The German locomotives ''Comet'', ''Faust'', ''Blitz'' and ''Windsbraut'' were four of the first

locomotive A locomotive or engine is a rail transport vehicle that provides the Power (physics), motive power for a train. If a locomotive is capable of carrying a payload, it is usually rather referred to as a multiple unit, Motor coach (rail), motor ...

s on the

Leipzig–Dresden Railway Company The Leipzig–Dresden Railway Company (german: Leipzig-Dresdner Eisenbahn-Compagnie or LDE) was a private railway company in the Kingdom of Saxony, now a part of Germany. Amongst other things, it operated the route between Leipzig and Dresden, ope ...

(LDE). They were four-coupled engines, that

Rothwell and Company Rothwell, Hick and Rothwell was an engineering company in Bolton, England. Set up in 1822, the partners became interested in the production of steam locomotives after the Rainhill Trials. The company's first engine was ''Union'', a vertical bo ...

had built in

Manchester Manchester () is a city in Greater Manchester, England. It had a population of 552,000 in 2021. It is bordered by the Cheshire Plain to the south, the Pennines to the north and east, and the neighbouring city of Salford to the west. The t ...

between 1835 and 1838. ''Comet'' was the first locomotive to be delivered to

Saxony Saxony (german: Sachsen ; Upper Saxon: ''Saggsn''; hsb, Sakska), officially the Free State of Saxony (german: Freistaat Sachsen, links=no ; Upper Saxon: ''Freischdaad Saggsn''; hsb, Swobodny stat Sakska, links=no), is a landlocked state of ...

. She arrived at

Leipzig Leipzig ( , ; Upper Saxon: ) is the most populous city in the German state of Saxony. Leipzig's population of 605,407 inhabitants (1.1 million in the larger urban zone) as of 2021 places the city as Germany's eighth most populous, as wel ...

in November 1836, packed in 15 crates. After her reassembly testing began on 28 March 1837 and she was then deployed on railway construction duties. She was followed by ''Blitz'', ''Windsbraut'' and ''Faust'', the last named being similar in dimensions to ''Comet''. The other two were somewhat larger (their technical data, where different, are given in the table after a "/") All the engines had a cylindrical firebox and boiler barrel, an oak

locomotive frame A locomotive frame is the structure that forms the backbone of the railway locomotive, giving it strength and supporting the superstructure elements such as a cab, boiler or bodywork. The vast majority of locomotives have had a frame structure o ...

reinforced with sheet

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

and inside

cylinders A cylinder (from ) has traditionally been a three-dimensional solid, one of the most basic of curvilinear geometric shapes. In elementary geometry, it is considered a prism with a circle as its base. A cylinder may also be defined as an infini ...

and

valve gear The valve gear of a steam engine is the mechanism that operates the inlet and exhaust valves to admit steam into the cylinder and allow exhaust steam to escape, respectively, at the correct points in the cycle. It can also serve as a reversing g ...

. In 1842, following a serious accident in France the operation of twin-axled locomotives was banned and the engines were given

0-4-2 Under the Whyte notation for the classification of steam locomotives, represents the wheel arrangement with no leading wheels, four powered and coupled driving wheels on two axles and two trailing wheels on one axle. While the first locomotiv ...

wheel arrangement through the addition of a

trailing axle On a steam locomotive, a trailing wheel or trailing axle is generally an unpowered wheel or axle ( wheelset) located behind the driving wheels. The axle of the trailing wheels is usually located in a trailing truck. On some large locomotive ...

. Such early machines often had to be repaired at frequent intervals and these engines were no exception. ''Windsbraut'' blew up on 21 May 1846 in charge of a train that was ready to depart from the Dresdner station in Leipzig. The other locomotives were retired no later than 1849.

Sources

* ''This article was created from a translation of the equivalent German language article'' {{DEFAULTSORT:Lde - Comet Early steam locomotives 0-4-0 locomotives 0-4-2 locomotives Locomotives of Saxony Railway locomotives introduced in 1835 Passenger locomotives

See also

Sources