New built steam

Everybody "in the street" is convinced that building steam locomotives has ceased. Has it? No it has not. After a pause of almost fifty years, in Europe at least, locomotive builders and workshops are gradually coming to the realisation that building new steam locomotives is not nearly so impossible as generally thougt.

With the ever ageing fleet of heritage steam locomotives the question arises if we must perpetually restore "original" steam locomotives to working order. This question was especially spurred by the building of the A1 "Tornado" and its subsequently coming to the rails in 2009. In the case of the Tornado matters were relatively straight forward: none of the original batches has made it into preservation so if there was to be one it should be newly built. And so it was. This created an open door though for the matter of restoration. Restoring a mainline steam locomotive to full operational order costs dearly and after that you end up with an engine which basically still is over fifty years old, no matter what. Financially it could be wiser to invest in building an entirely new engine for operational purposes and store the original engine for eternity. Time will tell, but maybe a trend in this direction is developing. In these pages I hope to collect information on new built steam locomotives.

Some thougts

What is "new built"??

It seems trivial question but the answer is not so obvious. There is an area between restoration and building that is not clear. I define new built steam as

a steam locomotive built
- distinctly after the regular steam era ended in the country for which it is destined
- intently to form a new creation in addition to existing heritage or otherwise operational or static fleet
- without pre-existing main components like frame, cylinders or complete driver wheelsets (built "from the drawing board")

As a consequence a locomotive that is assembled for 95% of new parts around e.g. an existing frame with the intention of depicting the original locomotive is NOT a new built locomotive, though technically maybe nearly so, but a reconstruction. I must admit this is arbitrary. Another exclusion is that of minature steam locomotive. I consider 600 mm (2 feet) gauge as the lowest practical gauge to be serious business track. Anything smaller narrower than that is out of scope. I know light railways and miniature railways build new steam locomotives in dead earnest but I have to draw a line somewhere.

Relation to Modern Steam

Modern steam is a collection of techniques and improvements which greatly enhance the performance and maintenance characteristics of the classical steam locomotive. In this respect not every new built steam locomotive can be considered to be "modern steam". In fact most new built steam locomotives are not. Most are classical steam locomotives, if not entirely built to original designs than at least built to the same design principles. I consider a steam locomotive to be "modern steam" only when it incorporates at least one of the features mentioned here.

Having said that let's turn our attention to the pièce de resistance, a list of new built steam locomotives. No it's not complete. It will be <<under continuous construction>>.
If you know a locomotive not on the list please contact me!!