That’s not to say that these 50-ton engines are anything less than cast-iron behemoths, with 1,300-gallon water tanks and a firebox that devours 180 pounds of coal on the uphill run and 130 pounds on the downhill. (SDG), which runs the Fichtelbergbahn and two other narrow-gauge steam railroads around Dresden, a narrow-gauge train can turn in a circle with a radius of just 50 meters (164 feet) - nearly two-thirds less than a normal-size locomotive. Put another way, explained Hans-Thomas Reichelt, the chief engineer with the Saxon Steam Railway Co. But like many trains that run in mountainous terrain, the Fichtelbergbahn is smaller for a reason: Because it must make sharper than usual turns, its narrow-gauge track is about half the width of conventional rail lines, the two rails exactly 750 millimeters (about 2 1 / 2 feet) apart. Steam locomotives are impossibly romantic, and narrow-gauge engines, about half the size of an ordinary locomotive, are impossibly cute as well, in the manner of a pint-size version of anything, from a miniature horse to a pygmy hippo. The Fichtelbergbahn, one of three narrow-gauge steam railroads in this relatively obscure corner of eastern Germany, a couple of miles from the Czech border at the top of the Ore Mountains, attracts visitors from around Germany and the world.
Now, a lifetime later, I stood outdoors on a cold, gray, moist December day in the railyard of the German village of Oberwiesenthal, watching another black engine, this one built in 1933, alternately belch jets of steam that raced along the tracks and gusts that enveloped its green passenger cars whole.
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