Krauss Lotter frame
The Krauss Lotter frame is a variant of the Krauss Helmholtz steering frame and was used especially in Bavaria and Prussia for electric locomotives with rod drives . The difference to a vehicle with a leading bogie and the Krauss-Lotter frame is that the leading bogie is connected to the first coupled wheel set by a powerful pivot lever. This pivot lever was rotatably mounted on a pivot that was mounted in the main frame of the locomotive. The motivation for the construction was that the wheel sets in the Lotter frame have a much smaller approach angle than in the Krauss-Helmholtz steering frame.
This frame was invented by Georg Lotter , who, as head of the construction department at Maffei in Munich , attached great importance to good vehicle running, especially in tight curves. The Krauss-Lotter frame was considered to be a smooth-running and track-friendly construction, but was more expensive than the Krauss-Helmholtz steering frame and made higher demands on maintenance. This also explains the application in locomotives that mainly ran on the Freilassing-Berchtesgaden and Silesian Mountain Railway, i.e. on winding routes. In 1921 Lotter received a prize from the Association of German Railway Administrations for the good experiences that had been made with his bogie on Bavarian and Prussian railways.
The Krauss Lotter frame was used on the following electric locomotives:
- Bavarian EP 3 (DR series E 36),
- Bavarian EP 4 (DR series E 36 2 ),
- DR series E 79 ,
- Prussian EP 235 (DR series E 50).
The Prussian EP 235 was the first electric locomotive with this series of wheels in Europe . In the steam locomotive construction, on the other hand, this construction hardly ever occurred. Only one case is known of a steam locomotive carrying a Krauss Lotter frame, this was the TAG 8 tank locomotive delivered by Maffei to the Tegernseebahn in 1943 . This steam locomotive, built with the Adriatic wheel arrangement , received the removed Krauss-Lotter frame of an E 79 that was parked during the war . According to the literature, the locomotive should have run extremely smoothly at 100 km / h .
literature
- Wolfgang Messerschmidt: Locomotive technology in the picture . Steam, diesel and electric locomotives . Motorbuch, Stuttgart 1991, ISBN 3-613-01384-3 , p. 52-54 .
