COBI DR BR 03 Steam Locomotive Set 6288

COBI's DR BR 03 is a 1:35 model built from 2,564 blocks, 71 cm long with its tender. Gears in the frame drive the coupled wheels and connecting rods as on the original, the cab is fitted out with firebox, throttle and controls, the smokebox opens, and the tender's coal load lifts out. A Deutsche Reichsbahn driver figure and six sections of straight track are included. All markings are pad-printed; no stickers.

Built lighter on purpose

The BR 03 is the BR 01 made to weigh less, and that sounds like a compromise until you understand what limited German express trains in the 1930s.

The constraint was axle load — how much weight each axle puts on the rail. Main lines could take 20 tonnes per axle. A great many secondary and cross-country routes could take only 18, and a locomotive that exceeded it was simply not permitted, however good it was.

The BR 01 was an 20-tonne machine and could not run on those lines. The BR 03 was designed to the 18-tonne limit with thinner boiler plate and a lighter frame, which cost it some power and opened up thousands of kilometres of route it could actually work on. 298 were built between 1930 and 1938 by Borsig, Krupp, Henschel and Schwartzkopff.

They pulled the most prestigious expresses in Germany at 120 km/h, and after the war they were divided between West Germany, East Germany and Poland. The model is BR 03 273.

In the COBI range

Set 6286 is the Executive Edition of the same locomotive with 2,721 pieces, three figures, a water crane and a display base.

Specifications

Pieces: 2,564 · Figures: 1 · Scale: 1:35 · Six straight track sections · No stickers
Model dimensions: 71 × 9 × 13.5 cm (28.0 × 3.5 × 5.3 in)