Steam Locomotive 66 002

The year is 1948. The railroad also recovered slowly but constantly from the immense war damage that affected the locomotive roster in particular. Although the diesel locomotive had already long since started its victory march in the USA, German engineers at that time believed that steam motive power was indispensable for the near future. The "Technical Committee for Locomotives" set up an extremely ambitious new construction program. A tank locomotive with the class designation 66 was to be built as a fast, powerful general-purpose locomotive for main and branch lines. The new class 66 was based on a design from the firm Henschel in Kassel, Germany. It envisaged running gear with three powered axles, a two-axle trailing truck, and a single-axle pilot truck. The relatively large driving axle diameter of 1,600 mm / 63 inches allowed a maximum speed of 100 km/h / 63 mph and the indexed output still came to 1,170 horsepower. Consideration was also given to the locomotive crew. The class 66 thus had a fully enclosed cab, skylight windows, floor heating, and upholstered seats with backrests. However, the two prototypes were not delivered until 1955 – at a time when the new German Federal Railroad had already decided to step back from steam motive power. Therefore, no regular production order was placed, although the prototypes had already more than fulfilled all of the expectations set for them. They were used in Hesse around Frankfurt and Giessen, even including express trains in regular service. Both locomotives were able to prove their worth for little more than a decade. They were put into storage in 1967. Road number 66 002 was preserved as a museum locomotive for the German Society for Railroad History and can be admired as a well-maintained unit at the museum in Bochum-Dahlhausen.