<kuid:142675:500880> CFL 5404

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In 1916 railway officials had to concede that there was no heavy freight locomotive adequate to the task of hauling heavy military supply trains in the inventory of any of the German state railways. Prodded by the German General Staff, the Prussian Ministry of Public Works initiated design of a new heavy freight locomotive. The first exemplars of the new class G 12.2 were ready by 1917. It incorporated the most advanced design features known to German locomotive designers of the day. Although none of those features were entirely new, their combination was, breaking with established design practices for freight locomotives of the Prussian State Railways, and the other German State Railways as well.
Intended a heavy freight locomotive it had five coupled axles of 1400 mm diameter and a leading Bissel-type truck. The latter was a design feature German locomotive designers had quite reluctantly come to accept with freight locomotives. It did, however, permit the maximum speed to be fixed at 65 km/h as opposed to the 45 - 50 km/h permitted for five-coupled freight locomotives without leading truck.The Bissel type truck allowed 80 mm radial play of the leading axle towards either side. The second and fifth driven axle were given 25 mm lateral play. The axles were borne in an American style bar frame, which state railways in Southern Germany had started to use in the preceding decade. Unlike the more powerful South German locomotives of the day, the G12.2 was powered by a 3 cylinder single expansion steam engine with cylindrical valves, Heusinger-Walschaerts valve gear and operating with superheated steam. The large boiler rested on top of the frame allowing a wide grate with large area. Because of this, the centreline of the boiler was at an unprecedented hight of 3,0 m abouve ground level. The firebox was of the Belpaire type. It was also one of the first locomotives using a surface feedwater preheater in conjunction with a steam powered piston pump. As a second, independent boiler feed pump it retained the two injectors commonly found with steam locomotives at that time. One of these was later removed, once the reliability of the piston feed pump during day to day operation had been established.
Except for the Belpaire type firebox, all major design features were incorporated into the set of general principles which governed design of the standardized locomotive types, Deutsche Reichsbahn was to introduce 10 to 15 years later. The G12.2 was therefore dubbed as the first of the German standard locomotives by some railway autors. It certainly constituted an important step towards the modern, standardized designs of later years.
It was also the first Prussian designed locomotive procured in considerable numbers by the state railways of Alsace-Lorraine, Baden, Württemberg and Saxony.
In 1928 Prinz Heinrich Railways of Luxembourg bought a number of G12.2 locomotives from Belgian State Railways together with some very similar 1'Eh3 locomotives originally built by Henschel in Kassel for a Turkish railway company during WWI and handed over to Belgium as wartime reparation. In CFL service these locomotives were named classes 54 and 53, respectively. Since they performed well, additional class 54 locomotives wer bought from AL railways in France. After WWII CFL also rented for a while some ex. G12.2 locomotives from SNCF in France, which had inhereted the type from EST and AL companies.
The class 54 locomotives were mainly used to haul heavy ore trains to Belgium. They operated mainly from the Bettemburg and Petingen depots. Eventually some of them were fitted with turbogenerators and electric lighting and a French AFCI mixing preheater. Most of them also had a cab fitted to their tenders. Survivors of WWII which were eventually returned to Luxembourg were further employed until they were replaced by more modern steam locomotives during the late 1950s