Description

There were only three units of this type (out of which one was radically different from the other two). It was an uncompromising design for fastest express trains, meant to demonstrate what performances steam engines could achieve. The result was this streamlined type that reached 200.4 kph during trial runs between Hamburg and Berlin in 1936. Only the British A4 Mallard ran slightly faster (and broke down afterwards).

Regular service was done at 150 kph, which was still a huge improvement over other fast trains. With the outbreak of World War II the engines were sidelined. They only got back into regular service - without the aerodynamic panels - well after the war in the 1950s, running express trains in Northern Germany until 1958. With only three units of the class they were expensive in their maintenance, so they were retired and two units were scrapped, the third one is in a museum in Nuremberg. The travel times they offered between Hamburg and Berlin were not reached again until well into the 1990s.

In the game this type is somewhat exotic and has a very narrow field of service: Light express trains on perfectly flat lines. The engine needs quite some time to reach top speed, so it needs to run long distances to really make a difference. On the other hand it is the fastest engine by far until the class 103 is introduced around 1970.