1965, the Deutsche Reichsbahn, the East German state railway, rebuilt thirty-five 01s at Meiningen works in a more radical fashion. With new, larger fire-boxes and higher-set, combustion-chamber boilers, a continuous, Soviet-style dome cover running the length of the boiler, clipped Witte smoke deflectors, new cabs, and more powerful brakes, these 01.5s were superb and highly distinctive machines. Rated at 2,500 ihp, these red and black Pacifics – half of them oil-fired – were kept busy on the Berlin to Dresden route until 1977, and the class survived for a further five years on express duties before finally being replaced by Soviet diesels.

  The 03 class, a lighter version of the 01, appeared in 1930, with 570 × 660 mm (22½ × 26 in) cylinders and rated at 1,943 ihp. With an axle loading of 18 tons, compared to 20 tons for the 01s, these light Pacifics were able to operate many of the secondary main lines from which the earlier Wagner Pacifics had been banned. A total of 298 engines was built, up until 1938, by Borsig, Krupp, Henschel, and Schwartzkopff. Unlike in Britain, where locomotives were built mostly by railways in their own works, German engines of the 1920s and 1930s were the product of commercial manufacturers working in collaboration with Wagner’s design team. In fact, it was the British way of building steam locomotives that was unusual – a product, perhaps, of the craft-based engineering culture that emerged with the Industrial Revolution, which took hold in Britain quite some while before it shook up Germany.

  The sheer power demanded by heavy freight duties saw Wagner turn to three cylinders for his first 2-10-0s, the class 44 of 1926. Only ten of these giants, known as ‘Jumbos’ to German crews, were built that year. Production resumed in 1937, with more robust frames, when the demand for very powerful freight locomotives was clear, and continued through the Second World War until 1949, by which time there were 1,989 class 44s at work in East and West Germany. The last scheduled steam service on the Deutsche Bundesbahn, on 26 October 1977, was worked by 043 903-4, one of thirty-five two-cylinder derivatives of the class 44s that were built in 1927–8. Mass production of 2-10-0s, as characteristic of German steam in the mid-twentieth century as Wagner’s Pacifics, really began with the two-cylinder class 50s in 1939. These machines, adopted by the Nazi government as Kriegslok war locomotives, were built throughout the war, with production continuing in West Germany until 1948, by which time 3,164 class 50s had been built. Many, however, had been destroyed by allied bombing.

  So successful were the class 50s that a new batch with all-welded boilers, designated 50.40, was built at the Lokomotivbau Karl Marx in Babelsberg for the East German Deutsche Reichsbahn between 1956 and 1960. These were the last brand-new German steam locomotives. They were withdrawn in 1980, seven years before a number of the original 50s that remained in service in East Germany.

  Locomotive developments in Germany had been steady and rational, yet in the 1930s the quest for speed was to make Wagner think anew. From designing 120 kph locomotives, the Deutsche Reichsbahn was now set on creating the world’s fastest trains. This development had begun in the late days of the Weimar Republic, with the launch of high-speed diesel services, beginning with the Fliegender Hamburger in 1932. The need for heavier trains able to run at speeds of 150 kph (93 mph), and even above, led to a new generation of streamlined steam locomotives which, superficially at least, were everything that Wagner seemed to have stood against.

  The genius of the high-speed German steam locomotives of the 1930s was that, despite a few experiments along the way (see Chapter 6), they were basically simple, if meticulously built, machines beneath their wind-cheating skirts. The first of the high-speed German locomotives was 05 001, built at the Borsig works in 1935. Nothing quite like this stunning three-cylinder machine had been seen on rails before. Painted a deep red, all moving parts were hidden, with side-skirts falling to barely inches above the track. Only the whistle and chimney rising from the sloping front of the engine, set above a large, faired-in headlamp, made it in any way evident that this was a steam locomotive. The ten-wheeled tender was all of a piece with the engine. In fact, 05 001 looked more like a submarine than a machine that ran on rails.

  Beneath the voluptuous cladding was a beautifully proportioned and exquisitely crafted 4-6-4, all but guaranteed to be a record-breaker. The design was by Adolf Wolff, chief locomotive design engineer at Borsig. Born in Goslar, in Lower Saxony, Wolff was educated at the Technical University of Hanover and worked for Hanomag, where he designed some impressive and long-lasting compound 4-8-2s for the Norte railway in Spain. Some 40 per cent of Hanomag’s locomotive production – it was well known for its cars and tractors too – was exported. Precociously talented but modest, ‘kleine Wolff’, as he was known, moved to Borsig in 1929. After the Second World War he was employed by Krauss Maffei as technical director, where, among other projects, he rebuilt the 05s into non-streamlined 4-6-4s. This, though, is jumping the gun.

  There was nothing complex in the specification of 05 001 or its one sibling, 05 002. Everything, however, was done (this side of fitting a combustion-chamber boiler, which was rejected by Wagner) to give these engines the best possible steam-flow circuit, with piston valves 30 per cent greater in diameter than those of Gresley’s A4s. The large boiler was pressed to the then high figure of 294 psi, heated by a firebox with a 50.6 sq ft grate. Superheated steam flowed, at speeds of up to 200 mph, to three 450 × 660 mm (17¾ × 26 in) cylinders, driving 2.3 m (7 ft 6½ in) coupled wheels. The design speed was 175 kph (109 mph) and nominal power rating was 2,360 ihp, although a maximum of 3,400 ihp was attained on test.

  Wolff’s masterpiece made its debut in March 1935, six months ahead of Gresley’s A4 for the LNER and six weeks before the Chicago, Milwaukee, St. Paul and Pacific Railroad’s streamlined Atlantic, specified by Charles H. Bilty, broke through a ribbon at the Alco works in Schenectady, New York. Wolff’s 05 001, with its advanced technology and aerodynamic cladding, was proof – if proof were needed – that the speed bug had infected railways around the world.

  Streamlining could certainly help locomotives to run faster, as a smooth casing reduced wind resistance, but it was often as much a styling fashion, introduced to make steam engines look as futuristic as the latest monocoque aircraft, speedboats, and racing cars. Indeed, a year before 05 001 steamed for the first time in Berlin, the South Manchuria Railway had introduced its streamlined and air-conditioned Asia Express between the port of Darien and Hsinking, the capital of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo, carved in 1932 out of Manchuria and Inner Mongolia – where the last great Chinese steam locomotives, the QJ class 2-10-2s, were to rule the great passes of the newly built Jitong Railway until 2005. To haul the tra
in, the South Manchuria Railway commissioned twelve streamlined two-cylinder Pacifics, following American design practice, from Kawasaki and the railway’s own Shahekou works. Complete with observation cars and cocktail car, the Asia Express, a symbol of presumed Japanese technological superiority, had beaten the Americans and Europeans at a game that should have been theirs. The Pashina class locomotives, however, were not as fast nor as powerful as they looked. Their highest recorded speed was 83 mph. Nevertheless, this was a revolution in China. The locomotives survived war and revolution and were still at work in the 1980s. At least one has been preserved.

  By the time of the Second World War, streamlined locomotives could be found on the least promising lines. In 1941, a new railway connection between Iraq and Syria meant that the Taurus Express could run direct from Istanbul to Baghdad. This was the route – much of it built to the highest specification by German engineers of the Second Reich – that was supposed to have linked Berlin with Baghdad. To celebrate the new through service, in 1941 Iraqi State Railways took possession of four streamlined two-cylinder oil-burning Pacifics, designed by the railway’s own William Ikeson and built by Robert Stephenson and Hawthorn’s. One was lost in a convoy on the way, but three made it to Iraq, where they ran until 1960. From a distance, they might have looked a bit like a Stanier Coronation crossed with a Gresley A4 – but did they ever get above 60 mph?

  Wolff’s 05s, however, were in a different camp altogether. Their streamlining was scientifically researched. Wolff claimed, not without justification, that the streamlined casing of engine and train lessened air resistance to achieve a 20 per cent reduction in the power needed to work a 250 ton train on the level at 150 kph (93 mph). The 05s proved to be very fast engines indeed. German and other enthusiasts describe them as the fastest steam locomotives in the world, despite Mallard’s 126 mph. The claim is an interesting one, and, in certain ways, justified. On 7 June 1935, 05 002 sprinted up to 191.7 kph (119.1 mph) on the line between Berlin and Hamburg. It went on to make six further runs with speeds above 177 kph (110 mph). On 11 May 1936, pulling a 197 ton train, it soared to just over 200 kph – 200.4 kph to be exact (124.5 mph) – not downhill but on level track, near Friesack. The speed was maintained for long enough to be measured precisely; it required an output of 3,400 ihp. Mallard travelled at 125 mph for just 305 yards; if it really did get above that speed, the last 1 mph must have been over a very few yards indeed. Gresley himself never claimed 126 mph, and, in railway enthusiast circles, the debate continues today. It is also possible that 05 002’s 124.5 mph was an average speed over between 1 and 2.5 kilometres, in which case it might have beaten Mallard’s 126 mph anyway. In charge of testing on the Deutsche Reichsbahn, Professor Nordmann erred on the side of scientific caution.

  A letter in Railway World in April 1969 from John F. Clay, a member of the Stephenson Society, argued the case for Mallard: ‘The difference between the maximum speeds for Mallard and 05.002 is so small as to be in the range of uncertainty present even with the most sophisticated of dynamometer car equipment.’ Clay went on to help gauge the particular merit of Mallard’s record run:

  An A4 was built to a much more restricted loading gauge than the larger and more specialised 05. It would be impossible in this country [Great Britain] to build an engine with 7 ft 6 in driving wheels and an adequate boiler. Mallard’s load of 240 tons, light at it seems, was heavier in proportion to the size of the engine than the 200 tons behind the 05. Although Stoke Bank is downhill the initial acceleration from 24 mph at Grantham to 74 mph at Stoke Box up 1-in-200 would, in itself, have winded a lesser engine even before the high-speed attempt could begin. The smaller wheels of the A4 had to reach a higher rotational speed to equal the road speeds of the German engine. Although we must be sensible about Mallard, we still have every justification for a little national pride.

  Quite what it was like to ride on the footplate of the German 4-6-4 at 2 miles per minute was vividly described by Paul Roth of the Deutsche Reichsbahn’s locomotive testing department at Grunewald. In an article published a year after his death in Lok (Locomotive) magazine, Roth explained that Wagner had been hoping to break the 200 kph barrier with the 05s. Despite 05 002’s free running and reserves of power, whenever the engine was worked up to a tantalizing 195 kph problems arose, now with broken springs, now with loose tyres due to the high lateral forces between tyre and wheel rim at very high speed.

  On 11 May, 05 002, pulling one coach less than on previous runs, had been delayed by signals and speed restrictions. Leaving Wittenberge for Berlin, every attempt was made to regain time, meaning that long stretches would have to be run at 180 kph (112 mph). Roth recalled:

  As a result of the reduction in weight by fifty tons, the lack of a side wind and with wet rails, the train resistance was significantly reduced and the 05 reached 195 kph much faster than usual. At this speed a howling at the chimney started up. It sounded like a ship’s hooter and indicated a very high boiler performance. An additional circumstance egged our crew on. In Hamburg, they had learned from our passengers that one of the diesel-electric railcars had reached the 200 kph barrier between Stendal and Hanover. Till then, no diesel had run as fast as the 05, so our crew was rather displeased.

  The 05 was now racing faster and faster; no one was thinking about broken springs and tyres. The pressure gauge read 20 atmospheres [294 psi]. There was sufficient water in the boiler. The driver, Oscar Langhans, asked if he could link up a few cogs. After a short while, the speedometer needle touched its stop [200 kph]. Everything went much faster than usual. In the train, meanwhile, people had also recognized that something special was going on. When the speed of 200 kph was reached, the dynamometer car gave a long honk, a signal to the crew up front. Since speedometer readings are never fully accurate, the crew maintained the speed for a while. Not at any price did we want to stand there at 199.5 kph.

  Being in the cab of a 200 ton steam engine [the weight with tender] racing at 200 kph is not comfortable . . . the crew’s nerves were on edge. Even so, or perhaps because of this reason, our fireman, Ernst Hohne, performed an Indian dance with his broom in the cab.

  The driver would have been mostly concerned with the view of the road ahead. German main-line signals at the time were spaced at three-quarter-mile intervals, but even with an emergency brake application, 05 002 needed 0.85 miles to stop from 180 kph (112 mph). But the test runs with the streamlined 4-6-4 were useful, not least because they prompted significant improvements in locomotive, and train, brakes. Mallard’s own record run down Stoke Bank on 3 July 1938 was described by the LNER as the result of a high-speed brake test using quick-service application valves, combined with an attempt on the world record.

  That 05 002’s world-record run was an exercise in propaganda is made clear by the fact that senior members of the government, including Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS, and his deputy, Reinhard Heydrich, were on board, along with Wolff, Wagner, and the Deutsche Reichsbahn’s head of testing, Professor Hans Nordmann. A trip two days earlier – one of four very high-speed return journeys made between Berlin and Hamburg with 05 002 that week – was laid on specially for senior German military officers. However hard the Deutsche Reichsbahn tried before the war to maintain a strictly technocratic stance in its dealings with the Nazi state, it was impossible to remain anything like detached.

  None of the high-speed runs affected 05 002’s performance. On 30 May, the record-breaker took the British party from the Institution of Locomotive Engineers, including Stanier and Cecil J. Allen, on a run from Berlin to Hamburg and back with a three-coach, 150 ton train. Allen reported that 250 miles of the journey had been reeled off at a mean speed of 91 mph, with much ground covered at three-figure speeds, including a maximum of 118 mph. On the return journey, 05 002 sprinted away from Wittenberge with the alacrity of a modern electric – the train was very light – covering the 70.1 miles to a signal stop fourteen miles west of Berlin in 48 minutes and 32 seconds, at an average of 86.7 mph. There was n
o doubt, Allen wrote, that ‘the engine could travel for indefinite distances at 100 mph and could obtain considerably higher speeds when necessary’. It certainly could. Given the sheer number of times 05 002 reached 110 mph and more on level track and went on to average 124.5 mph over some distance, it might well be right to call Wolff’s locomotive the fastest steam engine in the world.

  What was equally impressive is that on regular services between Hamburg and Berlin, with up to six coaches, the 05s could very nearly equal the timing of the lightweight, two-car Fliegender Hamburger. A third 05 was commissioned from Borsig, but this was an experimental cab-forward locomotive designed to burn pulverized coal (see Chapter 6). To increase the maximum speed of express trains generally from 120 to 140 kph (74.5 to 87 mph), and even 150 kph (93 mph), Wagner had fifty-five streamlined, three-cylinder 01s built from 1939. Classified 01.10, these looked like smaller versions of the 05s; while sixty 03.10s – streamlined, three-cylinder light Pacifics – followed closely on their heels. Three cylinders promised smoother running at speed and lower track ‘hammer blow’, while the streamlining saved power, and hence fuel, at speed. More of both classes were to have been built, but by then Germany had plunged Europe into the most destructive war the world has ever known.