Karl-Heinz Golze saw with his own eyes how work was begun at Borsig on the prototype of the Märklin model he is holding. (Translated from Märklin catalog 1988/89, page 12)

Many model railroaders interested in Märklin have taken the company to task for issuing a model of a locomotive that was never built. I don’t quite understand why. I, for one, think that the Borsig Mallet makes a fascinating model with or without the condensing tender. Recently, while browsing though my old Märklin Magazines, I came across two articles dealing with the fabled Borsig Mallet. I read both article again and I thought I’d like to share their main points with you in English.

In all, there were to be three war austerity locomotives. The first was the BR 52, followed by the BR 42 and the third was to be the BR 53. We all know that the BR 52 was a very successful design that lasted well beyond the second World War. The BR 42 was embroiled in much politics but did reach production and also soldiered on after the war. The third, the BR 53, for want of a better designation, numbered 53 0001, never even reached the prototype stage.

On October 13, 1943, some ten weeks after the delivery of the first BR 42 (42 0001), the Construction Committee of the Special Board for Locomotives invited the locomotive builders to submit proposals for a heavy war austerity locomotive. One source notes that nine and another writer said ten companies responded with 17 designs. Some of the designs included an engine with seven main axles from Schichau, a modified Fairlie from Orenstein & Koppel and a non-articulated from the Wiener Lokomotivfabrik or WLF (Vienna Locomotive Works). Clearly, the designs submitted by Borsig (Berlin Hennigsdorf) and WLF were of the greatest interest to the Reichsbahn. (In 1944, Borsig became part of AEG, the giant electrical firm.)

Borsig, under the direction of Dr. Adolf Wolff, sent two proposals with one of them being an articulated Mallet design (No. 426-821) and a more conventional engine (No. 426-824). The latter was to have been a 1’E2’ (2-10-4) based heavily on the BR 44. WLF also proposed an articulated design but rather along the lines of the American non-articulated duplex configuration. Borsig, on the other hand, was not unfamiliar with Mallet locomotives having built a number of them for Serbia, Italy, Spain, Indonesia, Argentina and the Ottoman Empire.

In reviewing Mallet designs of the past, it was found that the (1’C)D (2-6-8-0) axle arrangement was not widely used; however, Baldwin in Philadelphia built such a locomotive in 1910 for the Southern Pacific Railroad and the Alabama & Great Southern Railroad. Other such Mallets were compromises built of already existing locomotives. These were furnished to the Baltimore & Ohio and the Great Northern railroads.

Borsig reviewed these designs and paid specific attention to the one bought by the Alabama & Great Southern. This machine measured 72.8 ft (22,203 mm) and featured wheels consistent with the Borsig design for the BR 53. However, many railroads favored a D’D’ (0-4-4-0) arrangement, the same design as found in the famous Bavarian Gt2 x 4/4 Mallet.

Thus Borsig’s Mallet design of (1’C)D h4 (2-6-8-0) configuration was to have been a locomotive capable of hauling a 1,700 ton freight train at speeds up to 50 mph (80 km/h).

The boiler was to have a diameter between (6 ft 6 in. and 7 ft 3 in. (2 and 2.2 m). The flues were 6 m (39 ft). The frame was divided into two groups of driving wheels, each with two cylinders, with the boiler resting on a pivoting bolster over the front group.

Further, the BR 53 would have weighed in at 140 tons and measure nearly 90 ft (27,350 mm) from buffer-to-buffer, unfortunately a bit too long for the standard 75 ft (23 meter) turntables. The five-axle tender would have been in keeping with the locomotive’s anticipated voracious appetite and therefore contain 15 tons of coal and 9,246 gal (35 m³ ) of water.

The new machine was also to have incorporated such features as stokers to feed coal from the tender into the firebox since the fuel consumption would prove too prodigious for a man shoveling coal manually. In light of what is known now, it would very probably been equally unlikely to have either procured under a licensing agreement to purchase or design an entirely new stoker system.

Unquestionably, the Borsig Mallet was a sound design which was extremely well received but there was some concern about the vulnerability of the various flexible couplings necessary to accommodate the articulated frames. Despite ever more difficult working conditions, it seems that the Hennigsdorf engineers talked about building a prototype. While there may have been such talk, there is evidence that were only preliminary sketches but no detailed drawings that would be needed to machine components.

The Borsig history for 1943 notes that the company’s facilities in Hennigsdorf near Berlin were heavily damaged by air raids and therefore continuing with locomotive construction was not possible. It was possible to finish two Kriegsloks in January 1944. Also, it was possible to carry out some locomotive repairs. One source notes that by war’s end in April 1945 only about 25 percent of the company’s machine tools were in working order.

Krupp’s locomotive works were already destroyed in 1943 and lost as a production facility. In the fall of 1943, Albert Speer, minister of war production, ordered that construction of new locomotives at Krauss-Maffei and Borsig be stopped and that these companies concentrate on repair of damaged locomotives. In November of the same year, the locomotive factories were moved east of the Berlin-Munich line, probably to escape the increasingly heavy air raids. Other unnamed locomotive factories were also instructed to deal primarily with repairs and other related tasks.

` As the last proposals for the heavy Krieglok were received in February 1944, it became increasingly evident that such an engine would not be needed in light of the retreat of the German army from its eastern positions. Berlin was under increasingly severe air attack and events had reached the point where tanks were deemed more important than locomotives.

The third war austerity locomotive had, for all practical purposes, become a moot point.

Proposed Specifications

"Borsigs Reichsbahn Mallet Entwurf" by W. Messerschmidt, Märklin Magazin, 1/89, p.36, 37.

"Borsig-Entwurf einer Mallet-Schlepptenderlok", Märklin Magazin, 1/79, p. 33, 34.

Ever since Märklin brought out the Borsig Mallet in the late 1970s, there has been on and off discussion as to whether or not Borsig actually started to build this engine. In an apparent attempt to settle this question, the editors of the Märklin catalog, ran two pages in the 1988/89 H0 catalog to answer that question. Here are the main points of these two pages while omitting the technical details because these agree with other sources about this locomotive.

According to former Borsig engineer Karl-Heinz Golze, the sentence, "The prototype of the Märklin 3102 locomotive was never built" is incorrect. He was 61 years old at the time and he continues, "At Borsig I saw with my own eyes the first assembly work for this locomotive."

During his training at the German State Railroad’s engineering school in Saxony, Mr. Golze from Leipzig was at the Borsig factory in Berlin several times in 1944. "It was not entirely true that the German State Railroad had given out contracts in 1943 only to the locomotive for the development of such a super heavy freight locomotive." On the contrary, the State Railroad’s schools were also entrusted with designs.

"Even in Mittweida there were people involved in the contracts." There were some rather odd designs, a locomotive with the cab in the middle and a boiler in the front and back, for example. The coal bunkers would have been located over the low-slung boilers. Another version was planned for powdered coal firing because of its better combustion characteristics. The powder would have been sprayed into the firebox with jets, similar to the oil sprayers used today." The attempt failed because, among other things, it was too expensive in wartime to produce coal powder from lignite and bituminous coal."

Golze quoted one of his instructors as saying, "It is important that something sensible comes out of it which does not cost anything."

And this was the way things were even at Borsig during days which were ruled not only by shortages of money and material but already by the naked struggle for survival. "We were happy to go to Berlin because the meals at Borsig were good." To paraphrase Golze’s quotes, "while we were knocking out 52s [the first Kriegslok], there was also another locomotive under construction which looked quite different from the standard wartime locomotives. It was the Borsig I, the big articulated Lok. Evidently the design had been given the green light because no one was allowed to admit that the war at this point could not be won and the big Lok would be needed for service to the Eastern regions.

Golze describes the sight, "The cylinder mounts could be seen easily. The frame was finished. I walked on it myself." There was a little to see of the tender and the cab as there was of the cylinders but the lathe operators had already worked on the wheel sets. The boiler was also in progress. Golze cannot conceive that the locomotive was ever totally finished or even under steam. He also does not know what became of the parts under construction. "I was drafted in the summer of 1944. Much happened after that and also during the chaotic postwar period that followed. The bottom line is that he never set foot in the Borsig factory again.

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"The Giant Locomotive Which Was Built…", Märklin Catalog, 1988/89E, p. 12, 13.