The Fastest

My parents' house is right next to a railway line, and it happens rather frequently that we hear a steam engine. Sometimes we rush out, get the car and try to catch it. Not always, but 18 201 is a very good reason. It did not stop for long in Goslar (all locations in Germany), but we were able to overtake it through Langelsheim and finally found a picture site on a field just outside Langelsheim. Sadly, on the wrong side of the tracks as far as the sun was concerned, but I think this image is pretty nice anyway.

18 201 is a locomotive with a very long history. The GDR never had any own need for fast locomotives; most lines didn't allow for speeds higher than 120 km/h, and even that was rare. However, the GDR also was a huge exporter of passenger rail cars (if you look at pictures of trains from eastern europe, the passenger cars will almost always have been built in the GDR), and to test them at higher speeds, they needed a specific test engine. Only one, and it should be cheap, though.

So the testers took the frame and wheels come from 61 002, a prototype high speed tank engine from before the war, as well as parts of various other prototypes and normal locomotives. The green paint scheme was non-standard, but for a one-off locomotive, nobody seemed to mind. And it worked! The pacific, named 18 201 in honor of the saxon type of pacific (which was the original class 18.2, but all were gone by then) reached speeds of up to 182 km/h. Today, its top speed is 160 km/h, and even that is reached only on special occasions (last in june 2011). Still, it's pretty fast, and it holds the world record as fastest active steam engine. Screw Tornado.

A fun fact: To increase its range in a time when most stations have no facilities to provide water or the oil it burns, 18 201 usually travels with two tenders these days, although on special events, it is more common to hide the second one. It is not alone in that regard; 01 1066 is another locomotive that is usually seen with double tenders.