For the increased traffic on the suburban routes of the growing industrial cities in Württemberg, the state railways had a tank locomotive developed in Esslingen from 1908, later called the T 5. A distinctive feature of them was the very long wheelbase, in order to be able to guarantee smooth running at high speeds even with a small wheel diameter.
The chassis of the T 5 consisted of three coupled axles that were arranged at a relatively large distance and one leading and one trailing axle each, which were designed as Adams axles. With a rigid wheel base of 4,000 mm, the locomotives ran extraordinarily steadily, but the diameter of the driving wheels of only 1,450 mm allowed a top speed of initially 70 km/h. The supplies were quite considerable for a tank locomotive and included 8.66 m³ of water and 3 tonnes of coal. Due to the well thought-out design, the locomotive had an empty weight of only 52 tonnes and remained under 70 tonnes with full supplies.
Despite the low speed, the locomotive proved itself. For this reason, it was not only used as planned on shorter main lines in regular passenger service, but was also used to some extent to pull express trains. The latter was the case for example on the Gäubahn between Immendingen and Stuttgart, where the line largely follows the river Neckar and its tributaries and therefore has many curves.
96 were produced in the period from 1910 to 1920, of which only three had to be handed over to France as reparations after the First World War. In the Reichsbahn, the locomotives were assigned to the class 750 and given the numbers 75 001 to 75 093. Due to their smooth running, they remained in use in almost the same number for a long time, so that the Bundesbahn was able to take over 89 of the 93 locomotives. Almost all except one were retired by 1959. The last T 5 initially remained in service until 1963, before finally becoming a museum locomotive. However, it could not last long in this role, and so it was scrapped five years later.
