DRG Class 52

The DRG Class 52, widely known by the German term Kriegslokomotive or war locomotive, is a German steam freight locomotive mass-produced from 1942 during the Second World War for the Deutsche Reichsbahn, designed specifically to be built quickly and cheaply from simplified components using less critical war material than earlier German locomotive designs. Built in extraordinary numbers, with more than six thousand examples constructed across German-controlled Europe during the war, the Class 52 was intended to sustain German military and civilian rail transport under wartime production and resource constraints, and its simplified design allowed manufacture at numerous factories simultaneously. After the war, large numbers of Class 52 locomotives remained in service across many European countries that had received or captured examples, and the type continued in regular use on several national railways, including in Eastern Europe, for decades after the war ended.