For those who may be interested, a further gem from my favourite channel;

Kriegslokomotiven

Regards,

Michael.

Hi Kimball,

Great footage I agree, I just love that old technical stuff

Perhaps it has had a recent edit with a good program to maintain the old look !?

Hi Brandon,
No the comment was not done in jest, and I concur that your explanation is most likely spot-on.
I also agree with your observation on lenses - the Germans were superb.

Regards the shot at the end, you can tell they have doubled up somehow on the images, because the same drivers appear over and over.

I have an anecdote - in the 1980s/90s I worked for a Japanese optical company, which was formed in 1932.
I visited their factory in northern Tokyo a few times.
On one occasion, they were refurbishing one of the lens grinding rooms, and it was explained to me that the machinery in there was purchased from Germany when the factory started in 1932.
It was also explained that the quality of lens produced would be impossible to replicate with modern techniques.
(Glass quality also plays a part).
But at this time, the factory was interested in producing more, and the German machines may take 2 days to grind a lens (200 at a time).
Using modern machines, they could do it a lot quicker.
They were not discarding the German ones, just doing a new layout to incorporate more grinders.

regards
Kimball

Kimball,

Good catch with the driver, you looked closer than I did.

Thank you for the story about your previous company. I would be happy to go on a tangent about vintage optics, but I think that would be unfair to the topic of this thread.

So, instead, some prototype details (according to Wikipedia anyway):

DR/DB class BR52:
Units produced: Approx 6719!
Years Produced: 1942-1950 (6300 units from 1942-1945, the remaining units produced after 1945)

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DRB_Class_52

Also of interest (to me anyway):

"In the early post-war years the 52s were used by many European countries, the largest user being the Soviet Union which had more than 2100 of this type. Poland was another country with more than a thousand and East Germany had about 800 examples. The type was also quite widespread in most of the other east European nations. West European countries replaced them with more modern locos as soon as possible, with the exception of Austria where they were used until 1976. The simplicity and effectiveness as well as the large production number meant that many east European countries were slow to withdraw Kriegslokomotiven, with Poland using them until the early 1990s. Turkey and Bosnia were also late users of the type."

Imagine that, a run of almost 50 years in Poland.

As a number of manufacturers produced these, I wonder which we see in the film? Probably no way of knowing.

-Brandon