Elsass-Lothringen 0-6-0 Locomotives in Germany

Class AL-T3-D26/D27/D29/D30 (Locobase 5029)

[] offers a table of locomotives preserved by the Luxembourg group "Train 1900". This 6-coupled tank was works # 4324.

It was acquired by the Train 1900 group in 1996.

Another website -- [] (accessed 15 May 2005) put up by the Chemin de Fer de Touristique du Rhin (Rhine Tourist Railroad) -- tells us about the whole class of T3s that operated on the Elsass-Lothringen during Alsace-Lorraine's annexation to Germany (1870-1918). The first of the class was delivered in 1891 and the class comprised 4 subseries; the particular locomotive represented in the specifications was part of the 12-locomotive batch from 1891.

Compared to the better-known and much more numerous Prussian T3 (Locobase 1285), these were bigger locomotives in every respect - more weight, more heating surface area, a bigger grate. Their appeal, notes the CFTR site, came in their simplicity and robustness, which was never complicated by high pressure or superheating, althought they were equipped with a Westinghouse air-brake system after 1910.

Three operated in tourist service as of 2006: former SNCF 130 & 134 on the CFTR and the Train 1900 locomotive mentioned above.

Class C10 (Locobase 20725)

Data from G F Tyas, "Early Locomotives of the Alsace-Lorraine State Railways", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XXV [25] (15 February 1919), p. 29-30; and W H Maw and James Dredge, "Appendix to Reports on the Vienna Exhibition--Locomotives" in Reports on the Vienna Universal Exhibition of 1873 - Part II (London: George Eyre and William Spottiswoode, 1874), p. 423.

Tyas wrote that this batch of six-coupled freight engines were "evidently intended to be an improvement on the earlier ones" especially in their use of Belpaire fireboxes and an enormous cylindrical dome over the middle axle. The dome used double valves in the regulator, thus ensuring an extra supply of dry steam. A capuchon-style stack came under scrutiny as an oddity as did the triangular-section compensating that equalized the middle and rear axles.

Maw and Dredge singled out the same compensation system for special mention, not all of it favorable. The system used a single spring on each side that was connected to the beams and "serving for both axles ...it undoubtedly has its conveniences [uh-oh, faint praise must be followed by] although when a long engine is mounted on a short wheelbase, as is generally the case when this arrangement is used, we should prefer dispensing with the compensating beams altogether."

May and Dredge's reasoning appears worth considering. Such beams "practically still further reduce the wheelbase as fas the power of checking longitudinal oscillations or pitching motion is concerned." Moreover, such short-wheelbase engines appeared to Maw and Dredge as "very trying to the permanent way." Even so, a "very creditable piece of work" and well suited to Continental freight work.