Kleinlokomotive
A low-power locomotive that does not require a specific type of engine
A Kleinlokomotive or Kleinlok (literally: "small locomotive"; plural: Kleinlokomotiven or Kleinloks) is a German locomotive of small size and low power for light shunting duties at railway stations and on industrial railways. Most are powered by diesel engines, but Kleinloks with steam, petrol, or electric engines were also produced.
After testing several trials locomotives, the Deutsche Reichsbahn (DRG) placed various types of such locomotives into service from 1930 onwards. Industrial lines and railway workshops generally procured engines of the same design.
In Switzerland Kleinlokomotiven were used as light rail motor tractors.
History
In order to speed up goods traffic and meet the challenges posed by emerging competition from road traffic, various national railways in Europe carried out trials with small diesel-powered shunters starting in 1923. Until then, all shunting movements for goods wagons at small stations and loading yards had to be carried out by the locomotive in charge of the local goods train (Nahgüterzug). This extended waiting times and reduced the average speed of the train considerably, but having a dedicated shunting engine at such stations would not have been economically viable due to the low levels of goods traffic. The development of combustion-engined locomotives offered new possibilities here: the Kleinlokomotiven were smaller, cheaper and easy to operate. It was anticipated that the resulting improvement in the speed at which goods could be moved would enable railways to compete with road transport.
“Kleinlokomotive” enters the record as a low-power locomotive that does not require a specific type of engine. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Kleinlokomotive, low-power and locomotive can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 24, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1640765. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1930 and 1923.
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This entry incorporates text from “Kleinlokomotive” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.