South African Class DS

The South African Railways Class DS of 1939 was the first diesel-electric locomotive on the South African Railways, a single twin-engined centre-cab Bo-Bo shunting locomotive ordered from AEG in Berlin. It was placed in service at the Congella yards near Durban in 1939 and was first numbered D137 and then D513. Two Maschinenfabrik Augsburg-Nuernberg diesel engines of 198 kilowatts each drove AEG generators and traction motors, and the locomotive weighed about 67 tonnes. Results were rather disappointing, yet it stayed in service for 28 years before being scrapped at Salt River Works in November 1966.