Snow Camel

Here's something you see very, very rarely: A class 199.8 locomotive actually working!

HSB's 199.8 is without doubt the strongest, largest and weirdest narrow-gauge locomotive ever used for public rail service in Germany (special electrics used in lignite mines might have been stronger). When the ten locomotives were built in the late 1980s, the narrow gauge lines in the Harz mountains were still very important for freight traffic there, as socialism meant a perpetual lack of trucks and good roads. Doing this with the old steam locomotives all the time wasn't efficient, so a diesel solution had to be found. Since axle load limits would not allow the heavy diesel-electric transmission, a diesel-hydraulic locomotive was needed. According to Comecon rules, such a locomotive would have to be built in Romania, but the GDR was not happy at all with earlier locomotives built there. So they decided to take normal-gauge engines of the very successful class V 100 (later 110, now 202) and fit them with new narrow-gauge trucks.

The locomotives did well, but then reunification happened, and the focus of narrow gauge lines changed from freight and normal passenger service to tourism almost immediately. That meant keeping steam engines forever, and keeping the unsightly diesels (known as "camels") out of sight as much as possible. Three are in storage, slowly deteriorating. The rest were rebuilt to modern standards, but of those, four got their normal gauge trucks back and are now used by other companies all over Germany. The remaining three units handle the remaining freight service, work trains and, in the winter, help with snow removal.

199 872 is returning from such a trip to Wernigerode Westerntor station, where the main depot of HSB is located, pulling the new rotary snowplow that was delivered in 2006. HSB has a selection of more historic plain and rotary snowplows, but this much more efficient machine handles all such duties today.