War category of Austro-Hungarian locomotives

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The war category was a uniform classification system for locomotives of the various state and private railways in Austria-Hungary for military purposes.

The image of the railroad in the Austro-Hungarian Empire was very diverse. In addition to the state railways (e.g. KkStB , MAV ) there were numerous private lines. Each railway administration had its own stock of locomotives and its own designation system that could not say anything about performance or track loads.

Under pressure from the military leadership, an additional label was devised in the 1870s that was to be affixed to the locomotives of all private and state lines in both halves of the empire, the so-called war category. In the event of an emergency, the military should be able to assess the usability of locomotives without having to know the encrypted number codes of the series.

The first system

The original system was kept very simple and consisted of two components:

  • Coupled axles in the form of a Roman numeral
  • Coupling axle load in the form of a lower case letter (a, b, c or d)

The lowercase letter a meant an axle load of 10 t, d an axle load of 14 t. It was not possible to determine whether it was a tender or a tender, nor was the meter load taken into account. A 1C locomotive with an axle load of 10 t therefore had category IIIa.

extension

A major flaw in the system was the lack of information on the maximum trailer load. In addition, the specification of the axle load was kept very rough. The system was expanded to take account of technical developments. The new war category consisted of three items of information, which were arranged above and below a horizontal fraction line:

above the fraction line

  • Coupled axles as before as Roman numerals
  • Towing capacity in tons with a 10 ‰ gradient and 17 km / h in Arabic numerals

below the fraction line

  • Route load in the form of a capital letter (A, B, C or D) and an Arabic number (1 to 8)

The line load was calculated from the axle loads, the load per meter and the wheelbase, with A8 being the heaviest and D1 the lightest.

The 310 series had z. B. the category with 14.5 t axle load . The heaviest locomotive was the six-coupled Erzberg - Zahnradlok 269 with an axle load of 15 t and a very tight design. She had the category . As a final example, the 178 series, as a branch line locomotive, had the category .

Use and end

As well and logically as the system was conceived, it was of little use in the First World War . The lines in the war zone were often subject to changes in ownership and condition (e.g. temporary bridges ). Thus, a precise definition of the correct category was often difficult or impossible.

The designation system for the war categories was partly used in the successor states of the monarchy until the 1930s. Ultimately, this internationally unique designation system disappeared.

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