Last Thursday, 18 April 2024, a special “star of the rails” made a brief stop at the railway museum: The express steam locomotive 3673 (Bavarian class S 3/6) from the Bavarian Railway Museum Nördlingen (BEM) refreshed its water supplies at our museum on the way from Nördlingen to Bochum. The rare visit by the representative of the state railway locomotives was of course documented in detail in sound and vision by our colleagues on site. The locomotive looked immaculately restored, both inside and out, and despite its advanced age of over 100 years was in top condition!
The transfer of the locomotive to this weekend’s Museum Days at the Bochum-Dahlhausen Railway Museum took place in the tow of a regular freight train operated by Bayernbahn GmbH, pulled by electric locomotive 151 001-5.
Tomorrow, Monday, 22.04.2024, the S 3/6 will start its journey home and make another refuelling stop at Bahnwelt.
Interesting facts about the locomotive
“The steam locomotives of the class S 3/6 […] of the Royal Bavarian State Railway (class 184-5 of the German Reichsbahn) were express locomotives with a four-cylinder compound engine. […]
The Ulm-based 18 478 was the last S 3/6 built during the Länderbahn era (1918) and thus also the last with a wind cutting cab. […] Today, this example is owned by the Bavarian Railway Museum in Nördlingen. The locomotive was restored to working order by the Bavarian Railway Museum with the Meiningen steam locomotive works in 1996 and was given back its original road number 3673 and a green colour scheme, which, however, did not correspond to the dark Bavarian state railway green, but to the light green of a well-known Märklin model and was thus a consideration for the main sponsor of the restoration. Since then it has been seen on numerous special trips [until the deadline expired in 2004]. […]
Extensive work had to be carried out on the now 90-year-old locomotive, which still has its original boiler, before it could be put back into operation. Following a successful search for sponsors, this work has been carried out by employees of the Bavarian Railway Museum since 2009 in order to be able to present the locomotive under steam again for the 175th anniversary of the railway in Germany. From May 2010, the locomotive was thus operational again until a deadline expired on 29 May 2014, when it was taken out of service again. It has been operational again since August 2017.”
(Source: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayerische_S_3/6, self-translated)
