Throughout the 1950s, the bulk of express passenger traffic was in the hands of Tešlov's 4-6-2 rebuilds and his new 4-8-2s of 1950, which were essentially a passenger version of the 533A. It was Ketterik's idea to produce a new engine to serve the RSR for the coming quarter century. The history of the steam locomotive is littered with projects where a new chassis was placed under an existing boiler. The 533D was no exception. Although it utilised the excellent boiler of the 434D and other modern features such as poppet valves, roller bearings and boxpok wheels, the 533D was totally superfluous to requirements and was therefore not authorised. The Tešlov class 533C, only eight years old, was coping admirably with the steadily growing volume of RSR heavy goods traffic and the 533Bs were taking care of the rest. The RSR simply didn't need another heavy goods engine, as Ketterik must have known, and so he was quite unfazed by this turn of events. Also, the 533D was very much a mix-and-match design which required very little effort to produce. In the event, the RSR did not acquire another ten-coupled goods engine until 1975.

Text and graphics © Norman Clubb 2012