Class M 0-8-0 (1871)

The movement of goods on the RSR was for a long time treated almost as a sideline. It was only in the late 1860s that the RSR management agreed to have some goods engines purpose-built. The design that Luršimonš produced, this outside-framed 0-8-0, brought a great increase in the RSR's freight-moving capacity. Borsig built eighty of these locomotives in four batches between 1871 and 1875. Over the years, the class M underwent various alterations and improvements, such as the fitting of larger boilers and cylinders from 1883 onwards and air brakes in the early 1900s. Quite powerful by the standards of the day, these engines could, it was said, pull anything that was hooked up behind them; all that varied was the speed. Many were displaced by Belčamin's 2-8-0s but a small remainder survived to be rebuilt with new Belčamin boilers from 1908 onwards, becoming class D2A. These shared duties with the D8 0-8-0s of 1910 and E1 0-10-0s of 1911, the last of the rebuilds finally going to the scrapheap in 1923.

Text and graphics © Norman Clubb 2012