This is is Royal Bavarian State Railways 2-6-0 No. 1599 displayed at the Bayerisches Eisenbahnmuseum Nördlingen in Nördlingen, Germany. It was converted into an 0-4-0 by an Allied bombing attack at Treutlingen on April 11, 1945.

Amazing it survived. I bet it was buried for a long time and dug up sometime recently. Anything scrap like that was cut up and melted down as part of the Marshall Plan after the shooting was over with.
It's incredible with bombing can do, I've seen lots of photos of steam locomotives turned almost inside out from that.

That's really a significant display. The Royal Air Corps Museum in London has a B24 displayed as it was found under the Zeiderzee. They also have the cockpit of a burned out, crashed Spitfire, again, just as it was found. Context is so critical with these rare remnant of darker times.

Actually, that B-24 was never crashed anywhere, it's a former Indian Air Force B-24L in very good condition.
Not much was saved from the recoveries in the Zuider Zee are, sadly. For example a
452nd Bomb Group B-17 named, "Dina Mite" (#42-37950) was recovered fully intact, sitting on the bottom, after the war was over. Then, she was scrapped right away.
Only in very recent times has there been any truly serious effort to preserve anything from that time in Europe.

looks like something from Rube Goldberg

Looking at the valve gear, it would appear that it was set for full forward when it got hit...

Interesting indeed! We were there two years ago and rode behind the beautiful 1918 K.Bay.Sts.R. S3/6. The museum was closed by the time we returned but it's on our list for 2014.

Jeff Livingston

Indeed. They filled a bomb hole with it and in 2004 it was rediscovered. It is the only "survivor" of its class and before it looked like this.

Mike

That could possibly tell who blew it up. Most RRs in the Reich were moving at night time long before then. So I'd be willing to bet that the RAF did this. The US gave up night time bombing very early on as they decided it was trading safety for accuracy. The RAF usually bombed at night with strategic bombers which is what they'd have hit a target this deep into Germany with.
If this hadn't been buried in the attack for so long, it wouldn't exist today.

...psh, that'll buff right out....

Seriously though, awesome display. What is the story behind its survival and discovery?

When will it be steamed up and what color will it be? </troll>

Lee wrote;

“Most RRs in the Reich were moving at night time long before then. So I'd be willing to bet that the RAF did this. The US gave up night time bombing very early on as they decided it was trading safety for accuracy. The RAF usually bombed at night with strategic bombers which is what they'd have hit a target this deep into Germany with.”

Perhaps; but there were also plenty of trains moving in the daytime. I have copies of my Father’s gun camera film (He was a P-51 pilot, 8th Air Force 1944) and he hit several locomotives in daylight. Granted it was in support of D-Day and not near where this loco was found.

A few well placed 50 caliber bullets would at the least cause a steam leak and disable the boiler, and maybe the crew (War is He--). But if the hits were concentrated enough a boiler explosion might result and with a few boxcars full of ammo a nice little blast could occur from the likely derailment.

The US Army Air Force did target “marshaling yards” for heavy bombardment in Germany, so this loco could have been “in the shed” when it was hit in the daytime.

By April of 45 my Dad was home safe in the US, so he did not cause this.

Nice story of how to disable your enemies’ railroad;

There was a Panzer Tank group with a set of railroad flat cars dedicated to transport them to the front. They unloaded the tanks and parked them in a well guarded encampment. They (the Germans) left the flat cars unguarded on a nearby siding.

The resistance spotted the flat cars and the Allies air dropped bags of “Carburundum” (silicon carbide grit, IE sandpaper without the paper) to the resistance fighters. The resistance fighters poured the grit into the bearing boxes on the parked flatcars. Nobody noticed.

Then the invasion came and the Germans loaded up their well guarded tanks onto the flat cars to “rush” them to the front lines. All went well for the first few miles, and then…..

Of course the resistance fighters where long gone and the Germans had a whole train of hot boxes stalled far away from where the tanks might help them. Sure they fixed it up and the tanks got there "eventually", but in wartime, "Now" beats "Eventually" every time.

Simple and Effective !!!

Cheers, Kevin

Not in a large RR yard deep in Germany. By this late in the war there were plenty of tactical air units operating freely over the continent, but most of them never went that deep into Germany. Fighters operating like your Dad did, generally were either much further West or South of where this locomotive got hit.
RR yards were very heavily defended, even that later in the game, no fighter jock would have been dumb enough to get down to try to hit something there.