| Electric Locomotive.
German Federal Railroad (DB) class E 44.
Source: www.maerklin.de
After an interruption due to the great economic crisis, the electrification of the German State Railroads network was continued starting in 1930. New, powerful locomotives were needed for the new routes. In the meantime the German railroad industry had developed new concepts and prototypes for modern general purpose locomotives. This design from Siemens shows clear progress compared to the provincial railroad designs of before that had been merely developed further. This unit was designed as a general purpose locomotive and was built on a welded frame, mounted on trucks with integrated buffer beams and powered with axle-suspended motors. This gave this compact locomotive a total weight of 78 metric tons without the need for pilot trucks and still below the critical 20 metric ton limit for axle loads. The modern motors put out 2,200 kilowatts or 2,950 horsepower that was available directly to the axles without the need for an expensive mechanism. The maximum speed reached on level track was 90 km/h or 56 mph. The first unit was successfully tested and placed into service by the German State Railroad as early as 1930 as the E 44 001. Additional, regular production locomotives with a maximum speed of 80 km/h or 50 mph were ordered immediately, initially for the route from Stuttgart to Augsburg (with the Geislingen Grade). The German State Railroad purchased a total of 174 regular production locomotives, of which 45 remained in East Germany with most of the rest in the West. Seven more locomotives were built new for the German Federal Railroad and several were equipped with push/pull controls or resistance brakes. The indestructible E 44 was in regular use well into the 1980s - at the end as the 144 (DB) and 244 (DR). (ref www.maerklin.de) |
