Third-party locomotive

As foreign locomotive or prey locomotive is called locomotives , during a military conflict as war booty temporarily by foreign railway companies - are taken over or remain permanently in a foreign country after the war - mostly in neighboring countries. In the case of passenger wagons , one speaks of foreign wagons or booty wagons .

Situation in the Soviet occupation zone

After the end of the Second World War , the number of foreign locomotives that came to the Deutsche Reichsbahn and remained in Germany was relatively high. In December 1946, for example, there were around 1,300 foreign machines in the Soviet occupation zone (SBZ). Compared with the total stock of around 7,500 machines, this corresponds to a share of 17 percent.

In the following years, however, the number of third-party locomotives fell rapidly for various reasons. Some of the foreign locomotives were added to the inventory or returned to their countries of origin. Most third-party locomotives were defective - of the 1300 third-party locomotives recorded in 1946 in the Soviet Zone, only a little more than 150 were operational - and so they were initially parked for repairs. However, there was hardly any repairs later, as the workshops concentrated almost exclusively on local locomotives, partly due to the better supply of spare parts. This led to the fact that many parked foreign locomotives were scrapped in the 1950s.

literature

• Michael Reimer: Third-party locomotives for the Deutsche Reichsbahn . Motorbuch Verlag, 2001, ISBN 978-3-6137-1153-2 .
• Lothar Schultz: The time of the steam locomotives in Mecklenburg . Ostseedruck Rostock, 1988, page 55.