I got out of the train in Wuppertal Oberbarmen, torn between visiting a model railroad store in Remscheid-Lennep that I expected to be closed and only carries TT, which I like but don't currently use, or just riding the Wuppertaler Schwebebahn a little. What I did not expect was to see a steam engine greeting me on the opposite track.

52 8106 is an east german class 52.80 locomotive owned by Eisenbahnfreunde Schwalm-Knüll. The original 52 was a version of the 50 that was greatly simplified and mass produced during the second world war. Together with the 50, those 1’Es (2-10-0) are the most produced steam locomotives ever. However, especially the 52s were only designed for use for maybe ten or fifteen years. West germany quickly got rid of the ones remaining there after the war, but east germany could not afford to and instead rebuilt them heavily, resulting in the 52.80. Today, it remains the most frequent preserved locomotive in all of Germany, and in fact had the honor of running the final normally scheduled normal-gauge steam train in Germany in November 1994, already under the Deutsche Bahn AG label then.

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