QUOTE (goedel @ 6 Aug 2007, 01:39)
<{POST_SNAPBACK}>I'm sure ME 26-06, our resident expert on all things K.BAY.STS.B will have something to say about it!
Who? Me?
Ironically, that engine will be mine shortly, too. My gf knocked my Sachsenstolz off the table when I was applying the detail parts, and this experiment showed that a Sachsenstolz will not survive a 3-foot-fall. Her insurance paid up (don´t ask, just don´t ask...
), yet the worst damage was that she burnt her arm badly when the hot light bulb from the lamp she also knocked over hit her arm. Poor her.
Long story short - they had the purple version on sale @ 389,-- Euro, and the insurance paid 379,-- Euro... ahem...
The S 2/6 was conceived and built to break speed records, and prove the superiority of Bavarian engineering over Prussian efficiency (yet again...). To reduce weigt, the boiler was made of thinner steel plates than usual, its pressure being reduced from 16 psi as usual in these days to 14.5 psi. In order to make up for this reduction in pressure, the wheels were built larger in diameter, so that one cylinder stroke would make the wheel travel a longer distance on the rail. However, 20 years later, the 14.5 psi turned out to have been still way too high, as it was thought to be damaged beyond repair. The engine was not scrapped, but given to the Nuremberg Traffic Museum, where it is still on display today.
The engine performed well, being the first engine on the continent to have travelled at 100mph (apparently, there was an engine that did so before in the UK, albeit that speed was not measured using a dynamomoeter car as in Bavaria, but with a passenger´s stopwatch, but I don´t want to go there... the S2/6 was the first engine
on the continent to reach 100mph, and that´s it), and was used alonside the Bavarian S2/5 Atlantics and S3/5 fast train engines of the time. It was delivered in grey livery with its boiler and cylinders cased with specially treated sheet metal "Glanzblech" that, like today´s mica car paits, shone in hues ranging from dark blue to light gray depending on the light and the viewpoint of the observer. Brawa tried to capture this appearance by painting the boiler and cylinder in a metallic grey tone, and the rest in a "normal" silk light gray.
On display, shiny and new, the S2/6 3201
As Germany´s economy was booming in the first decade of the 1900s, and the German middle class was one of the beneficiaries from that boom, the money for travel was there and was longing to be spent. Thus, the trains became heavier, since the Bavarian Alps were one of the favorite tourist destinations not only, but also of that time, and the Atlantics along with the S2/6 was no longer able to sustain these loads (these engines had enormous problems starting a train without having the driver wheels slipping, and with the S3/6 engines being around, alongside the S3/5 engines, the Atlantics and S2/6 became technically obsolete merely 5-10 years after they had been built.
However, at the time, "Bavaria" was not only what is to be seen on the map today as "Bavaria", but also featured that Pfalz, or Palatine region on the left side of the Rhine. The Royal Bavarian State Railways deprivatized the Palatinian Railroads in 1909, and introduced its own services, with the engines that were used there being painted in a reddish purple. The Palatine region consisted mainly of flat land, and shorter trains with less stops in the trips. The Atlantics and S2/6 were absolutely sufficient for fast passenger travel (including the Orient Express) in that region, and so were transferred there in 1910. The S 2/6 was also repainted in the Palatinian paint scheme, which is portrayed in the purple Brawa offering (the one I ordered, btw). It was used on a regular basis between the cities of Bingerbrück, Ludwigshafen und Strassbourg (which was German at the time) until 1918, when France claimed the Alsace and Lorraine territories back. The Allies were not interested in claiming the S2/6 as part of their reparations, thus it was used in lower services until 1921, out of Ludwigshafen, to return to Munich in 1921. By now, the boiler´s weakness started to act up, and the engine had to be repaired more and more often, with braces being welded to the tender, which had been built frameless to save weight, and boiler. Brawa added the visible details that were added at the time on their green version. By the mid-1920s, it seemed economcally unfeasible to maintain the engine any further, and when the Deutsche Reichsbahn was founded, one of the prerogatories was that all engines with two or less drivers were to be scrapped. The S2/6 escaped this fate by being displayed at a traffic expo in Munich in 1925, and then passed on to the aforementioned museum.
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The S2/6 near the end of its active carreer.
The Brawa engine, with all of its beauty, has a few minor flaws.
Because of the rather high wheel flanges, the Brawa model features slightly too small driving wheels. The distance between engine and tender is a tad too wide. The front coupler pocket can be removed, as this coupler was used only *very* rarely. The trailing wheels upper suspension has not been replicated true-to-scale, this, however, is owned to the model´s ability to negotiate tight curves. OK, this is nitpicking at its best, since the model is one of the finest engines short of handmade brass I have ever encountered. If any of you is interested in one, be aware that the grey version is believed to be as true as it can be, owning to the plating, the purple version has been recreated from actual paint chips, the black and red Reichsbahn version is pure fantasy, as this engine was never painted like that (it didn´t even wear the 15 001 number plate - ever), and the green version is merely on display at the Nuremberg museum, but never saw active duty in that paint scheme.
Pictures were taken from
Eisenbahn & Nostalgie
