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03-04 May 2025: Saisoneröffnung

electric locomotive E44 143

Builder:	Henschel / Siemens-Schuckert
Type:	E 44
Constructed:	1942
Works number:	25384
Power output:	1.860 KW (2.529 PS)
Maximum speed:	90 km/h
State:	Exhibit

The class E 44 was designed from 1930 as a mixed traffic electric locomotive, i.e. for freight or passenger service. The first machines were put into service from 1932. They were the first German electric locos to be produced in series not to have idler wheels leading the bogies, and to have individual axle drive; they were designed primarily for the line, electrified in 1933, over the Geislingen Ramp between Augsburg and Stuttgart.
The locomotives gave a good account of themselves there and subsequently further locos were delivered for service to all the most important depots in Bavaria, central Germany and Silesia where electric locos were stationed.

The locomotives stationed in eastern Germany had to be given up to the USSR as part of war reparations following discontinuation of electric operations in 1945, but they were not a success there. The bogie frames were not suited to rebuilding to the Russian broad gauge and fitting with central buffer couplings.
They were all returned in 1952 in an appalling condition, and our loco was the first, after a general overhaul lasting three years, to return to service on the German State Railway, in 1955.

After 1955, she saw the majority of her active service in the Leipzig and Halle region. In 1987 she was transferred to Schwerin where she was used as a shunting locomotive andfor pre-heating passenger trains. After covering a good two million kilometres, she was withdrawn from service at the end of 1991 and the following year was sold to the track construction and repair company H.F. Wiebe, which initially loaned it as an exhibition piece to the railway museum in Weimar. Since 18.09.2015 the locomotive has been on display in Wittenberge.