Class D9 2-8-2 (1919)

Class D9 4-Cylinder Compound Mixed-Traffic Locomotive
Designed by Karel Belčamin in 1919

Although Karel Belčamin's last class to be built was the C14 Pacific, his colleagues found, after his sudden death, a number of unfinished designs which probably would have been quite useful had he lived to build them, plus some of more questionable value. Among these was the 2-8-2 shown here, which would have become class D9. The boiler of the C14 remained unchanged and was combined with a longer smokebox. It should perhaps be pointed out here that for design purposes the RSR treated boilers and smokeboxes separately. Just what class of traffic Belčamin had in mind for this engine is not clear. The size twenty driving wheels would seem a mite too large even for fast goods work, which never attained passenger speeds. The good balancing of the four-crank drive would surely have favoured the higher speeds needed for passenger work but the plain leading Bissel truck would almost certainly have been rejected by the civil engineer, as witness the fate of the 2-6-0s and 2-6-2s of 1910 and 1913, respectively. It will come as no surprise therefore that Šahlmeti, being no admirer of Belčamin's work, left the D9 project unfulfilled.

Text and graphics © Norman Clubb 2011