Netherlands Central 4-6-0 Locomotives in Netherlands

Class Zeppelin/3600 (Locobase 2747)

Data from "New Express Locomotives for Holland," The Locomotive, Volume XVII [17] (15 March 1911), pp. 56-58 and "Six-Coupled Bogie Express Locomotive, Dutch Central Railway", Locomotive Magazine, Volume XX [20] (15 May 1914), pp. 121-122.

. See also J A Veenendaal, Railways in the Netherlands: a brief history, 1834-1994 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001 ), p. 118-119. Works numbers were 3140-3141 in 1910, 3276-3277 in 1911, 3404-3406, 3413 in 1914.

Like the North Brabant German engines that ran in very similar service, these engines were limited by Dutch law to 90 kph (56 mph) maximum speed. Given that restriction, train tonnages could top 700 tons in 28 passenger cars on the Utrecht-Zwolle line.

They had wedge-front cabs, straight boiler with separated domes, and extended smokebox with a conical front that inspired the nickname. Veenendaal tells us that the design was derived from the already famous Bavarian four-cylinder compounds but that the Central's locomotive superintendent J W Verloop preferred a four-cylinder simple-expansion layout. The first two engines had the "wind-splitter" cab front, the last six used less-streamlined cabs. The tender's trailing bogie was also changed to fix issues with tracking.

Verloop had hoped to avoid paying royalties on a Schmidt superheater and installed his own steam-drier design in the first four locomotives. It fell well short of his requirements for dry steam, so he rebuilt those locomotives with Schmidt superheaters and delivered the last three in the class with Schmidts.

Two mergers later, the Nederland Spoorwegen (NS) replaced the original boiler with one derived from NS's 3700 class, which had a Belpaire firebox