Contributions to the History of Railways and Locomotives

compiled by Ingo Hütter

In the 1930s there appeared a magazine with the name "Beiträge zur Lokomotivgeschichte" (Contributions to Locomotive History). It was published by a group of people who had formed the "DLA" in Darmstadt -
this abbreviation stands for "Deutsches Lokomotivbild-Archiv" (German Archive of Locomotive Pictures). The magazine contained information on locomotive history in all epochs of railway development, and the very precise articles were written by people who were enthusiasts and specialists. So this magazine was written for other specialists of locomotive history - and I think that was the reason why only one issue
was ever published.

With this website I will try to follow the ideas of this old magazine. Of course it is a bit difficult, as a single person is never able to compete with such a big group, but at least one aim of this page is identical to the aim of the old magazine: No trivial information will be provided on this page - the page is made for railways enthusiasts who want to dive deep into different aspects of Railway and Locomotive history.

The most ambitious project of this site is the locomotive database, which provides online information on single locomotives. In the beginning the database was limited to locomotives and railcars (excluding steam locomotives) of the German State owned railways, but due to the strong interest in steam locomotives they had been added in the meantime.

At the end of 1997 a book with the title "Vom Kleinbahnnetz zu den Osthannoverschen Eisenbahnen" (From a light railway network to the Osthannoverschen Eisenbahnen) was published, which is the most extensive publication about this largest German private railway. Due to limited space in the book it was not possible to publish all the available information. Therefore this Internet site contains some additional online chapters and further information on the locomotives and coaches of this railway.

In recent years, some more books have been published by the author of this site. Some errors in these publications were identified in the meantime and corrections are available on this site. In addition, information on interesting books written by different authors are provided here.

The link "documents" leads to a collection of articles (written by different authors) and scans of original documents. These documents will typically be in German, but many of them also contain interesting lists, which can be understood without any knowledge of the German language. Additional contributions (also in English) are always very welcome.

I hope, that many railway enthusiasts will like this page. Mails with additions and corrections are always very welcome. If you have any specific corrections please also add information on the source of these data. The reason for that is that in the past a lot of things have been published which contain errors and wrong data. Only if the source is known is it possible to distinguish between trustworthy and non serious information. (Of course this doesn't count for corrections of typing errors - sorry, English isn't my native
language).

Pattensen (Germany), June 2000

(Last update: 31.05.2010)