Review: Lauscher/Richter, Schalke - Lokomotiven für Bergbau, Industrie und Nahverkehr

Gewerkschaft Schalker Eisenhütte in Gelsenkirchen is older than the German soccer club. In 1938/39, the company entered the locomotive production business and has been manufacturing mine locomotives, service vehicles, and heavy special locomotives since the 1970s.

Stefan Lauscher and Wolfgang-Dieter Richter have compiled a 400-page, large-format standard work that not only weighs 2,500 grams, but also contains a unique wealth of information about all kinds of exotic locomotives.

Schalke Locomotives, as the manufacturer has been called since 2018, has produced over 1,600 locomotives to date and delivered them all over the world, as the maps on the endpapers demonstrate. The mining supplier offered its first motor locomotives in 1907/08, but unfortunately only two advertisements have survived. After an employment crisis, the ironworks finds orders for coking plant machinery and, from 1938, uses its collaboration with BBC to build electric coking plant locomotives with lateral current collection.

During the war years, Schalke survives by building heavy open-cast mining locomotives. At the end of 1944, bombing raids brought production to a temporary halt. It was not until 1949 that coke quenching locomotives could be produced in the newly built factory, where Siemens-Schuckert-Werke also moved into a workshop. The practical timelines in the book reveal that, until well into the 21st century, almost all such locomotives for coking plants and gasworks in Germany came from Schalke.

In 1958, Schalke reached its peak with 399 employees. In 1961, the crisis-ridden company began manufacturing plastic processing machines, but also delivered a world first in collaboration with BBC and Siemens: the first thyristor-controlled battery locomotive. Due to their weight, the locomotives they produced for the Rhaetian Railway were ridiculed as armored cars. The two Te 2/2 works train locomotives were scrapped in 2000 and 2001.

The crises continued, and Siemens abandoned the mine locomotive business. Schalke discovered the market niche for work vehicles for municipal transport companies in good time and supplied the Berlin underground with dual-power locomotives. In 1985, Schalke introduced a mining articulated locomotive in which two control cars were coupled with several “energy cars.” Narrow-gauge electric locomotives for cement railways, such as in Lauffen/Neckar, were also produced.

As a newly founded limited liability company, Schalke has been seeking orders from mines since 1986. Codelco in Chile receives 22 heavy underground locomotives. Better known is the Cargotram delivered to Dresden in 2000, which is used to transport VW car parts through the city. Diesel locomotives are also supplied for the Kuala Lumpur airport railway and the Bangkok metro.

The diesel-electric SDE 1800, developed from 2006 onwards, is intended to compete with Vossloh's diesel-hydraulic industrial and works railway locomotives, but no pilot customer can be found. The ambitious program includes plans for two-axle models with a large wheelbase and bogie locomotives. However, the elegant trucks locomotive, which is delayed in completion, proves to be too heavy and too expensive with an axle load of 22 tons. Many of its parts end up in a Toshiba hybrid locomotive.

Since 2019, Schalke Locomotives, a subsidiary of the Canadian company Nordic Minesteel Technologies, has been building locomotives again, including some for the metros in Amsterdam and Sydney. The hope remains that it will be possible to survive with small numbers of special locomotives.

This extensively researched book from Barteld-Verlag is printed on high-quality art paper and impresses with 775 photos and drawings. I contributed nine photos, including the apparently very rare pictures of the quarry railways in Blaubeuren and Schelklingen, which have been history for 55 years. A huge advantage over other railway books is the 25 cm wide page format, which allows for much larger pictures and a more varied layout. The German language book is consistently appealing, reader-friendly, and sensibly designed, divided into chapters and requiring no back-and-forth leafing. A weekend will not be enough to take in all the material compiled by both authors over many years of work and to delve into the sometimes exotic locomotive classes and curious designs that one would otherwise encounter at best in short magazine articles.

Another innovative feature is the QR code at the end of the book, which can be used to access a 46-page PDF file containing delivery dates and prices (!) for over 1,600 vehicles, broken down by locomotive category. Even canceled or unaccepted orders are listed.

Since mine railways are not really suitable for model railroaders, the narrow-gauge industrial locomotives and articles about many factory railways offer plenty of inspiration for dioramas. But the standard-gauge special locomotives and the many dimensional drawings could also inspire replicas. Anyone who grew up in the Ruhr area and other mining and steel regions will also discover many things from their own neighborhood thanks to the detailed captions accompanying the photos. This opulent book can be recommended to anyone interested in railway technology. A perfect Christmas gift.

Stefan Lauscher/Wolfgang-Dieter Richter: Schalke – Locomotives for Mining, Industry, and Local Transport 755 illustrations (291 color photos, 228 black-and-white photos, 173 vehicle drawings) | 400 pages | Format 25 x 31 cm | Hardcover | ISBN 978-3-935961-31-8 | €49.90

Barteld-Verlag