81.340

Piko 5/6315 - Steam locomotive Type 81 no. 81.340

... and my non-existant engine shed gains another inhabitant.  But what an inhabitant!

Like the HLV 64, the HLV 81 was a key type of the Belgian Railways.  Originally built as the Prussian G8¹, the Type 81 entered service with the Belgian State Railways in the aftermath of World War One, when the railways of Imperial Germany were forced to hand over some 2200 locomotives to Belgium as part of War Reparations.  Just over a quarter of these locomotives, some 576 in all, were Prussian G8¹s.

Entering service in 1919, the Type 81 was used all over Belgium, mainly as a freight locomotive, but occasionally also on passenger services.  They remained in service until 1967, the year steam locomotives were withdrawn from mainline services in Belgium, with the last freight services performed by the locomotives of the Gouvy depot on January 10th 1967.  Unfortunately, after their withdrawal, not a single Belgian Type 81 was preserved.

...

The Piko model of the Belgian Type 81, a vintage model which was first produced in 1956, is pretty much representative of a standard DB engine, but needs some minor modifications to properly represent a Belgian machine.  For instance, it has the Knorr preheater mounted on its right side, which was not present on most of the Belgian machines in the post-War era, so that is coming off.  At least this model does not have the steam bell mounted atop its smoke box - for some odd reason, some production runs of the Piko Type 81 did, and some did not come with that bell, which was not present on Belgian machines...

She also needs some minor repairs, but at least none of them are difficult to perform! :3