German steam locomotive classification
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In 1925, the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft (DRG, German Railway Company Limited) introduced a new system of steam locomotive classification. The DRG had inherited a wide range of locomotives from the state railways that had been merged in the previous year, and had a need to centrally catalog and organise its property. The scheme the DRG devised continued in use in a somewhat revised form until the German railways ceased to operate steam locomotives.
In the new scheme, locomotives were allocated to a series (Baureihe, BR), which were numbered from 01 to 99. Each series contained locomotives considered similar, but not necessarily of the actual same type. The series are often called 'classes' in English, but actually they are a little more general than the normal use of 'class' by railway systems in the English-speaking world.
Within each series, subtype or subclass numbers indicated the actual distinct type. This number was written in superscript characters after the series number, e. g. BR 384. The subclass number was also the first digit (or digits) of the locomotive number, followed by two more digits to indicate the specific locomotive (BR 384, for instance, comprised the locomotives 38 401 to 480). If there were more than 100 locomotives in a subclass, a range of subclass numbers was used, and this was indicated by a dash (e. g. BR 5523–24 comprised the 133 units 55 2301 to 2433).
Different blocks of series numbers were assigned to different types of DRG locomotives:
| Class | Description |
|---|---|
| 01-19 | Express passenger tender locomotives |
| 20-39 | Other passenger tender locomotives |
| 40-59 | Freight tender locomotives |
| 60-79 | Passenger tank locomotives |
| 80-96 | Freight tank locomotives |
| 97 | Rack tank locomotives |
| 98 | Local tank locomotives |
| 99 | Narrow gauge locomotives |
The last steam locomotives of the Deutsche Bundesbahn (DB, in the Federal Republic of Germany) were decommissioned October 26, 1977 in Bahnbetriebswerk (Bw) Rheine und Emden. These were the 043 903 (44 903), 043 315 (44 1315) and 043 196 (44 1203). The DRG notation is between brackets, while the DB classes, since 1968, had a 0 added to the series number. All DB classes were derivatives of the DRG classes, for instance BR 44 gave birth to BR 043 (oil-fuelled) and BR 044 (coal-fuelled), while BR 50 (with originally more than 3,000 units, of which DB still had more than 1,000 by the end of 1967) gave rise to BR 050, 051, 052 and 053. The Deutsche Reichsbahn (DR, in the German Democratic Republic) followed decommissioning in the 1980s.
