Steam Locomotive, Road Number 18 323

They were elegant, well-designed, powerful, and genuine locomotive legends. The Bavarian class S 3/6 provincial railroad express locomotives and the Württemberg class C both wrote railroad history along with the most modern of the four-cylinder Pacifics, the Baden IVh, 20 of which were built by 1920 by J. A. Maffei in Munich. The class 18.3 units, as these locos with their large wheels and output of around 2,000 horsepower were designated on the German State Railroad, reliably hauled famous trains, such as the “Rheingold” or the “Riviera-Naples-Express” for many years on routes that included the high-speed line between Mannheim and Basle. After 1945, however, their fate as a small class appeared sealed, and the scrap yard beckoned. This is when Theodor Düring, manager of the German Federal Railroad Central Bureau and a big fan of these powerful provincial railroad beauties, intervened and had road numbers 18 323, 18 316, and 18 319 overhauled and updated to perform challenging duties on experimental runs. They turned in excellent results and were used in tests of new types of locomotives all over West Germany. Düring’s collection of rarities also included a Bavarian class S 3/6, a locomotive that attracted a great deal of attention, and not just among railroaders, all the more so when road number 18 316 set a record speed of 162 km/h / 101 mph in 1956. Road number 18 323 ran the longest and was a star attraction on many sold-out special excursions from the mid-1960s until its retirement at the end of 1969. This steam loco often drew huge crowds, especially in the Baden region, where it had started its career 50 years before. Many railroaders had never forgotten these thoroughbred racers. An Offenburg locomotive engineer is said to have made the following wistful remark: “There will never be another loco as good as the Maffei machine.” Nevertheless, two of these wonderful Maffei machines have been preserved: Road numbers 18 323 and 18 316 hark back in Offenburg and Mannheim to this Baden-Bavarian tour de force of German locomotive engineering.