Railcar, Diesel, SVT 137 155

History: Diesel railcar SVT 137 155, also called Kruckenberg-Schnelltriebwagen or Fliegender Silberling, was a railcar of the German railways, which was built in 1938 from a design by Franz Kruckenberg, for experimental purposes. As a prototype, it distinguished itself by his advanced concept and design. The special features were lightweight construction, air suspension and pioneering power transmission with flow gearboxes, which used hydraulic transmission.

In the 1930's the Kruckenberg "Flugbahngesellschaft" built many new and innovative trains. They produced the world famous Rail Zeppelin which beat the world speed record in 1931, reaching a top speed of 230.2 km/h. A few years later they delivered this 3-unit SVT 137 155. The construction of this revolutionary train was years ahead of it's time, in 1939 it reached a world speed record of 215 km/h, this was a record for diesel railcars. It was never put in revenue service. The unique set is now in storage at the Dresden rail museum.

The DRG Class SVT 137 was a class of streamlined high-speed diesel train sets of the Deutsche Reichsbahn-Gesellschaft and later of the Deutsche Bundesbahn and the Deutsche Reichsbahn. SVT stands for Schnell Verbrennungstriebwagen which means High Speed Diesel Railcar. Despite being regrouped under the same class, the various DMUs were actually very different one from each other.

More on Wikipedia about the whole class SVT 137 and (in German) about Kruckenberg SVT 137 155.

Railroad/Company: This set of items is comprised of more than one name. Please look at the component items for details on the specific roadnames and/or manufacturers.