Class 523C 2-10-0 (1949)

After the Second World War Frihdrik Tešlov decided to furnish the RSR with a medium-weight goods locomotive to complement his class 323F 4-6-2. Interestingly, Tešlov preferred not to use the existing German classes 50 and 52, but rather to create his own design. The 523C shared many features with the 323F, including its all-welded boiler, cast chassis with integral cylinders and various devices for reducing servicing time (and costs), such as fully automatic lubrication, Franklin automatic hornblock wedges, rocking grate, hopper-bottomed smokebox and firetube cleaning gear. The new engines entered service during 1949 and, as the RSR's first ten-coupled tender design for some twenty years, bridged until the coming of the 523D 2-10-2s and the legendary 533A. The 523C was a classical post-war Tešlov engine with two-cylinder simple drive and of a type much favoured also by its designer's successor Rodivacek. During the 1950s the entire class received poppet valves, a few locos also being coupled to Vanderbilt tenders. Once Jochann Ketterik had taken over as CME, however, there was a major swing in favour of multi-cylindered locomotives and the 523C was an early victim. Of the total of seventy engines built, over half had disappeared by 1970, the rest following by 1973.

Text and graphics © Norman Clubb 2012